ByJOHN VAN KLAVEREN
A NEW Geelong Amateur Radio Club exhibition highlights advances in modern communications.
The club’s From Morse to the Magnetron features military communications equipment used between 1914 and 1960.
Displays include yesteryear equipment such as spark generators, wireless transmitters and receivers, spy radios, Word War II walky-talkies – even a reconstructed wireless console from a Lancaster Bomber and receivers that helped break the Japanese Kana Code.
The club’s Barry Abley said visitors could try their hand at sending Morse code, with a special certificate for kids.
“At the beginning of the Great War wireless telegraphy, using Morse code,as opposed to using wires, was considered to be a quaint adjunct to the proven means of communications such as semaphore, heliograph, field telephones and pigeons,” Mr Abley explained.
“But by war’s end high speed wireless communication was used by all protagonists.”
The exhibition is part of centenary of WWI commemorations, with the club receiving an ANZAC Community Grant.
The display, including more than 100 exhibits, is open 10am to 4pm Thurday to Sunday from 2 to 30 July at Osborne House East wing.
