News Items

Radio Record, Volume II, Issue 39, 12 April 1929, Page 31

News Items

J EWELLERS in America report a recent increase in trouble from magnetised watches. In many cases this can be traced to the strong magnetic field of an electro-dynamic speaker. This trouble may eventually require the use of a magnetic screen around the speaker. Of course a watch can readily be demagnetised by placing it inside a coil through which an alternating current is passing, but it is liable to be remagnetised when again exposed. HERD are some Dnglish schoolboy "howlers":; "Talligraphy is Morse but radio is listening-in to music and other sounds." "An accumulator is a heavy sheets of lead soaked in acid and they charge 1 and 6 to charge it." "A dry cell is in a flashlamp with two brass strips and several volts." "Telephony is two sorts, wireless and ordinary. Ordinary costs twopence but Wireless many £’s and then perhaps you hear nil." "Hertz invented sparks but Marconi went to New South Wales and flew a balloon, thus bridging the Atlantic with a faint 8.0.8." HE American Academy of Arts and Letters is to award a gold medal for good diction by a radio announcer, "This," says a writer in the London "Popular Wireless," "is, I presume, intended as an _ encouragement of ‘talkies.’ In this connection I Sonam

should like to draw to the notice of the Academy the claims of the Prince of Wales, who, by speaking to the microphone for a few minutes, succeeded in collaring £55,000 for the miners within a few hours. If it is true that ‘money talks,’ then our Prince has the diction which should please an American academy." AN interesting power plant has recently been assembled in Australia, consisting of a four-cylinder Fordson tractor engine, direct coupled to a 250volt 500 cycle alternator and a double current 240-volt D.C. 160-volt, 60-cycle generator, the whole. being mounted on a heavy girder bedplate. Special features comprise the fitting of impulsator ignition and a governor, the first for easy~ starting and the last-mentioned for consistent speed under varying loads. A starting motor is fitted in order that the engine may be started at a distance by means of a switch from the operating table at the wireless station, another switch being provided to stop the engine when required. The object of the plant is to generate power for operating the wireless transmitters at coastal radio stations. Power units of this description have already been fitted at the coastal radio stations at Thursday Island, Brisbane, and Suva -at the last-mentioned station duplicate power equipment is installed. These power units are shortly to be installed at the coastal radio stations at Broome and at Darwin.