I love it when writers with expertise in one area just throw in huge advances in other technologies as a possible result of another. Eg: What does a 3-D virtual conference room have to do with satellites? Would it not work with wires?

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What the New Domestic COMMUNICATIONS SATELLITES Will Do for You

Canada’s pioneering Aniks, and U.S. successors, are introducing the revolutionary innovation of overland telephone-and-TV relays in the sky. They promise bargain rates for long-distance phone calls, picture phones that everyone can afford—and better television programs, by way of novel kinds of TV networks

By WERNHER von BRAUN
PS Consulting Editor, Space

On Jan. 11, 1973, Rudy Pudluk, community manager of Resolute on a Canadian island above the Arctic Circle, made a long-distance phone call to Ottawa. The English-speaking Eskimo chatted with Gerard Pelletier, Minister of Communications, and with David Golden, president of Telesat Canada, whose system carried his voice across the frozen North.
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How Ingenious Sound Producing Devices Fool Radio Microphone

You can’t always believe what you hear over the radio—the picture above proves it. Sound producing machinery of a large chain broadcasting company is shown. Thirty-three separate sound effects arc produced by the cabinet before which the operator is sitting, but in addition to this a large number of individual devices are employed, including numerous bells of various tones, a cigar box with a pulley and piece of string to simulate the sound of a curtain being drawn in a theater, oar locks used in acts calling for a rowboat, and a pillow to be struck with slats to produce the thudding effect of a prize fight blow against human flesh. Read the rest of this entry »

PLANES’ RADIO MESSAGES “CANNED” FOR DISASTER RECORD

RADIO communications between plane pilots and airport dispatchers are now permanently recorded on wax cylinders by an electrical machine recently installed by the U. S. Bureau of Air Commerce at a California landing field. Reports made by pilots and orders given by dispatchers, kept on file in record form, are thus available to examiners investigating the causes of any accident to a plane.

Television Newspaper

BROADCASTS WORDS TYPED ON TAPE

FLASHING news reports, stock-market quotations, farm prices, and other types of information in printed form, an apparatus recently designed by William H. Peck, New York inventor and former U.S. Navy optical expert, has introduced a novel form of television news service.

At the broadcasting station, an operator types out the items on a continuous translucent cellulose tape which is fed automatically into a cabinet holding the television sending apparatus. Read the rest of this entry »

HUGE CAMERA READS METERS TO COUNT TELEPHONE CALLS

Special cameras of new design are taking the place of human meter readers who check and record, each month, the number of telephone calls for which you are to be billed. In the larger cities, a single telephone central office may employ as many as 10,000 individual registers or meters, and teams of clerks have been required to read them. Photographing twenty-five meters at a time, the cameras give a quicker reading and one that is proof against error.

Charting our own course

Over the years Gen Tel has become a large and important part of the nation’s vast communications network.

In fact, Gen Tel is today the largest of the many Independent telephone companies that supply a substantial share of America’s great and growing communications needs.
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This reminds me of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

NOVEL WEEKLY SERVICE KEEPS PHONES GERMFREE

Telephone subscribers in a number of eastern cities may now avail themselves of a service that undertakes to keep the instruments free of germs. Once a week, a uniformed representative calls, undoes a kit resembling a physician’s case, and applies an antiseptic paste that is said to keep the telephone in sanitary condition.

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WORLD RADIO BATTLE LOOMS

Priceless radio frequencies will be doled out at international conference to be held in Cairo early in 1938.

by Roland C. Davies

AS THE smoke of foreign conflict rises above the horizon, students of world affairs realize that international broadcasting is perhaps the most potent arm of propaganda to dump nations into the inferno of war or to maintain peace.

Almost daily the press tells how foreign nations are using that marvel of modern science to tell the world via short-wave radio of their nationalistic aims, armed strength and economic prestige.
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THIS is everyone’s War… if you are not able to serve in the Army or Navy, you can serve on the production front. Elmer is doing his duty by leaving his non-essential position and taking a job in the war plant.

THE HAMMARLUND MFG. CO., Inc., 460 WEST 34th St., NEW YORK, N. Y.

New FM Auto Radio

OUR recent survey “FM Radios for Your Car” (December 1959) contained several reports from leading auto radio makers which stated flatly they had no plans for marketing an FM auto radio. Motorola was one of them. In spite of their former stand—or perhaps because of our article—Motorola is now mass producing the FM-900, a mobile radio that tunes 88-108 mc. Read the rest of this entry »

KENNEDY ANTENNAS… Probe the secrets of inter-stellar space

Somewhere in the nearly empty reaches of outer space, two hydrogen atoms collide. After a 100-million year journey at the speed of light, the signal generated by that accidental collision reaches a super-sensitive radio telescope antenna in Massachusetts and is recorded — and so one grain more is added to man’s knowledge of the universe.
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Given all the steps involved, twelve minutes to set up a call doesn’t seem that long. I wonder what the call cost.

It’s kind of amazing to think that my iPhone has far more capacity than the entire “overseas” telephone network had at this time.

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‘America Calling’

How A Transatlantic ‘Phone Call is Made

By A. P. PECK

1. Within an average of 12 minutes after an American subscriber puts in a call for a party in London, the connection is made and conversation is carried on as clearly and easily as if the called party were only a few blocks away. Behind this commonplace occurrence (an average of 50,000 overseas calls are made yearly, 60 to 65 percent of them being transatlantic), there is a vast array of technical developments and their application, aimed toward maintenance of service and speech quality.
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