The Mighty Waves

The U.S. has long led the world in communications. But in its awesome postwar expansion, U.S. industry discovered that the old communications methods were not good enough. The telephone, telegraph and teletype lines that connect the scattered plants of big corporations were limited in use, expensive to install and maintain. As a solution, industry is turning to another medium: microwave transmission,* i.e., ultra-high-frequency radio.

Already used by about 125 big corporations, microwave communication is flexible, and cheaper than any other system. With it, businessmen can do much more than talk with one another. They can run machines by remote control, read faraway meters, get lightning-like reports from way stations all over the country.

Last week microwave communication had a big new customer. The Tennessee Valley Authority started work on a 350-mile, $350,000 microwave system to link up its new power plants in Alabama and Tennessee. When completed by a subsidiary of International Telephone & Telegraph Corp., TVA's new system will carry voice and teletype messages, send in meter readings and reports on power loads, and help control power distribution.

Automatic Men. Microwave networks cost less than $1,000 a mile to build, only half the cost of conventional telephone & telegraph lines. Maintenance costs are also low, since there are no poles and wires to blow down in storms. Western Union pulled itself out of the red largely through the installation of microwave facilities.

Microwave systems are versatile; a single channel can carry up to 2,500 messages at a time v. 1,800 for a coaxial telephone cable. Messages may be oral, or merely impulses which are registered on meters or run through teletype machines.

American Telephone & Telegraph,which uses microwaves for transcontinental television and telephone communications, is the biggest commercial user. Pipelines and other utilities are the next biggest users of microwave communication to date. Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Corp.'s President Claude Williams is installing microwave all along his 1,840-mile line from

Texas to New York. Says he: "We will be able to start and stop engines along the line, open and close valves, read meters, control pressures and in fact do just about anything human beings [on the spot] can do." In operating its new pipeline from Texas to Illinois, Peoples Gas Light & Coke Co. (TIME, Dec. 17) gets automatic reports via microwave on gas flow, pressure, and other conditions.

New Tricks. In the Northwest, the Bonneville Power Administration is testing a new electronic wrinkle to its microwave system. The new device will monitor Bonneville's power lines, automatically record the time a line break occurs, and compute its location.

The big makers of microwave equipment, e.g., R.C.A., I.T. & T., Philco, Motorola, General Electric, Western Electric, did an estimated $150 million of industrial and military business last year and expect to do even better in 1952. But they think that they have barely scratched the surface. R.C.A. alone has orders for microwave systems from the Arkansas Fish & Game Commission (to catch poachers fast), the Atomic Energy Commission (for remote-control experiments) and the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (for quick reporting of accidents, traffic jams and other road conditions).

*In microwave transmissions, messages are converted into electronic impulses which are beamed to their destination, usually through a series of relay towers 25 to 50 miles apart.

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