Diseminating News

Radio Record, Volume II, Issue 52, 12 July 1929, Page 10

Diseminating News

Rapid Movement from: . Antarctica -- TANDING on the ice of the great Ross Sea Barrier, members of the Byrd Expedition recently watched the sun sink below the horizon for the long Antarctic night. A few hours later a description of that scene was available to newspaper readers all over America. The adventures of this hardy, band of explorers are front page news in half a hundred papers. How’ that news leaps a.10,000-mile gap with! the speed of light is a triumph of shortwave radio transmission. ‘ Since the expedition left New York last September it has not missed a night's communication. More than 150,000 words in Press dispatches have travelled over the invisible bridge from the lonely Antarctic to New York. One night 8500: words were sent and re-. , ceived. j At ten o’clock each night a radio operator in, the editorial rooms in the "New York Times" Annexe receives the day’s dispatch from the reporter with the Byrd party. Simultaneously this message is picked up by a short-wave ‘radio station at Woodside, Long Island, a few miles away. If, as occasionally happens, electrical interference in the city prevents clear reception in the "Times" Annexe building, the signals are relayed, over telephone wires from the Long Island, station to the newspaper radio room. In an. hour or so the whole story is on the presses in New York and is going by. cable, telegraph, and wireless to newspapers in ‘every part of the world. . -From the New York station personal messages are sent to Commander Byrd and his men, and at, one o’clock each ‘morning there is: radioed to them a summary of news'to be published in the papers then on the presses. The success of radio to the South Polar regions has exceeded all expectations. If members of the Byrd HExpedition fly over the South Pole, the story of their success may reach America long before the ’plane returns from the flight! Already radio messages have been exchanged between the "Times" station and ‘plane 3000 feet above Little America-a long dis- . tance record for radio from ’plane to ground. , ‘ 1