Eight Jumps to Boston

A new radio relay system connecting New York and Boston was demonstrated last week by Bell Telephone Laboratories. The cableless cable uses microwaves about 7 1/2 cm. long, which are not affected by weather, static or most kinds of man-made interference. The waves move in straight lines and refuse to curve with the earth, so they cannot make Boston in one jump. The telephone people skip them from hilltop to hilltop.

The waves start from the roof of a Telephone Co. building in Manhattan. A tricky metallic "lens" concentrates them into a narrow beam, sharper than the shaft of a searchlight, which points at the first relay station atop Jackie Jones Mountain, 35 miles away. A receiving lens gathers in the waves; an amplifier hops them up; a second transmitter beams them to the next hilltop relay. They make eight jumps to reach Boston.

The present setup will carry hundreds of telephone conversations or one television broadcast (which cannot travel over ordinary wires). Its capacity can be multiplied easily. Bell intends to start work soon on a New York to Chicago jump-line.

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