INTERNATIONAL

Radio Record, Volume I, Issue 4, 12 August 1927, Page 5

INTERNATIONAL

CRISIS eee VALUE OF 2YA, WEL- _ LINGTON BROADCAST STATION IN CHINA | SENDS TIMELY WARNING. | The Prime Minister, the Hon. J. G. Coates, recently stated that the Government would regard Wellington’s superstation, 2YA, as a potent asset in time of a national crisis, -Ioreign residents in China, received a timely warning from a broadcast station in Shanghai when the great upheaval occurred there recently. , The Shanghai broadcast station KRC provided the means whereby thousands of missionaries and other forcigners were warned and their lives saved during the recent serious troubles in China. The story was told in a letter just received by the Kellogg Switchboard and Supply Company, of Chicago, sent to them by a gronp of missionaries, relating the part played by the lone Shanghai station in saving their lives. . The hampered facilities of commutnuications and the broken-down teleplioue and telegraph lines and the control of the available lines by the Chinese military made the task of notifying foreigners in the remote sections of China almost an impossibility.

Station Offers Services. It was then that the manager of the broadcasting station in Shanghai offered to help out the American naval and consular authorities, by sending out watnings over its microphone. While there were not many receiving sets in operation in the interior-since radio equipment is classed as munition of war in China, and therefore contra-band---there were quite a few receivers known to be scattered throughout the troubled area. The warnings sent out over the Shanghai station and picked up by the lucky listeners, who spread the news to their friends and neighbours, made it possible to save thousands whose fate would have remained unknown. Built Four Years Ago. The broadcasting station, operating under the call letters of KRC, is run jointly by the Shanghai office of the Kellogg Switchboard and Supply Company, Of Chicago, and ‘The Chinese Tree Press," « Chinese-American newspaper. The entire apparatus, except the microphones, tubes, and other equipment sent from Chicago, is home made, having been put together four years avo in Shanghai by Roy FB. De Lay, a Kellogg radio engineer. This was necessary, because of the embargo on the importation into China of foreign radio equipment. Warned In Two Languages.

Little Miss Ai-lien Wu, who is the regular announcer of the station, was the one who broadcast the daily imessages of wartling which were picked up hy thousands scattered in the interior. She announces in both Chinese and English. The station has been broadcasting @ regular daily programme in the two languages and on Sundays religious setvices in three or four languages have been broadcast. ‘The station is of 500 watt power, and has a wave length of 870 metres. It has been heard in British Columbia and in San Pedro, California. Yt will continue at the disposal of the authorities until all danger is past. :