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Left: Section of Tapline conduit which carries daily flow of 300,000 barrels of oil over 1,000 mile route shown below. Radio Speeds Work on World's Largest Pipe Line By H. C. Edgar, Merchandising Director, RCA International Division V^ ONSTRUCTION and operation of the world's largest oil pipe line across more than a thousand miles of desert wasteland from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea represents a modern wonder achieved by a combina- tion of radio and petroleum engineering. Successful 24-hour operation of the mighty oil highway, which traverses four countries — Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon — depends upon instantaneous, reliable radio communications. RCA was entrusted to design and install a radio system between terminal points and the six pumping stations that control tlie daily flow of M)0,000 barrels of oil. Tapline, the abbreviated name commonly used to identify this project, was built by the Trans-Arabian Pipe Line Company and the Arabian American Oil Company. It cost more than 200 million dollars to build and required more than 265,000 tons of steel pipe. Completion of the project involved three years of work and more than five billion ton-miles of freight shipments. Most of all it involved vision. Actually, the history of Tapline starts with the dis- covery of oil in commercial quantities in Saudi Arabia. The oil there is close to the Persian Gulf, but by tanker route it would have to be carried 3,500 miles to the Mediterranean, by way of the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea and through the Suez Canal. Looking at their maps, oilmen saw that tremendous savings in time and money could be made by piping the oil across the sands and gravelly plains of the Arabian Peninsula. After extensive planning and study, construction on the pipe line was begun in the summer of 1947. Communications engineers of the RCA International Division were among the first to go into the field. These engineers were organized into two groups for the Tap- line project. The field team was composed originally of eight engineers but later was expanded to 20. The other group, at the New York home office, was made up of from three to eight draftsmen and engineers. While the field force was erecting temporary radio fa- cilities, the New York group was busy on blueprints of the permanent system of communications. The initial step in designing an integrated radio system for Tapline was to investigate the best method to use under the prevailing geographic and physical conditions. RCA technicians made detailed ionospheric propagation studies and then developed a frequency 10 RADIO AGE