Radio broadcast .. (1922-30)

390 Radio Broadcast and buildings at both Cape San Antonio and Swan Island, as well as New Orleans, were designed to withstand the average hurricane, the experience with hurricanes at those places indicated that a much heavier construction and a different design should be used. They therefore called in Mr. A. W. Buel, consulting engineer, of New York, who had been associated with the design and construction of the Company's railway bridges in Central America. In cooperation with Mr. Davis, he has designed and the Company is now erecting, towers which will withstand wind forces up to 140 miles per hour. These latest towers, which the Company has adopted as standard, are 420 feet in height, are self supporting and triangular in shape, and have at the top a bridge arm 150 feet across. The towers are designed to be installed with a span of 1,100 feet and to carry an antenna of 20 wires, each 1,000 feet long. It is hardly surprising to find that all steamships of the "Great White Fleet," in addition to providing for the special comfort of passengers, have been equipped with the most modern safety devices and are prepared to meet almost any emergency. One of the precautions thus taken was to install on each steamship storage batteries as an emergency power source for operating the radio transmitter, and for an emergency lighting system to be used in case of failure of the main dynamos. With characteristic thoroughness, Mr. Davis selected this equipment Dy a process of elimination, .he main considerations of which were reliability of operation under adverse conditions, and the fact that emergency power should be such as would enable the radio operator to obtain it instantaneously for the radio equip THE "EGYPTIAN MONOLITH" TYPE OF TOWER Especially designed for the United Fruit Company to withstand wind forces up to 140 miles an hour, and now adopted as standard. These triangular towers, 420 feet in height, are self-supporting and have a bridgearm i 50 feet across. They are designed to be installed with a span of 1,100 feet and to carry an antenna of 20 wires, each looo feet long ment as well as for the emergency lighting system. Mr. Davis states that storage batteries seemed to come nearer these requirements (for auxiliary power purposes) than either steam or internal combustion engines, in that they could be brought into use by merely throwing a switch on a switchboard. The installation of such an elaborate equipment is not compulsory but was made possible by the broad policy of the Company to leave nothing undone, regardless of the expense involved, for the safety and convenience of its passengers and crews. It was the first company to recognize the value of complete storage battery equipment in connection with the operation of the main radio apparatus on board ship, and to install on its ships a complete emergency lighting system operated from storage batteries. All of its steamships will finally be equipped with the Pickard radio Pelorus, which will enable the captains to determine their bearings from the radio beacon stations now being established by the U. S. Department of Commerce. In 1914, the Company abandoned the old Burrwood, La., station and erected a new plant at a point nearer the mouth of the Mississippi River. The Burrwood station was originally intended formarinework, but, on account of its ideal location—from a radio receiving standpoint — in the marshes bordering on the Gulf Coast, the Company contemplates making it its principal radio receiving terminus in the United States, and from here remotely controlling the high-powered transmitter in New Orleans. At the present Burrwood station there are two 25O-foot towers set on a span of 650 feet,