The Brattleboro daily reformer. (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1913-1955, 1922-04-29
RADIO USERS TO
ARRANGE OWN TINE
Plans for Government Con-
troll Complete and Ready
for Congress
NO MONOPOLY IN
CONTROL OF AIR
No Transmitting Station to Control
Service of Whole City - Government
Will Grant Licenses TO All Who De-
sire and They Will Divide Hours.

sire and They Will Divide Hours.
! BysDAVID LAWRENCE
| Especial Despatch to The Reformer.)
/ Copyright 1922.
/ WASHINGTON, April 29.-Plans for
| government control of radio have been
completed. An administration bill will
a., be introduced in the senate next week
| by Mr.. Kellogg of Minnesota and in the
house by Mr. White of Maine.
! Briefly, the bill when passed would
authorize the department of commerce to
prevent the growth of any monopoly in
| transmitting messages of any kind
| divisiou Of the hours of the day among
! the sending stations.
| Fer many months the radio problem
| has been growing in complexity The
| limited number of wave lengths and the
! great number of people who have sought
| to establish transmitting stations has
compelled the government to take a hand.
Committees of experts representing every
kind of business interest and every phase
of government equity have been at work
on the matter and have finally come to
unanimous conclusion. Their finding will
be embodied in the new bill to be intro
duced in the congress.
The legislation itself will be broadly
phased so as to give the widest latitude
possible TO the administrative agency of
the government-the department of COM
merce-but the report which has just
been agreed upon by the army. navy,
private companies, amateurs and all
kinds of concerns interested in radio
l. H.. L.
the department of commerce would be
morally bound 10 follow when the law is
enacted.
Can Serve Several Parties
In the first place. no transmitting sta
ton will tver be given monopoly for a
certain privilege to vested interest. If
there are several newspapers in a city
or several business houses which want to
use the radio for transmission purposes,
the government will grant licenses to
any of them But the time for using
the transmitting stations viii have to be.
divided equally among the users. The
inspectors of the department of COM
merce will assist in bringing the parties
at interest together but the division of
! time must be the transmitting stations
or else the government will decline to in
| terfere. But the advantages of dividing
| the time so that each station may be
1
ing is so obvious that agreement is con-
| fidently expected. ..-...
Secretary Hoover who has been work
| ing on the matter for many months be-
| lieveS that the number of sending sta
| tons Will be materially increased when
| as many as four or five wave lengths can
| be used in city at the same time. Up
! till now. there have been very few wave
| lengths available for private uses as the
navy has reserved for its own use most
| of the wave lengths. This has COM
| PEELED stations in the same vicinity to
use the same wave length with the result
that they have drowned each other out or
interfcred with each other so seriously
as to be ineffective. Most of the pro-
grams. especially concerts and enter
taining features of radio telephone had
to be sent ON the same wave lengths,
SEQ meters. This has made it impossible.
for instance. to hear stations ut great
distances because the stations nearby
took precedence in the air.
May RevOlutiOnize Radio
The granting of more wave lengths for
private use may revolutioniZe radio. 1t
will then be possible for each city to
have as many as 10 stations for instance
and each station would be able TO use
every other hour of the day. If there
were more sending stations the time
could be reduced to periods of half
hour each and so on. Sending stations
are rather expensive to build and unless
private companies can see a material
benefit in establishing them, officials be-
lieve the number of transmitting stations
will not grow too large for convenience.
As for receiving stations they can grow
to unlimited numbers because a receiving
outfit is silent and cannot do anything,
TO interfere either with somebody else's
sending or receiving apparatus. Expense
and the necessity for a power plant of
dimensions too large to be installed in
private homes will always keep down the
number of transmitting stations but
everybody expects the number or receiv-
ing stations to grow by tens of thousands
as the expense is being gradually reduced
to relatively small sums.
Most officials doubt whether the radio
will ever be more than Il fad for many
people They declare its novelty. will
| pass just as has been the case with other
| inventions. The photographs, it was
thought at first. would be affected but the
irregularity of radio and the fact that a
phonograph can be turned on at any
! hour without interference of any kind
| viii safeguard its place in the scheme of
| things domestic There is an admitted
use however, for radio other than enter
| tainment which officials believe will tend
1 TO be developed They foresee wonderful
| opportunities to broadcast information
| to farmers and suburban communities.
! They think it will be useful for public
4 speeches. sermons and the prevention of
disease by the spread of valuable data
/ especially in times of epidemic. Every
business concern viii have to work out
its own problem in using radcliffe gov
ernment will rely on competition to solve
i the difficulties of too many users The
| best daily program will win out just as