"The development of short waves, with smaller power and higher speed, introduced an immense new factor. It altered the whole financial outlook. of wireless, and seemed to point for the frst time to direct and successful competition with the cables. This country: possessing both cables and wireless could only lose by a fight which would inevitably weaken one system or the other. The rivalry therefore was wisely nipped in the bud by the formation of the great corporation now known as Cable and Wireless Limited. The beam services, originally developed on Marconi principles by the Post Office, were brought under the same control and made to serve what is perhaps their proper function as auxiliaries to the cables.
In the meantime cable science forged ahead. The invention of the regenerator increased the efficiency of long-distance cables by 30 per cent. Then came loaded cables. Loading is a method of increasing the inductance of a cable; so that its carrying capacity is augmented by four or five hundred per cent. On top of that came multiplex working, the splitting up of a single cable into several different channels, The total many others who make use of wireless as well as cables.
To secure to ourselves the special benefits of both systems, we. commonly route a single message part of its way by cable and part by radio. For instance, in transmitting certain so-called flash items from "America which we require in, let us say Egypt, India, South Africa and China, we [receive them at our offices in these countries within 60 seconds of their leaving New York. These messages cross the Atlantic by cable in a few seconds (13% seconds to be exact is the average time taken by the short despatches which I have in mind) and they are then put on groups of wireless transmitters, here.
Thanks to organization which has been brought to a very high pitch of efficiency, the transfer from the cable to the wireless transmitters, plus coding, checking, and subsequent reception in the most distant quarters of the globe occupies only 30 or 40 seconds more.
"This single example, coupled with what I have previously tried to tell you, should be a fair indication to you of the fantastic jay in which news, almost with the instantaneousness of an explosion, is fired over the surface of the earth.
"If I may make a peroration by suggesting a picture, the detailed furnishing of which I leave to you, I suggest, as a warning, that we think for a moment of the two thousand million human creatures it the world, clotted into small and large groups—of family, of relationship, of creed, d of race—and that we reflect upon e possibilities of friction, of drama, of tragedy in even the smallest of these groups; that we think of this friction producer, news, going up like a series of rocket combustions,.continuously, everywhere, its particles moving with the incredible velocity which I have described, falling here, landing there, and igniting other explosions until, the world rained upon by these fiery showers, we are faced by something almost alarming, something that must give us pause and that inclines me to finish, with the clergyman, saying. Let us pray."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.