These Milestones...

Radio Record, 18 March 1938, Page 16

These Milestones...

Forgotten Moments Of Drama In The History Of Radio Broadcasting Special to the "Record"

by

E. M.

DORKIN

66 ‘7 T is wnpossible," writes Garry Allighan in his biography of Sir John Reith, "to place a finger on the leaves of the book of Time and say : ‘Here began radio.’ Radio existed from the day that the life- -giving sun first threw its rays over a dead earth." Mr. Allighan’s education i in astronomy may differ

trom the orthodox, but his statement of philosophy at least draws attention to the fact that radio is not mun's invention. Man hus merely learned gradually how to harness the

Lorces OL nacure. The reader has probably heard or read half a dozer accounts of the first broadcast, all dissimilar. The fact was that several nen discovered sections of the-radio truth and that the co-ordination of their ideas resulted in the famous Marconi experiment in, transmitting "wireless" signals, The story of how Marconi rigged his home-made apparatus on the roof of the family home at Pontecchio and how, with his mother as witness, lie rang an electric bell with power transmitted through the ether, is known to uearly evyeryoue. Some contend that in this strange experiment radio broadcasting was born. Others hold that the. first real broadcast was made years later when for the first time he transmitted the Morse letter S$ to his farmer-assistant, Mignani. Some even hold that the first broadcasts were made in the technical sense by Hertz. But, since the story of radio has been the story of how mfn learned to apply existing natural forces, there are other niilestones in the history of it no less important {OR instance, who now remembers that radio telephony -soulething we had hardly ever heard about in New

Zealand until after the war-was far beyond its infancy in 1909? Years before, the invention of the thermionic valve had made possible a series of experiments which culminated in 1909 when Lee de Forrest obtained permission from the directors of the Metropolitan Opera Company, New York, to rig a microphone backstage. The management, looking down its nose at this new-fangled scientific experiment, put a musty attic at the inventor’s disposal and tolerated him to build a cumbersome microphone on a trolly on the stage. The opera was "Cavalleria Rusticana,’ and before the curtain rose the tenor sang "Siciliana." The microphone was then hastily trundled out of sight by the scene-shifters. The tenor who tock part in that historic broadcast -the first radio entertainment of all time-was Enrico Caruso. The intervention of war, the preoccupation of the official world with radio’s material uses, delayed the evolution of broadcast entertainment, but hastened the development of technique. In 1912, 19138 and 1914 the Wireless Club, later to develop into the Radio Society of Great Britain, held sporadic telephony broadeasts, and de Forrest,

on the other side of the Atlantic, regularly broadcast Columbia records. But it was not until two years after the end of the war that another great artist faced the microphone. ‘The

London "Vauy Mail" wrote of that memorable occasions "At the invitation of the ‘Daily Mail,’ Dame Nellie Melba/ the famous prima donna, sang to the world on the wirelesy telephone. . . . She told me it was the most wonderful moment of her career. The prima donna began with a long trill, ‘my hallo to the world,’ she called it. Then followed songs in English, French, and Italian-all of them swelling out into space through the mysterious electric force which made the unique experiment heard within a thousandmile radius of Chelmsford." ND, it recalling that radio milestone, let it be recorded that Marconi, the man responsible for the transmission, Was reprimanded by the British Post Office for the "frivolous employment of wireless equipment," and was "warned to cease activities calculated to hamper legitimate wireless service!" UTILITARIAN radio has had its dramatic moments, too. Who now recalls the first wireless rescue-way back in Queen Victoria’s day? In March, 1898, the steamer "I, F. Matthews" collided with the East Goodwin lightship, and was so severely damaged (Cont. on page 30.)

CARUSO AT THE "MIKE"

The Milestones (Continued from page 16.)

that all hope was given up by those on board. The operator of the experimental set installed by Marconi on the lightship signalled the South Foreland lighthouse with his equipment and lifeboats were sent immediately to rescue those on board the doomed ship. Fifteen years later Marconi himself, standing on a New York quay, ‘saw landed the first survivors of. the Titanic. He saw a young girl standing beside him, frantically _ scanning . the faces of the survivors. Suddenly she recognised her father among them and shouted: "Oh, daddy, daddy, you’re alive; Marconi has saved you!" Of that incident Marconi wrote: "Before I had time to realise what was happening, she turned impulsively round to me and, taking my head in both her hands, she covered my face with kisses-the warmest I have received from a girl in all my life." S ally of the law, radio has had its milestones, too. In 1910, Dr, Crippen, the most publicised murderer of the century, was arrested in Quebec because of a radiogram sent by Captain Kendall, of the liner Montrose, on which the infamous Crippen and his mistress, Miss Le Neve, were travelling, And it throws much light on the psychology of the modern world that radio-telegraphy received more publicity for its first arrest than for all its quieter triumphs during the long years when men of genius slaved in the laboratory to discover, piece by piece, the méans of harnessing its treméndous force and wsing it to influence the whole trend of human evolution.