Trans Canada Microwave
Trans Canada Microwave or Trans-Canada Skyway was a microwave system built in the 1950s to carry telephone and TV from Canada's east coast to its west coast. Because microwaves travel in a straight line and do not follow the curvature of the Earth, towers were built every 48 kilometres. The towers ranged from nine metres high to over 100 metres high in northern Ontario. The system included 139 towers spanning over 6275 kilometres and cost $50 million ($336 million in 2003 dollars).
- It took just one-fiftieth of a second for a microwave signal to travel from one coast to the other.[1]
- The Trans-Canada Microwave system was officially completed on 1 July 1958. It was the longest microwave transmission network in the world in 1958, stretching from Sydney, Nova Scotia to Victoria, British Columbia, placing Canada at the forefront of communications technology.
- The system was implemented under Bell Canada president Thomas Wardrope Eadie as an all-Canadian microwave network for transporting telephone conversations, Teletype messages and television signals.[2]
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