.Robot Production Line Makes 3 Radios a Minute
THE so-called “printed” radio sets are still new on the American scene, but they are rapidly becoming common items in England. A new factory near London is using a robot machine (above) which takes the plastic molding in one end and delivers the printed circuits from the other end at the rate of three a minute. It would take about 2,000 workers to do the same job by hand.
.“Hellos” by the Millions
RECENT figures compiled by the Bell System show that there is more than 145 million miles of telephone wire in the world, or enough to reach from the Sun out past the planet Mars; and about 60% of it is in the United States, where it was used for more than twenty-seven billion conversations over the wire last year. (At three minutes each, this is 154,000 years of talk.) That is, every man, woman and child in the United States made 220 calls; or, rather, leaving out those who can not use the telephone, there was an average of only about one call a day. In the use of the telegraph, the United States is a shade less pre-eminent; it has only a third of the world’s 6,773,500 miles of wire.
.More Telephone Service for more people
From The 1946 Annual Report of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.
1. In no year since the telephone was invented was there such a remarkable increase in the amount of telephone service furnished to the American people as in 1946. The net gain in the number of Bell telephones was 3,264,000, or more than twice the gain for any previous year. Additional telephones were installed at a rate averaging more than 25 a minute every working day.
.Tank Maneuvers Controlled by Radio
Developments in the mechanization of the army is the installation of radios in tanks for the transmission and receipt of orders. Control of tanks in action, since they were first introduced by the British during the World war, has been at once an important and difficult task, hitherto performed by officers who walked beside the tank and signalled with flags—a duty both dangerous and unsatisfactory.
.Phone Uses Light Sockets
A NOVEL telephone which a person can plug into the nearest electric light socket to talk with another person plugging a similar telephone into a similar outlet near at hand has been developed by a New York City manufacturer. It was demonstrated at the New York Museum of Science and Industry by Dr. O. H. Caldwell, a trustee of the museum.
.NEW TELEPHONIC DEVICE KEEPS HANDS FREE
MR. GEORGE TANKARD is shown below with his new invention that is designed with an eye to speeding up the efficiency of a busy man. This invention is balanced on the shoulder by the form fitting holder. The receiver is placed in the holder and then adjusted to the shoulder so that the ear gets the best results. It is interesting to note that this device has been produced in London, where the American type of speed efficiency has been taking a very strong hold in the last few years.
.The Microwaves Are Coming!
Invisible network will handle phone rails, telegrams, television, FM and AIM broadcasts, complete newspapers—even carry your mail.
By Martin Mann
PSM photos by Robert F. SmithCOMMUNICATIONS are being revolutionized faster than you think. The humming wires beside the highways already are rivaled by new systems, capable of transmitting more spoken or written words and more still or moving pictures from coast to coast. The difference between these new systems and those of the past is as great as that between oxcarts and stratoliners.
.Static from the Stars
Because a radio ham heard strange sky noises, we may get better FM and television—and learn more about our universe.
By Herbert Yahraes
Drawings by Ray Pioch WHEN young Grote Reber was a high school sophomore, he operated 9GFZ in Wheaton, Ill., and tacked so many recognition—QSL—cards to his bedroom walls that the plaster cracked and his parents cracked down. When not communicating with El Paso, Arequipa, Capetown, Prague, and other points, he designed equipment to communicate with them even better. Nobody who knew him then will be surprised to learn that he is still in radio—listening not to the chatter of hams, but to mysterious and bothersome radio waves that come from the heart of the Milky Way.
.Radio Living Room of Tomorrow
Simple in arrangement, and soft in color because of television, the suggested “radio living room of tomorrow” at the New York World’s Fair is open to visitors, who are permitted to inspect the various sight, sound and facsimile facilities while they are in operation.
And now this tech has progressed to the point where the limiting factor is the speed of light.
.High Speed Stock Tickers to Ease Record Market Days
THE Western Union is spending $4,500,000 in an effort to speed up stock quotation service. The task is the largest in quotation service history and is the culmination of three years of labor, six months’ training of personnel in schools
of five cities, the construction of 5,000 city to city wiring and circuit channels in 350 cities and towns in the North American continent. High speed tickers have been ordered at a cost of $2,500,000 to be rented to brokers in the United States.
