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During the year 1907, the broadcast
of radio programming was noted in the United States and in islands in Europe, as
well as from anchored ships and ships at sea.
Even though these broadcasts were certainly still experimental in
nature, yet the program content indicated the intent to entertain and to
inform; thus the designation radio broadcasting.
Soon after the beginning of the new
year 1907, on February 6, Lt. Quentin Crauford of the Royal Navy in England
presented a radio broadcast over the air from the ship HMS Andromeda. At the time the "Andromeda" was
anchored at Chatham, an inlet off the Thames Estuary on the east coast of
England.
This
broadcast was organized by Lieutenant Quentin Crauford with the approval of the
naval authorities and In recounting the event, Wireless Operator Crauford
stated that he adapted the spark wireless transmitter QFP on the
"Andromeda" so that it could broadcast music and speech. His historic inaugural broadcast was a
patriotic concert program performed by navy personnel. This broadcast, with the approval of the
naval authorities, began with a rendition of the national anthem, God Save the
King.
This surprise broadcast was heard by
wireless operators on board other navy vessels anchored nearby. However, as a security measure, Lt Crauford
was not permitted to publicize the event, neither before nor afterwards, though
the event attained historic significance as the first wireless broadcast in
England and the first from a ship. It
appears that another radio broadcast was subsequently presented from another
British ship nearby.
American experimenter Lee de Forest
also made several radio program broadcasts from ships, both at sea and at
anchorage. On July 18, he transmitted
race results from the steam yacht “Thelma” at
the Lake Erie Regatta and these voice reports were received ashore on a nearby
island by his assistant Frank Butler.
Subsequently, Forest and Butler constructed additional transmitters and
made many experimental transmissions with voice and music content between
buildings in Toledo Ohio.
As a result of the success of these
radio ventures, Forest was invited to install two transmitters on the navy
vessels “Connecticut” and
“Virginia”;
and this led to the the installation of more than a score of transmitters on
other navy vessels.
On December 16, Forest made a special
entertainment broadcast from the ship “Dolphin” as
it was moored at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York. Swedish born 34 year old opera singer Eugenia
Farrar sang “I
Love You Truly” and
other songs during the live broadcast which was reported in a New York
newspaper. This broadcast was the send
off for the round the world tour of the Great White Fleet.
Over along the Pacific coast of the
Americas, wireless operator Arthur Isbell made many wireless transmissions
aboard the passenger ship “President” under
the callsign V2. The transmitter was
manufactured under the Massie system and it operated on 750 kHz at 3 kW. Several of these transmissions created new
long distance records.
Subsequently, Arthur Isbell
established a wireless station in San Francisco with antenna masts 200 ft
tall. This station adopted the callsign
IAA, a reversal of the operators initials.
Many newspapers covered the story of
Lee de Forest’s
radio broadcasts from the Tellharmonic Hall at 38th and Broadway in New York,
both before and after the events. This
program, the first in a short series, presented music from the Harmonium, and
listeners were invited to make request for special selections of music. Test broadcasts between the Tellharmonic Hall
and the passenger liner “Normandie" began a week in
advance of the main broadcasts.
In Canada, the Canadian
Meteorological Service began the broadcast of time signals on a regular basis,
the first in the world. The time signal
was generated at the Dominion Observatory at St. John New Brunswick; it was on
the air daily around 10:00 am; and it was broadcast by the Marconi coastal
station HX at Camperdown near Halifax Nova Scotia.
Over in continental Europe, crystal
radio receivers were developed by Tissot and Pelin in France; and Robert
Goldschmidt in Belgium conducted wireless experiments between the Palace of
Justice in Brussels and two cooperating locations, the Namur Citadel and the
Liege Observatory.
The Christchurch Exhibition in New
Zealand, at which wireless transmission and reception was demonstrated, ended
on April 15; and a huge Marconi wireless station was inaugurated at Cliffden in
Ireland for trans-Atlantic service on October 17.
Right
towards the end of the year 1907, the Great White Fleet began its triumphal
world tour and more than 20 American naval vessels were equipped with the new
Forest wireless equipment. That story
will come on another occasion here in Wavescan.
(AWR/Wavescan-NWS 282)