Radio Broadcast (May-Oct 1922)

A Review of Radio 339 been realized. Possibly their change of attitude during the last three years has been even more surprising than that of the Government and radio company officials in general. In 1919, when 1 began a quiet Httle campaign of education and persuasion with certain editors, 1 sought to show what unlimited possibilities for the education and amusement of all America, and particularly of the dweller on farms and in isolated districts, the radio telephone possessed. By the very nature of its propagation, the medium it employed, by the astonishingl y simple and inexpensive receiving apparatus required, should it not have been clear to anyone giving thematter a little thought, that a few powerful, well-located radiophone t r a n s m i tters could afford a means for nation-wide announcement for oneway communication, which was absolutely new in man's experience? Yet while this technical phase of the situation was (perhaps doubtingly) admitted, yet none of those newspaper men with whom I came in contact seemed at that epoch to realize the possibilities for genuine good to the public of this proposed service. Yet, let it be known, the managers of the Detroit Daily News grasped the germ of the idea as soon as it was presented. A small transmitter was installed on the roof of their building shortly thereafter by the Radio News and Music Inc., a company which at that time sought but failed to interest the other newspapers of the country; and to that newspaper belongs (as told in Radio Broadcast for June) the honor of establishing the first "radiophone newspaper service," interesting and up-to-theminute news bulletins, interspersed with music or monologue to make the service doubly attractive. Then, not many months later, the Westing In 1908 messages were sent from the Metropolitan Tower, New York, to Milwaukee and Key West by the "Sparkless" radiotelegraph. The arc chamber employed for this transmission may be seen at the extreme left o\ er the operator's shoulder. The huge boxes before the operator constitute the receiving equipment. The radio amateur of yesteryear will recognize the old fashioned variometers, variable condensers, audion detectors, and adjustable pillar inductances house Company, whose progressive directors had long before determined to break into radio regardless of what millions this might involve, took up the possibilities of the broadcasting idea. Backing faith with works, they opened up their regular station at Pittsburg, then one at Newark. So at last Broadcasting began to come into its own. Now that a few years will see every fairsized vessel, on ocean or lake, equipped with this safeguard for the mariner, is, I take it, as certain as progress. Then, fogbound, or lost near shore, unacquainted with his bearings, knowing nothing of the telegraph code, every skipper can call to some listener at the nearest lifesavers' station, or lighthouse, and hear in a still small voice his vessel's name repeated and its whereabouts revealed. Or, he will hear an answering "Ahoy," and be told that another craft, steering a certain course, is close upon him. The tug captain will be in telephonic touch with his barge office, miles distant, or with the steersman of his tows, even if the hawser has parted. A yacht-owner, without the luxury of a Morse operator in his crew, can already call up his club miles away over the waters. Cities separated by a hundred, a thousand miles of gulf are to be connected by telephone over the water, although the distortion and alternation of currents in a submarine cable of such length render voice transmission utterly impracticable. It is of course no longer necessary that the speakers themselves be at the radio telephone stations in order to use them. Wire telephone instruments are directly connected to the wireless at terminal stations, thus giving all the elasticity of the present telephone exchange, yet employing the radio telephone as the "trunk line" or connecting-link.