1935 - Communications, Media

Communications, Media

Scottish physicist Robert Alexander Watson-Watt, 43, of Britain's Government Radio Research Station begins setting up radar (radio detection and ranging) warning systems on the British Coast (see Kuhnold, 1934). Asked by the Air Ministry to assess the feasibility of a "death ray" that might be used to wipe out enemy pilots in their cockpits, Watson-Watt drafted a memo February 12 entitled "Detection and Location of Aircraft by Radio Methods." He has adapted experimental direction-finding techniques used to detect thunderstorms and devised a detection device which sends out a radio-pulse that is interrupted if it encounters a ship, plane, or other object; a portion of the energy is reflected back to the transmitting station, and since radio signals travel at the speed of light the distance of the object can be calculated by timing the journey, and its location can be pinpointed by measuring the angle and direction of incoming echoes. An experiment conducted February 26 has shown that aircraft on a pre-arranged course can be detected eight miles away, demonstrating the viability of Watson-Watt's idea, but although the British Chain Home installations can spot aircraft as far as 70 miles away they require antenna towers up to 300 feet tall (the longer the wavelength transmitted, the larger the antenna needed), and Watson-Watt uses wavelengths of roughly 50 centimeters that work best in daylight (see 1940).

France's Postes Télégraphs et Téléphones starts experimental television broadcasting April 26, using the apparatus invented by René Barthélemy of the Compagnie pour le Fabrication des Compteurs et Matérials d'Usines à Gaz. It employs a 60-line system with 25 frames per second to transmit pictures of the Exposition Universelle et Internationale at Brussels.

BBC stops using John L. Baird's 30-line television transmission system September 11 and switches to a fully electronic system (see 1932; 1936).

The Magnetophon produced by German General Electric Co. (AEG) at Berlin is the first tape recorder to use plastic tape (see Begun, 1934). Its tape speed is 30 inches per second, and although its performance is inferior to that of the 1929 Blattnerphone its operating cost is lower. AEG engineers will show their colleagues at Schenectady an improved dc-bias Magnetophon K2 model in 1937, but they will not be impressed (see 1940).

German inventor Willy Müller devises the world's first automatic telephone answering machine. His three-foot-tall instrument finds a market among Orthodox Jews whose strict observance prevents them from picking up a phone on the Sabbath (see Ansaphone, 1960).

Nobel physicist (and long-distance telephone pioneer) Michael I. Pupin dies at New York March 12 at age 76.

Iowa statistician George H. Gallup, 34, founds the American Institute of Public Opinion (Gallup Poll) to gauge reader reaction to newspaper features. Des Moines Register and Tribune publisher Gardner "Mike" Cowles Jr., 32, has hired Gallup and launches him on his career as pollster (see 1936; Look, 1937).

Crowell-Collier launches This Week, a Sunday newspaper supplement that will be carried by scores of metropolitan papers (see Collier's, 1919).

New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs dies at Chattanooga, Tenn., April 8 at age 77; Milwaukee Journal founder and editor Lucius W. Nieman suffers a stroke and dies at his hotel apartment October 1 at age 77, leaving an estate of $8 million (see Nieman Foundation, 1938). "You've got to have good editorial matter for a paper to get circulation," he has said, "and you've got to have good circulation to get advertising. Editorial matter is the heart of it all"; public relations pioneer Ivy Lee dies of a brain tumor at New York November 9 at age 57.