Science: Curved Radio

Long-wave radio signals spray out from the transmitters in undulations from 200 to 25,000 metres in length. They surge through & around obstacles or up against and down from the ionized Kennelly-heaviside layer of the stratosphere. Short radio waves are not so fluid. Like light waves, which are very much shorter, short radio waves travel in straight lines only.

Guglielmi Marconi, father of radio, Roman Senator, the papal marchese who built Vatican City's radio station, wants to give his good friend the Pope an inviolable means of communication between the Vatican and the remodeled papal summer residence at Castel Gandolfo. A system using extremely short radio waves would suffice. Such waves would be relatively cheap to produce. They may be concentrated into a straight, pencil-like beam like a spotlight. But for utility in signaling there must be no obstacle between transmitter and receiver. Hence the transmitter may not be beyond the receiver's terrestrial horizon. For the straight, light-like short waves cannot pass through the bulge of the earth or bend around it.

Since Castel Gandolfo is invisible from the Vatican, to oblige the Pope Signer Marconi was obliged to use reflectors or to develop a system of "bending" short waves or somehow shooting them out in a curve. Last week he announced that he had done so, that he and his collaborator, the Marchese Luigi Salari had communicated over a distance of 167 miles on 57-cm. (less than 2-ft.) waves. Other radio engineers read his statement with wonder and respect, awaited details.