evision: - Early Television Foundation

28 TELEVISION: THE REVOLUTION
which may be less expensive
than the coaxial
cable. Soon we may see a sprinkling of relay
"booster" stations at forty-mile intervals across
the continent. Each station would pick up the
waning signal from the preceding transmitter,
amplify it,
and rebroadcast it to the next station
in the relay chain. Current progress in Army
and Navy "Radar" is
making important strides
in this field. It may be that much of the military
high-frequency radio equipment can be salvaged
in peace-time and adapted for use in such
a national relay network. Radar has developed
highly "beamed" radio signals, which are as
concentrated as a ray of light from a signal beacon.
This will help to prevent
loss between the
booster stations. It is
quite possible that such a
coast-to-coast line-up of relays could be almost
entirely automatic. The equipment required at
each "step-up," though complicated,
is quite
compact; it might be installed in an antenna
tower similar to present automatic aircraft beacons.
Turned on and off by a separate cueing
circuit, the booster stations might
not even require
a full-time attendant.
This is possible. But it is still an enormous
undertaking. The installation of relay stations