Adelaide News
1 May 1939.
SEND FREE CABLES - RECORD MAYBE MADE:
An unprecedented rush of cable business at the Eastern Extension Office and the G.P.O. in King William Street today is expected to establish a telegraphic cable record.
The reason is the free within-the-Empire cables allowed the public today in the new social message service inaugurated by Cable and Wireless Ltd.
Hundreds of messages of greeting are going from Adelaide people to friends in other parts of the Empire.
Messages via Imperial cable are going direct from Adelaide to London and other parts of the Empire, but the beam wireless messages lodged at the post office are first being telegraphed to Melbourne for transmission.
With a steady stream of messages coming in after 8 o'clock, eight operators at the Eastern Extension Office in King William Street have not had a let-up, and several more men were brought on duty this afternoon.
At the rate of six messages a minute, greetings were being sent away on the Adelaide-Cottesloe-Cocos-Singapore cable. About half this number were going over the slower cables through Cocos Island and Rodriguez and through Darwin.
Most of the messages were for London and South Africa, but greetings also were sent to outlying parts of the Empire. India, Burma, Canada, Transjordania and the Sudan did not come into the arrangements.
A surprising number of people paid for the extra words above the 12-word free message, while many would not take advantage of the free offer and paid the new rate of 5/- to send their cable.
Ordinary commercial messages suffered no delay, said the Adelaide manager of the Eastern Extension Co. (Mr. S. Ringwood). Speeds were increased to the maximum, with the instrument room working at full capacity. Local traffic and Sydney and Melbourne transmitting messages were getting away satisfactorily.