ROMANCE OF RADIO

Evening Star, Issue 23273, 23 May 1939, Page 11

ROMANCE OF RADIO

GROWTH OF BROADCASTING FIRST BELGIAN EXPERIMENT IN 1912 • In the year 1913 two young engineers working in the electrical laboratories of the Royal Palace at Laeken, near Brussels, were experimenting with the new wonders of the wireless telephone. The world’s first wireless telephone circuit had recently been established in Germany, and amateurs everywhere were constructing strange-looking contraptions for the capturing of_ radio waves. The two young engineers, pupils of the great French pioneer, Ferrie, were transmitting daily, first Morse, then actual sound, using a grotesquely primitive device—impinging a. jet of water on a rotating copper electrode to produce the requisite electrical oscillations. To vary the monotony—and save their voices—they conceived the idea of transmitting gramophone records in their tests. Presently letters came in from grateful amateurs, asking for more; and, for a lark, Messrs Raymond Braillard and Robert Goldschmidt began transmitting a series of “ concerts ” every Saturday afternoon.

Soon the Royal Family became interested, and one day a real concert, with live artists, was given under the patronage of Queen Elisabeth of the Belgians. It was “ broadcast” to the amateurs in the presence of a select audience: and the amateurs, with their home-made receivers—their musical “Aladdin’s lamps”—thought they were in the Arabian Nights indeed. That was, the first true studio broadcast on record; and might have been the beginning of great things—had not the sound of cannon, coming from the east, cut the young pioneers short. It was August, 1914. The two young men, like everyone else, went off to war, and radio, having groped its way to the very threshold of its great joygiving task, went to work in Europe’s charnel house.

Twenty years later Raymond Braillard, one of the two pioneer broadcasters, reproduced that historic first concert on its anniversary dav for the amusement of radio fans; and all Belgium listened. Braillard, by then, was the chief engineer of the International Broadcasting Union, Europe’s J‘ traffic policeman of the air,” patrolling the ether lanes of the world from a point not far from where their first experiments intrigued the amateurs. Much —very much—had happened in the intervening years. ' To* understand the history of European broadcasting one must never forget the World War. From the firing

of the first gun in August, 1914, radio became the hand-maiden of the destroyer; the war departments, the strategists, the military engineers determined its further course, developed one side of its possibilities, juSt as they developed one side of the possibilities of aviation—to the detriment of tha future of both. And. they ;-also developed a 1 fear —a morbid dread —of science’s latest child, if"it should ever leave the tutelage of those in _charga of a country’s defence. That'in part explains why the Governments of Europe, once their hands were pa radio, first refused to Todsen their grip, and then continued to hold over it-a." “ protecting ” hand, which was later to tighten into a stranglehold. First in France, then in one country after another, the authorities opposed the introduction of broadcasting by radio. Severe restrictions were placed in the way of amateurs: playing with radio waves which travelled across frontiers as easily as within them the war mentality—worse than playing with fire. Even the postal authorities made trouble. In June, 1920, when Melba’s voice was radiated from the Marconi station in England, in an historic concert organised by the ‘ Daily Mail,’ the Postmaster-General protested against this “ frivolous ” use of a potential national service. In Germany Dr Hans von Bredow, the radio pioneer who had demonstrated the radio-diffu-sion of music in America before the war, tried to persuade the German Government in 1919 to institute broadcasting entertainment, but wasn’t successful until 1923! According to the latest availab.rt license figures there are nearly 28 million stationary radio sets in operation in Europe (including the U.S.S.R. and Turkey) as against 25 million in the United States, and it is estimated that there are between two and three mil* lion undeclared sets in addition. _ Th>* actual European radio audience is, of course, much larger than the American, since, owing to the lower econonno status of most countries, and the development of group listening pn souk. an immeasurably greater number of people are served by the average set. Group listening is the rule rather than the exception in Russia, where.oni» loud-speaker often serves a whole village; it is widely developed in Germany, where every school, every factory, and numerous public places ara equipped with loud-speakers, and I:“cuing to certain “ official ” broad' i* obligatory. It is common in iy, where a group or crowd listening outside the local store or inn, especially at times of football matches, and other sporting events, is a common sight. American radio is run by pnvat® enterprise; European radio, is, almost without exception, either operated or controlled by organs of the Government. We have seen how the war wat largely responsible for this. Between the two extremes of Government control there is the system of operation by a chartered public service corporation, which escapes - the disadvantage of close Government interference on the one hand, and of th® profit system on the other. Of this Great-Britain, with its genius for compromise, is the prototype. And finally there is the unique system of Hollana* where the listeners themselves, organised in voluntary societies, provide tha programme organisations, while the Government merely shares ownership of the transmitters, which are leased foe alternate periods to ■‘he fi.e societies. In all the other European countries except Luxembourg, broadcasting is financed by the so-called licensing system, by which every person operating ft receiving set pays an annual fee. ranging from about 8s to 12s, for the privilege of receiving programmes. Th® most usual fee is an equivalent of about 10s. In every case this is collected through the postal authorities, who usually retain a proportion for collection expenses, and in most cases deliver a part of the total fee to the national treasury. The proportion in Great Britain at present is 25 per cent.