Transatlantic Radio Telephony

of the newspapers much general information has been published regarding the development of commercial telephone service between the old world and the new. Most of this published material either is sketchy in nature or is concentrated upon some detail of the system and it is difficult to gain from it a connected picture of how the final result was built up through several years of continued effort. The following has been written in an attempt to provide such a connected story. As soon as the successful experiments carried out by the Bell System engineers in 1915 had resulted in the reception of intelligible speech in Paris and Honolulu transmitted from near Washington, D. C., it became a foregone conclusion that sooner or later a serious attempt would be made to bridge the Atlantic Ocean by radio telephone service which would be available to the public at large. While the 1915 experiments were successful, they also served to emphasize the tremendous difficulties which had to be overcome. The onset of war activities prevented continuing a direct attack on these difficulties but the developments incidental to the wartime use of solution. In particular the development of vacuum tubes for transmitting purposes made considerable progress. Other radio developments carried out immediately subsequent to the war also aided the program. When transatlantic telephony was taken up again for active consideration, it was obvious that the first requirement was for a transmitting station which would be sufficiently powerful to deliver satisfactory signals on the other side of the ocean.