The Cuba Story - Part 1
Quite
recently, Pope Francis from the Vatican made an official visit to the island of Cuba in the Caribbean. Let us catch up on some of these interesting
events, and we take a look at the early wireless and radio scene in Cuba.
According to the encyclopedia, Cuba
is 120 miles across, 777 miles long, and it covers an area of 111,111 square
kilometers. In addition to the main
island, there are more than 4,000 smaller islands and cays, including Juventud,
or the Isle of Pines, with its 100,000 people.
The total population for Cuba these days is 12 million.
If you fly over the island, you will
admire its lush tropical scenery, with its tree covered towering mountains, and
rolling hills and broad grasslands and deep bays with sandy beaches and
colorful coral reefs. Even to this day,
it is a chosen destination for multitudes of tourists coming in from Canada,
Europe and other countries in the Americas.
In the pre-colonial era, Cuba was
home to several Amerindian tribes who had migrated in from North America,
Central America and South America. On
October 28, 1492 the famous Atlantic explorer Christopher Columbus landed on
the northeastern shore of Cuba, claiming the island for Spain, and naming it
Isla Juana. The subsequent name for the
island, Cuba, comes from the local Taino language, and it conveys the meaning
of a pleasant land.
Eight years later, Sebastian de
Ocampo circumnavigated Cuba, thus confirming that it is indeed an island. Then three years later again, the first
Spanish settlement was founded on the very eastern tip of the island. Give four more years (1515), and the
settlement of San Cristobal de la Habana was founded. At one stage, Havana was the third largest
city in the Americas, and as we know, it has since become their national
capital.
Over the centuries, Cuba has been
invaded by armed forces from France, Holland, England, and the United States;
and on five separate occasions, the United States has attempted to buy Cuba
from Spain. For a decade or so around a
century ago, the United States governed the island as an American territory,
but in 1920, the island was granted independence.
The first wireless stations in Cuba
were installed more than 100 years ago; and the first two stations were
installed at Mariel, 25 miles west of Havana and on the Isle of
Pines-Juventud. In 1924, a total of 9
wireless stations were on the air in communication service in Cuba, and each
was identified with a callsign in the consecutive series, PWA, PWB, PWC, etc.
The beginnings of radio broadcasting
in Cuba can be traced back to the year 1912 when the American electrician Frank
Jones migrated to the island to serve in the cane sugar industry at Tuinucu in
the center of the island. Soon
afterwards, he constructed his own amateur wireless station, a 2 kW spark
facility.
In December 1921, Frank Jones ordered
an assortment of radio equipment from the United States, and when it all
finally arrived at his country location, he assembled it into a radio
broadcasting station. This new amateur
radio broadcasting station was planned for operation on a wavelength of
approximately 300 meters (1000 kHz). The
aerial was a 200 ft long inverted L, the earthing system was a full sized above
ground counterpoise, and the electric power came from the generating plant that
he himself was supervising at the cane sugar farm.
When callsigns in Cuba were first
issued, the Frank Jones station at Tuinucu was allocated initially the call
5KW, though only a week later this was amended to 6KW. He also operated his radio station in the
amateur mode under the callsign 6XJ.
The radio programs over amateur
broadcasting station 6KW were heard widely in the Americas, as well as in
Europe and occasionally across the Pacific.
His QSL cards in response to the huge inflow of reception reports, a
generic card giving technical details of the station, were issued by the
hundreds, and they are sometimes available for purchase on Ebay to this
day.
In 1930, the callsign for the
Tuinucu station was listed as CM6KW.
Then later in the same year, the amateur broadcasting station gave way
to a fully licensed station in Tuinucu, CMHC with 500 watts on 790 kHz.
Another significant early
broadcasting station in Cuba was inaugurated in 1920 by Luis Casas Romero as an amateur
station in Havana under the callsign 2LC.
Two years later on August 22 (1922), this station began an irregular
schedule of program broadcasting on 810 kHz with equipment provided by the
American electronic conglomerate IT&T.
This station signed on for its evening broadcasts at 9:00 pm with the
ticking of a clock, the firing of the canon La Cabana, followed by a bulletin
of weather information.
During the following year, the
callsign was amended to Q2LC due to a change in international radio
regulations. Interestingly, we might say
that the initial Q identified the island Quba!
Around this era, an official radio
broadcasting station was installed in the capital city, Havana. This new facility was established by the
Cuban Telephone Company which was owned by another American electronic conglomerate,
AT&T.
At the time, AT&T procured three
500 watt mediumwave transmitters from Western Electric; one for installation as
WEAF in New York City, another for installation in Puerto Rico, and a third for
installation in Havana. The Havana
station was installed in the Cuban Telephone Company building at Zulueta and
Dragones Streets under the callsign PWX, where the two towers stood as highly
visible electronic icons for many years.
This station was inaugurated in a
special broadcast beginning at 4:00 pm on Tuesday October 10, 1922. The Cuban President, Alfredo de Mayas y
Alfonso, presented an inaugural speech in English, and Luis Casas Romero
conducted a special orchestra in the presidential palace with classical and
Cuban music. The programming for this
first special broadcast in Cuba was sent to station WEAF in New York by cable
and phone lines for broadcast city wide on local mediumwave.
In actual fact, this inaugural
broadcast in Havana on 750 kHz was produced more for the benefit of the
American audience rather than the Cuban audience. At the time, there were no more than a
hundred radio receivers in Havana.
Interestingly, the programming from
the Luis Casas Romero station 2LC was at
times taken on relay for broadcast over the new PWX. During the following year (1923), a total of
30 mediumwave stations were on the air in Cuba,
On January 1, 1930, station PWX was
given a new regularized callsign along with all other mediumwave broadcasting
station on the island due to new international radio regulations, and PWX
became CMQ.
(AWR-Wavescan/NWS376)
