Business & Finance: Radio Fair

At Madison Square Garden, Manhattan, was held a Radio World’s Fair. Three hundred and one exhibits of receiving sets, binding posts, crystals, coils, batteries were spread over three floors of the building. Some sets sold for less than $10, others for more than $2,000. Experts noted with enthusiasm the predominance of sets featuring the single control lever and operating without batteries from an electric light socket. In their opinion such simplification of radio apparatus will do much to bring instruments into the 21,000,000 U. S. homes that out of a total of 27,000,000 are now without them.

Governor Alfred Emanuel Smith opened the Fair with a speech broadcast to radio audiences all over the East. He received a picture of himself sent by A. D. Cooley’s new photo-radio system. The picture was converted into sound waves; the sound waves were recorded on a dictaphone and “played” for radio audiences. Said the Governor: “The changing intensity of the sound corresponds to the shading of the picture. I guess that loud part is my nose. Now you know what it sounds like to look at my face.” The National Association of Broadcasters, assembled at the Fair, heard themselves flayed by Commissioner H. A. Bellows of the Federal Radio Commission. Said he: “If anything could kill radio, it is the nature of the programs that have been broadcast.”

In a special section, the General Electric Co. exhibited a photo-electriccell by means of which the sun itself could automatically turn on and off the lights in street lampposts. In another section, detectorswere shown, so sensitive that merely a puff of breath on the tubes would cause gongs to clamor. Said Fire Commissioner

Dorman: “If one of these were ever placed on a street corner the poor firemen would never sleep.”