Tag Archives: GPS

Radio Waves: Dynamic GPS Tutorial, BBC’s First Female Employee, Rugby CW ID in Tubular Bells, and Roger Wallis Passes Away

Radio Sweden QSL

Radio Waves:  Stories Making Waves in the World of Radio

Because I keep my ear to the waves, as well as receive many tips from others who do the same, I find myself privy to radio-related stories that might interest SWLing Post readers.  To that end: Welcome to the SWLing Post’s Radio Waves, a collection of links to interesting stories making waves in the world of radio. Enjoy!


GPS Tutorial by Bartosz Ciechanowski

Check out this amazing, dynamic deep-dive into the world of GPS. 

The BBC’s First Female Employee: Isobel Shields (The British Broadcasting Century with Paul Kerensa)

Episode 41 (aka Season 3 episode 2):

On January 2nd 1923, John Reith interviewed Miss Frances Isobel Shields for a job at the BBC, to be his secretary. At the time the BBC had four or five male staff members. Miss Shields started work on January 8th, instantly making the BBC a 20% female organisation. It’s been greater than that ever since.

This episode’s fab guest is Dr Kate Murphy: academic, former producer of BBC’s Woman’s Hour and author of Behind the Wireless: A History of Early Women at the BBC. Her book is brilliant and highly recommended for a deep dive into the subject.

Hear Isobel Shields’ tale, plus the women who broadcast before her: Britain’s first DJ Gertrude Donisthorpe, 2LO’s first children’s presenter Vivienne Chatterton, and one of our first broadcast comedians Helena Millais. (You can hear their fuller tales if you go back to the earlier episodes on this podcast.)

And hear about some of the women who joined the BBC soon after Miss Shields, like telephonist Olive May and women’s staff supervisor Caroline Banks. Plus hear about some of John Reith’s unusual management practices, from taking his secretaries to the cinema to his brutal firing criteria.

But we dwell on his hiring not firing, as well tell the origin story of British broadcasting. [Continue reading…]

Hidden Morse Code in Tubular Bells (Madpsy’s Palace) 

The link between The Exorcist, Amateur Radio and Alan Turing.

A quick look at how the movie The Exorcist from 1973 has links to the late great Alan Turing via Mike Oldfield’s album Tubular Bells, Scotland and Amateur Radio. It’s Halloween so figured why not throw some horror in the mix.

When Mike Oldfield recorded Tubular Bells in 1973 he had no idea his first album on Virgin Records would be chosen as the soundtrack to The Exorcist later that year. Neither did he know that recording with Virgin Records would have an unintended consequence of hiding a secret message which dates back to 1926, shortly after World War One.

Tubular Bells was famously recorded at The Manor Studio which was owned by Richard Branston and used as a recording studio for Virgin Records. The building is located in Shipton-on-Cherwell, England. Mike was given one week to record the album, on which he played almost all the instruments himself.

The album initially struggled to sell. Then, later the same year, it was chosen as the soundtrack for the movie The Exorcist. It then experienced massive success and has since sold over 15 million copies worldwide. [Continue reading…]

Roger Wallis from “The Saturday Show” on Radio Sweden passes away

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Lennart Wennberg, who notes:

Just got the news that Mr Roger Wallis has died at the age of 80.

I remember him from Radio Sweden’s Saturday Shows on MW in the 70s. He was “Big Bad Roger” and hosted together with Kangaroo Kim.

Lennart Wennberg
Sweden

From Wikipedia:

Roger Wallis (8 August 1941 – 22 January 2022) was a British-born Swedish musician, journalist and researcher.[1]. He was an adjunct professor of multimedia at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.[2]

Between 1967 and 1981, Wallis was the main presenter of the English language The Saturday Show on Radio Sweden. Wallis also co-wrote “Judy, min vän”.

Wallis died on 22 January 2022, at the age of 80.


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From Fessenden to HD Radio navigation

IBOC Spectrum (Source: GPS World)

IBOC Spectrum (Source: GPS World)

SWLing Post contributor, Richard Langley, is not only a dedicated shortwave DXer, but he’s also on the faculty of the Department of Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering at the University of New Brunswick. Additionally, Richard coordinates Innovation: a regular GPS World feature that discusses advances in GPS technology and its applications.

The latest Innovation feature is absolutely fascinating in that it highlights the potential for AM broadcast band HD radio signals (IBOC) to be an effective navigation aid. Richard’s introduction to this article takes us back to the time of Reginald Fessenden:

THE YEAR WAS 1906. On Christmas Eve of that year, Canadian inventor Reginald Fessenden carried out the first amplitude modulation (AM) radio broadcast of voice and music. He used a high-speed alternator capable of rotating at up to 20,000 revolutions per minute (rpm). Connected to an antenna circuit, it generated a continuous wave with a radio frequency equal to the product of the rotation speed and the number of magnetic rotor poles it had. With 360 poles, radio waves of up to about 100 kHz could be generated. However, Fessenden typically used a speed of 10,000 rpm to produce 60 kHz signals. By inserting a water-cooled microphone in the high-power antenna circuit, he amplitude-modulated the transmitted signal. On that Christmas Eve, he played phonograph records, spoke and played the violin with radio operators being amazed at what they heard.

Fessenden had earlier worked with spark-gap transmitters, as these were standard at the time for the transmission of Morse code, or telegraphy, the wireless communication method already in use. But they couldn’t generate a continuous wave and couldn’t produce satisfactory AM signals. But as telegraphy was the chief means of communication, they remained in use for many years along with high-powered alternators and the Poulsen arc transmitter, which could also generate continuous waves.

Continue reading at GPSworld.com…

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