THE CONTROL OF TRANSPORT BY WIRELESS.
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How the Message Giving New Instructions to a Driver would be Transmitted from the Owner, and How It could be Acknowledged.
IN THE ARTICLE which appeared in the issue of The Commercial Motor a fortnight ago, (the series having been interrupted for a week to allow us • to consider the applieatio'a of wireless telephony for the amusement of a motor coach party) we came to the_conclusion that the best means for quickly establishing a practical transport control service was to make use of the existing broadcasting stations for transmitting purposes: We, moreover, pointed out that it would be advisable to call the , drivers up at stated times during the day,, and we decided that, for this purpose, a clock should be carried on each vehicle and that time signals should be sent through twice a day. We now propose to complete' our survey of the methods of operation, based on an assumed method of working, as thus out. • lined. To do this, let us trace out the course of a message from the time it leaves the owner until it reaches the driver.
Suppose that the proprietor of a fleet of wagons, whose premises are in London, has a message to send to one) of his vehicles which left for Birminghain three hours previously. 1-1 quick cal. culation will show him that the machine should be between 30 and 40 miles from town, and thus well within t h e London broadcasting. Zone. He would indite a• telegram something as follows, and have it handed in at the nearest post office:— . " 2 L.O., Transport. "6354 Hitchings of John Knox proceed Merideth 54 H i g hS t reet Atherst one before Birmingham
for his instructions." At the broadcasting station this telegram
would (as would all others • Marked " Transport'be received by a special transport traffic clerk, whose duty it would. be to transcribe the cryptic telegraphic messav into a more e-asily understood telephonic communication, and assemble an the messages in readiness for broad: casting at the next fixed hour. The result. of his labours would read something like this :— " No. 6354 Driver Hitchings on a wagon belonging to Messrs. John Knox. Please proceed to • Athdrstone before you go to Birmingham, and report to Meredith, 54, High Street, for further instructions," and would be broadcasted thus, being repeated twice, with proper names spelled out.
Getting the Message to the Rightful Recipient.
The object of the number before the name is to identify absolutely the recipient. While it is unlikely that any particular employer of a given name would have a driver with the same name as one employed by a, firm with a similar name, still it might, in exceptional circumstances, occur. . The provision of the -number, and therefore of a triple identification,. prevents a mistake being .made on thia amount.
The numbers would, of course, have to be allotted by some central authority, in order to prevent chaos. -cid Moreover, the number before the message also affords a valuable means for preventing .mischievous people sending out bogus instructions; either as a. practical joke or for other less innocent reasons. The authority that allots the drivers' numbers would also allot ;-an identification numlaer to each firm of employers. This number would be known only to the firm, but a frequently revised list of such numbers, together with their -corresponding driver numbers, would be in the possession of each traffic clerk at the broadcasting stations. The owner would ,add hit number as a signature to every telegram of instructions which he issued, and the traffic clerk would cheek this number against his list before allowing the message to be radioed. The employer's number would never be broadcasted, so that it would be very difficult, for unscrupulous persons to gat hold of it. The numbers could be changed at intervals.
Acknowledgment of Messages:
'We-now come to-a very important consideration. Row is the driver going to let his employer know
that he has received and understood the latter's
instructional At • first sight this may appear a • very difficult matter to arrange 1 o r satisfactorily, involving, as it seems to do, the provi-s i o ia of transmitting gear on the lorry. About the question of radio transmitters for vehicles we shall have ni5re to say in a later article. For the present we will confine ourselves to the utilization of such means as are easily at our dis
posal. The problem • is similar to that Met with by the War Office authorities in sending messages to overseas garrisons, and the solution will lie along the same lines as theirs. We must divide all messages into two classes—those the importance of which render it essential that the sender shall be sure that they have, been safely received, and those that are not so important that they need acknowledgement.
In the ease of the first-named the owner .would add the word " acknowledge " to his telegram, and the traffic clerk would cause to be broadcasted some such formula as this at the end of the message:--" Please acknowledge by telegram, at the first opportunity, that you have received this messageand understood its instructions." The driver would have orders that, on receipt of such a message, he was to stop at the first post office to which he came and despatch an ordinary -telegram to his owner, acknowledging receipt of his radio message. With broadcasting intervals of two hours between them, it should be easily possible to have an acknowledgment back in the owner's office within three or four hours of the original message being despatched, except at night, when the acknowledgment would be received the following morning. For ninety-nine out of a hundred cases this is all that is required. The message could be repeated in another zone if doubt existed as to the position of the vehicle.