From The Mailbag:

Radio Record, 9 December 1938, Page 63

From The Mailbag:

HE BBC Acoustic Section at Nightingale Square, Balham, under Mr. John McLaren, is making a close study of resonant absorption of sound. There are two. reverberation rooms of different sizes and two experimental studios also of different sizes. The reverberation rooms are used for carrying out routine measurements on the sound-absorbing properties of various materials and for laboratory types of measurements, and the test studios are erected to try out various types of acoustical

treatments in practice. The two reverberation rooms are lined with tiles. This is not a new method of changing the reverberation period rapidly, but of obtaining as long a reverberation period for the room as is possible so that comparatively large samples of material can be measured.

THE curse of summer reception in India is not so .much atmospherics as the interference caused by electric fans. According to the Civil and Military Gazette of Lahore, the best way to counteract this would be to relay through the local transmitter the Hmpire programmes from the receiving station at. Delhi. The journal contends that, although this elaborate receiving plant cost a*lot of money, it is rarely used, RIVALRY between the Geneva and Lausanne studios for the services of the Sottens radio orchestra has now been ended by the decision to contract the famous Orchestre Romand, conducted by Ansermet, for broadcasting and to station it at Geneva. It is pointed out that Lausann. big studio will probably fall into disuse.

DURING 1937 the Italian broadcasting organisation, EIAR, provided 128 programmes for foreign countries, and itself received 79 progr:..nes from abroad. A large percentage of the former were undoubtedly operas. ALL historical recordings will be preserved in a "Phonetheque Nationale" which was recently instituted by the President of the French Republic. THE use of wireless sets in schools in Czechoslovakia is limited to strictly educational broadec: :ts. It is forbidden to use the receivers for political purposes, and listening to any foreign programme is prohibited. THE Paris correspondent of "The Times" states that M. Maxime Baze, a Frenchman, is reported to be at work on a PA system designed to produce most of the sounds of battle. The apparatus could be set up in a field, and timid troops might be frightened into immobility by nothing more lethal than a s>ries of gramopnone records played behind the enemy’s lines.