Radio Abroad

Radio Record, Volume III, Issue 17, 8 November 1929, Page 31

Radio Abroad

. bee pee tel ~ S a result of conferences between British and American broadcasting representatives, regular exchange programmes will be commenced short ly on both sides of the Atlantic. Within a year it is probable that millions of listeners in America will be able to hear the roar of seaplanes competing for the Schneider Trophy, or perhaps: the. clash of arms at one of London’s huge military reviews, Radio engineers of two prominent British companies are now engaged in perfecting a shortwave transmission system which will endble owners of even the weakest of sets to receive these trans-Atlantic programmes. Because.of possible defects in transmission, however, no attempt will be made to broadcast any. items of a musical nature. a LISTENERS to ‘station WGY, Schenectady,' were entertained recently by a very novel broadcast, which consisted of the noise made by flying atoms as they passed through a sheet of aluminium. Radium and other radioactive elements continually emit streams of atomic particles flying with the amazing speed of approximately ten thousand miles per second; and several years ago a German scientist named Geiger invented an apparatus to collect and count these shooting atoms. Each tiny particle passeg through a thin window -of aluminium, the speed of the atom being so great that it shoots through without being stopped, The atomic projectile electri« fies gas atoms contained in a° inner? chamber, and thus the gas for an ins stant becomes a conductor of electricity. The tiny pulse of electric current prodyced by the arrival of the atomic bullet is then amplified millions of times, until it is able to-actuate a loudspeaker. The resultant noise, as of hail pattering against a window pane, provided a unique and interesting broadcast.