Radio today (Jan-Mar 1939)

r-~— — "TL rd <*V ^11 JP ' J! ::^*j Crosley Building at N. Y. Fair, where facsimile and radio will be shown. had in 1938 when Fuehrer Hitler met Chamberlain at Munich. This time, radio dealers were smart. They equipped innumerable business offices with sets, especially radios of the silent type resembling office telephones. These office radios localized reeeption and didn't disturb other workers. And so radio men cashed in on the crisis. Leaders of the television-radio industry were equally enthusiastic about the future. Volume was booming, but overproduction was under control. Merchandising problems had been simplified. Radio dealers were now "Home entertainment merchants," handling small and large radios, combination sets, records, home-movie projectors, television and facsimile receivers, electronic pianos, and all the marvelous new musical devices which, at the flick of a switch, could reproduce the tones of any familiar string or wind instrument. Radio was fulfilling the dreams of its most ardent builders anrl devotees. LOOKING FURTHER AHEAD Meanwhile, as we turn our backs on 1941 and look further ahead, we find progress in radio rushing along on a dozen far-flung fronts. Of widest promise, perhaps, is the field of ultra ultra short waves — tiny radio oscillations measuring hundreds and thousands to the inch. Here lie a wealth of channels ready for use. as fast as apparatus is developed. For it must be remembered that each time the wavelength is halved, there are immediately opened up twice the total number of frequencies, or as many more radio frequencies as were previously available in all the former spectrum ! New broadcasting and communication possibilities crowd before us here. Not only can each individual have his own radio receiver; every inhabitant might conceivably have his own special wavelength, and his own radio transmitter, capable of "calling" the micro-wave channel of any person he might want to reach. Tn our most "Spirit of Electricity and Radio," as depicted by Rockwell Kent for the General Electric exhibit at N. Y. Fair. intensely developed American metropolis live not more than nine million people. Yet nine million frequency channels could be easily available in this rich new frontier region of the electro-magnetic spectrum. So that each inhabitant could have his own individual phone connection through the ether. PLENTY OF CHANNELS Such availability of ample radio channels would lift the restrictive "ceiling" which has always hung everywhere over radio and choked its widest use. Plentiful channels at last would open radio applications to really widespread use in every activity of industry, business and home. Besides telephones and intercommunication systems, there are all the opportunities for machine remote control. Teletypewriters and accounting machines, instead of usiug carbon copies, might turn out "originals" at half a dozen points — head office, shipping room, accounting department, and branch offices concerned. Shortwaves might offer new opportunities even for power distribution and transmission. Original minds have not ceased to look for wavs to supply actual driving power to machines, ships and airplanes through power beams from reflector transmitters. When one recalls that all the energy we have on earth, arrived here as "beam power" transmitted oyer very short waves of the electro-magnetic spectrum, and that our autos and planes today operate on the residue of this energy, captured through age-long processes of tree growth, animal life and petroleum production, it is not so unthinkable that our autos and airplanes may some day be operating directly by radio power! EXTENDING FACULTIES Radio so far has largely worked chiefly to extend the human faculties — to give new amplification to our senses of hearing and touch and latterly of seeing. In the last-named field, it may eventually give us super telescopes, with magnification possibilities, which will make the new 200-inch glass on Mt. Palomar, as inadequate as a 1920 crystal set! (which is its true optical prototype.) Radio may extend our other senses and faculties. Smell and taste seem to be, at bottom, oscillation senses, as sound and sight are. Create the right olfactory and gustatory frequencies, and radio men may be able to let the television audience also sniff the rare perfumes of Arabia — taste the mangoes of the tropics for themselves ! Along with television — Tel-olfacrion? Tele-gustation? Why not? LIMITLESS POSSIBILITIES Radio men still move in a field of limitless possibilities. Radio's chief assets are yet unknown. Radio manufacturers, distributors, dealers and service men still can look forward to an unending parade of new developments — new radio products on which to cash in ! MARCH. 7939