And Now, Electronic Pollution

In the middle of the night, electrically controlled garage doors in a number of Western states suddenly begin to open and close. At Houston's Manned Spacecraft Center, an outburst of strange signals starts disrupting communications with an orbiting Gemini spaceship. High above the Gulf of Mexico, the navigational gear of a jetliner bound for Miami mysteriously indicates that the plane is on a course for Cuba. Is a modern-day poltergeist on the loose? Not really. These baffling occurrences are, in fact, examples of a serious problem of the Electronic Age. As ever larger numbers of electronic gadgets come into use, they increasingly crowd the atmosphere--and space above--with an invisible pollutant: stray, mischief-making radio waves.

The source of such electromagnetic interference may be almost any piece of electrical equipment--fluorescent lights, the ignition system of a car, or even a seemingly innocuous transistor radio. And with so many sources, the interference is becoming more and more exasperating. Even the Government finds itself suffering from the technological pollution. Shortly after the Internal Revenue Service opened a new computer complex in Louisiana, part of the brain's memory suddenly went blank. Puzzled IRS officials eventually learned why. The center had been built under a flight path to the New Orleans airport, and radar signals from the field had erased tax records that had been freshly stored on the computer's magnetic tape.

Electromagnetic pollution can also be highly dangerous. Certain pacemakers, for example, designed to steady the beat of a faltering heart, can be knocked temporarily out of rhythm if they happen to come close to microwave ovens. Other medical devices are vulnerable too.

In Canada two years ago, a motorcyclist with an electrically operated prosthetic arm passed near high-tension lines that were creating a powerful magnetic field. This energy caused the arm's motor to behave so erratically that the rider lost his grip on the handlebar, fell to the ground, and was nearly killed.

Whispering Gallery. One major cause of the electromagnetic smog is the increasingly intensive competition for the use of available radio frequencies. In 1949, there were 160,000 radio transmitters of all kinds operating in the U.S. Now there are more than 6,000,000, and the number will doubtless continue to rise. In the not too distant future, the entire world may become what RCA President Robert W. Sarnoff recently described as a huge "electronic whispering gallery."

The whispering already sounds more like shouting, as Malta's tiny air force recently learned. Although they fly thousands of miles away from the U.S., the Maltese pilots found themselves in an almost daily radio jam-up because airliner controllers in Atlanta, Ga., were broadcasting on their frequency. Nor is the problem peculiar to the West. Only last week the Soviets complained bitterly about interference by illegal, amateur radio operators--"hooligans" who fill the air with "garbage." In one recent instance, the Soviet Ministry of Communications said, radio hams were so disruptive that controllers at Moscow's Vnukovo Airport were unable to bring a plane down in bad weather.

In terms of sheer frustration, the greatest sufferers have probably been astronomers using radio telescopes to scan the heavens. Stray terrestrial signals at frequencies similar to those being detected are a constant nuisance. It was not until the powerful radar at New York's Kennedy Airport was properly tuned that Bell Labs scientists in New Jersey were able to detect background radiation--mysterious microwave emissions from deep space, which some theorists think are the remnants of the "big bang" that created the universe.

Tiny Waves. To help relieve the overcrowding, engineers are busily experimenting with new broadcast channels. At present, the highest frequency authorized for commercial communications is 12 billion hertz (for cycles per second), which lies at the extreme upper end of the microwave band. Eventually, researchers hope to communicate on frequencies as high as 300 billion hertz, thus greatly expanding the capacity of the air waves. But they will first have to overcome a major natural obstacle. The very small waves produced at such high frequencies--which are as short as one millimeter (compared with 55 meters or more for standard AM broadcast waves)--quickly lose their strength because of moisture in the atmosphere and cannot be sent over any appreciable distance. That problem may be alleviated in the future, says Bell Labs Radio Research Chief L.C. Tillotson, with such electronic relay devices as compact solid-state amplifiers perched atop utility poles and a new breed of communications satellite circling the earth at very close intervals.

Muffling stray interference will be a more difficult job. Most of the new electronic gadgetry--color TV sets, arc welders, diathermy machines--are potential electromagnetic polluters. As the Government's watchdog over the air waves, the Federal Communications Commission was recently authorized to take stiffer action against manufacturers of interference-causing equipment. But even though investigations of complaints have already been increased sharply, the FCC does not expect to achieve what engineers call electromagnetic compatibility very soon. "The smog will be with us for a long time," says one FCC official. "We'll have to suffer with it for several years at least."

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