Radio Broadcast (May-Oct 1922)

30 RADIO BROADCAST © Harris & Ewing CONGRESSMAN WALLACE H. WHITE, JR. Who is making a special study of radio conditions and possible radio legislation To begin with, then, we can put down one very tangible and meritorious result of the Conference: Thanks to the phenomenal popularity of the radiophone in the main, policing of the ether is imperative; Uncle Sam is clearly the only one who can do the job; and so far as non-governmental radio work is concerned, it is now plain that the wholly inadequate authority, force, and funds of the Bureau of Navigation must all be increased. But there are other results already achieved by this Conference called, at the request of the President and Cabinet, by Mr. Hoover. Mr. Hoover, himself, indicated some of them. He said that the Conference, with a view to affording the greatest good to the greatest number of Americans, had, clearly, made progress by enlarging and defining the ether rights of the public and the amateur, and by working out and recommending the largest possible permutations of available wave bands with respect to existing priorities, zones, time factors, and the like. "The Conference," said Dr. S. W. Stratton, Director of the Commerce Department's Bureau of Standards and chairman of the Conference technical committee, "has already gone a long way in settling what purposes can and should be served by radio and what purposes can still best be served by other means of communication. It established a tentative classificat ion of the agencies that are invaluable in the radio field. It has made progress in the allocation of the channels of communication, -i. e., the wave lengths. And it has suggested constructive modifications to be made in the present radio laws, the last of which was passed in 1912 and is now inadequate because of the pressure of later developments." Also, the Conference made clear that there probably can never be private property rights maintained in the ether. Then, too, it perceptibly diminished the zeal that, at first, some organized groups displayed in gunning for exclusive rights to bands of waves (which rights could be capitalized to the tune of millions of dollars). Moreover, the Conference has made clear that squabbles over wave bands in Uncle Sam's own official family must be settled out of court — that is, the Governmental agencies using radio must forthwith hold a conference of their own, settle their own differences, and establish, perhaps, some kind of a permanent inter-departmental body or board to settle governmental radio problems as they arise. Also, one of the most profound inferential results — and the inferential results of this Conference, like, say, the Washington arms conference, perhaps quite equal in importance the direct results — points to a powerful lot of fuss and fume that the United States delegates are now certain to make at the forthcoming international conference in Paris, to which this Conference is in a sense the preliminary. But, first, let us glance at some interesting points of view now, rather for the first time, hauled out into the open. For the American Telephone & Telegraph Company, for instance, Colonel Griswold pointed out that radio is now being used and for every reason should continue to be used for linking up with main lines of communication remote areas or islands, such as Catalina Island, which do not warrant the maintenance of cable or land lines. He described, interestingly, how, even now, in some of these localities a toll subscriber gaily talks over a phone without realizing that he is bridging a goodly space by ether, with wires at the ends only, while enjoying continuous