Radio Round The World

Radio Record, 25 March 1938, Page 54

Radio Round The World

NOTHER boyish illusion goes bang with the news that the modern cowboy has taken to wireless. He no longer sings his herd to sleep in the silence of the western night, for when the up-to-date descendant of Cody aud Bill Hickock asks for his boots and saddle he demands also a little portable radio set. He straps this on round the ribs of Old Faithful, the aerial consisting of a long flex attached to the reins; and when the "Arizona moon is mellow and the stars are yellow" he tunes-in to ‘Frisco, Schnectady, or maybe to the Daventry Empire station. The only trouble is that this modern method is too effective-in addition to keeping the cattle quiet it often sends the cowboy himself into a sound sleep! ERMAN P.O. officials are sitting up late at night with cold towels wrapped round their heads thinking hard over a recent decision of the courts. The trouble began when enter prising residents of summer houses anfi bungalows near the Hamburg radio station found that, by attaching electric lights to a circuit tuned to Hamburg’s wavelength, they could light their premises on the "buckshee" system. All the time that the station is working on 100 kilowatts its field-strength is sufficient to light the bulbs. Postal officials, nettled by this ingenuity, summoned the hut-dwellers for "stealing the energy of a broadcasting station." The judge, who was apparently a bit of a sport, ruled that the P.O. wins its case only if it can show that the use of the bulbs reduces the reception strength of the transmitter. And the P.O. officials, hastily donning their thinking caps and ice-packs, have re tired to think out why illumination should impair radiation. ‘THERE is still current an Australian colloquialism, ‘Buckley’s chance," meaning "without a hope." Yet it is something like a hundred years ago since Thomas Buckley escaped from a convict settlement down at Port Phillip, and with a companion set out for China, which, it was believed among the convicts, lay a little to the north of Australia. Thus history, or news, was made, and the words "Buckley’s chance" added to the Australian language. The story of Thomas Buckley’s escape, his long residence with a tribe of blacks, and his return to civilisation, made an enthrallingly dramatic episode in "Famous Escapes," BSA presentation broadcast last week from 2GB and 2UE Sydney.