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Taz
| | Posted on Tuesday, April 02, 2002 - 4:24 am: | 
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Although the Imperial Wireless Scheme had been cancelled at the outbreak of war, the company, which had made a considerable investment, revived the idea soon after the Armistice. Some of the dominions were in favour; the British government, still fearful of commercial monopoly, was not.
The company went ahead with research into high-power transmissions over long distances and, in 1921, started constructing new stations in Essex and London to handle continental and transatlantic traffic. When Irish rebels disabled its Clifden station in July 1922, the installation was out of date and it was closed down permanently.
Within a year, the company signed contracts to build long wave 'imperial' stations in South Africa and Australia, the latter radiating a massive 1,000kW. Remarkably, these too were out of date before they left the drawing board.
At Marconi's request, staff member C.S. Franklin had continued their wartime work and set up a 12kW short wave transmitter at Poldhu, with a reflector behind the aerial to 'beam' its signal. To test its efficiency Marconi took the Elettra in April 1923 from Falmouth to the Cape Verde islands.
During the voyage, he picked up signals as weak as one kilowatt on a 97-metre wavelength at ranges of 1,420 miles (2,285km) by day and 2,500 miles (4,023km) at night. Further experiments at greater ranges confirmed the results.
"We can now achieve distances of 25,000 miles (40,230km) with one-tenth of the power required before," wrote Marconi. He might have added, at a fraction of the cost as well.
The beam system would make the idea of Imperial Wireless a reality. But for omnidirectional long wave, long-distance message stations, it was the finish.
Man 1000 kw? thats monster for that time!!!!!!
also look at the site i got it from .
http://www.marconicalling.com/introsting.htm |
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