Short Waves: Long View

"Obsolete." That is the great word of forward-thinking scientists, scientific entrepreneurs, manufacturers of popular scientific inventions. "Obsolete." A new, bigger, better, cheaper product is at hand.

Yet there seemed to be some color in that familiar word as pronounced last week by William Dubilier, President of the Dubilier Condenser & Radio Corporation of New York. He contended that the perfection of short-wave radio devices, by definition consumptive of less power and hence of less capital, would soon render "the million-dollar high-power radio-broadcasting stations obsolete." Sailing for Europe, Manufacturer Dubilier took with him low-power radio equipment which he estimated as requiring 1/4,000 the power of such long-wave stations as KDKA (Pittsburgh), WJZ (New York), KPO (San Francisco), CFCA (Toronto).

For precedent and seeming proof, Manufacturer Dubilier had the reported performance of short-wave sets taken into the Far North by Explorer Donald B. MacMillan (TIME, July 6 et seq.), which their operators last week declared would (perhaps) reach every properly equipped station in the entire world.