Farming with Radio

Radio Record, Volume III, Issue 25, 3 January 1930, Page 7

Farming with Radio

ONG + distance" farming as part of the tremendously enlarged field for radio with heavy demands for skilled radio men, is foreseen by Dr. Lee De Forest, famous as a pioneer worker in tl: field of broadcasting, who predicts that radio control of distant mechanisms will constitute an important phase of radio in the future. "I can visualise many tasks performed by uid of radio control in the future," Dr. De Forest said recently. "In fact, out in the Middle West, where I was born, I can picture the farmer seuted in an observation tower, controlling one or more tractors by ultra sbortwave radio. The country is so flat that ‘at a few feet elevation a mun can see for miles. A. transmitter on the tractor itself can flash back a signal to the farmer, indicating the exact state of affairs and how the orders are being carried out just as the electric switch and signulling -system in railroading flashes back an indication to.the switch tower that a given order has been carried out. "Of course, there is the question of providing the necessary wave-lengths. To-day, with an overcrowding ether, there appears little chance to squeeze out additional channels, particularly for many individual uses. And yet IL am by no means discouraged. in my dream; I have great hopes for ultra short-wave radio, combined ‘with directional or beam effects, as a meuns of securing all the necessary channels for localising application, "I am sure history will ‘repeat itself, for just as the earlier radio ap-. plication had to, do with actuating a bell or tap recorder and performing other mechanical. work, so the future of the radio art will’ also have: to do with controlling machinery, There are greater opportunities ahead’ for the -radio-trained men. than’ we can. imagine to-day." ve hy