Automatic Wireless

Radio Record, Volume III, Issue 46, 30 May 1930, Page 7

Automatic Wireless

Latest Distress Signal HE mysterious disappearance of the lights of a small vessel off the Queensland coast one night lately and the resultant idea of a possible shipwreck, serves to emphasise the possibility of allaying anxiety in such a-case by the latest development in ship's wireless. Vessels of less than 1600 tons gross , burden are not required to carry a "wireless installation and within the ..past few years several coasters in this class have been lost off Australian coasts .with considerable loss of life. In more than one instance they simply disappeared and days elapsed before anything was definitely known of their fate. To meet the requirements of such cases, the semi-Government organisation, Amalgamated Wireless, has produced an automatic wireless distress transmitter which has yielded remarkable results. This transmitter is intended for use on vessels which are considered too small to carry a wireless operator. It ‘is contained in a cabinet 8ft. 6in. by 15in. square and can be placed in the corner of the chartroom. If the ship is'in danger any member of the crew, by operating a switch, causes the appliance to send out the international alarm signal, followed by the SOS and the name of the ship. In another halfminute an arrangement of letters can be manipulated which sends out also the position of the ship. The transmitter works from a battery and is thus independent of outside power. It will continue to repeat the signals for ten hours. In tests applied by the Commonwealth Navigation Department authorities the signals from this transmitter were received by shipping and land stations on many occasions for distances greatly exceeding that claimed as the effective radius’ of the transmitter. On the mechanical side the automatie wireless distress transmitter resembles a gramophone having «a steel dise (corresponding to the record) _swith the name of the ship and the OS eut permanently on it. The posion has to be added and this occupies "perhaps half a minute. The transmitter works automatically and the message despatched is simply the message on the disc. In the case of the lights off the coast of Queensland, if a ship was actually sinking it would have been the work of a second, to send out the SOS.- As it happens, however, there are over 163 vessels in the inter-State Australian trade which are not fitted with any form of wireless at all,