Radio Broadcast (Nov 1926-Apr 1927)

3AN217' ©C1B 731474 RADIO BROADCAST Volume X FEBRUARY, 1927 Number 4 Linking Continents with Twenty Kilowatts How Britain Is Linking Up with Her Colonies System — New Stations Can Handle Five Times as and Expense Is Lowered — A Description of a Typi Involved — What M.arconi Thinks of the "Ham's" Means of the Short>Wave Beam Traffic as Long'Wave Stations Beam Station and the Principles in Short'Wave Development I HAVE always felt," said Senatore Guglielmo Marconi in the "James Forrest" lecture given before the Institute of Civil Engineers in London recently, "that wireless waves are far too valuable to be continuously scattered and broadcast equally in all directions instead of being concentrated as much as possible on the station with which one desires to communicate." "Ten years ago," he continued, "during the War, I began to consider the possible alternative which might be offered by an exploration of the capabilities for point to point communication of those electric waves which had never yet been used for practical radio telegraphy. I mean waves only a few meters in length, and I was particularly attracted to this line of research because I was well aware that with these waves, and with these waves only, it would be possible to project most of the radiation in a narrow beam in any desired direction, instead of allowing it all to spread in every direction. "There is no doubt that, generally speaking, radio engineers of four or five years ago thought they knew much more about the subject than we think we know to-day. Laws and formulas were announced and accepted showing which wavelengths were best adapted for various distances, and indicating what amount of power would be necessary in order to be able to communicate any given distance. Unfortunately, it soon became apparent that the logical application of these laws and formulas brought us to the necessity of employing, for long-distance transmission, such enormous and expensive antenna systems, and A SHORT-WAVE WAVEMETER This particular instrument is utilized to keep check on the Bodmin short-wave beam station such large amounts of power as to make the method so costly in capital expenditure and operation, that only a very small margin of profit would remain when the system was worked in competition with modern cables and land lines." As long ago as 1913 efforts were made to design long-wave stations which could be used for long-distance communication. It was not until 1923, however, that the British Government finally decided definitely to proceed with a plan of linking up the Dominions with the mother country by means of wireless telegraph stations. The Dominions had been asking for such a service for many years, and when the decision was finally reached by the British Government, the Dominion governments immediately made arrangements for the construction of corresponding stations in their own territories to complete the service. Even while negotiations were under way to provide long-wave stations, Senatore Marconi became convinced, as a result of his experiments, that a new system could be developed which would prove to be better both from a standpoint of effectiveness and cost. Some courage was necessary to propose a system which might easily revolutionize the whole art of longdistance communication. This too, it must be remembered, at a period when larger and larger long-wave stations were being erected in America and at other points, such as the Lafayette station at Bordeaux,