If you like military radios as much as I do, you’ll love this video of Andy’s (GW0JXM) R1155 WWII era military HF receiver:
Hat tip to my good friend, Mike, for sending this video!
The Wall family (Photo: BBC News
An amazing piece of recorded history:
(Source: BBC News)
Curators at the Museum of London have discovered what they believe to be the first ever recordings of a family Christmas.
They were made 110 years ago by the Wall family who lived in New Southgate in North London.
There are 24 clear recordings on wax cylinders which were made using a phonograph machine between 1902 and 1917.
Music curators say the sound quality of the music recorded is outstanding. [Continue reading and listen to original recordings…]
![ABC reporter, and later RN documentary maker, Tim Bowden on patrol with a US Marine squad near Da Nang in Vietnam. (1966) [Photo: ABC ]](https://swling.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/RadioAustraliaReporter-300x200.jpg)
ABC reporter, and later RN documentary maker, Tim Bowden on patrol with a US Marine squad near Da Nang in Vietnam. (1966) [Photo: ABC]
ABC Radio National will broadcast a weeklong series highlighting the history, development, key moments and future of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on the occasion of its 80th Anniversary, from December 24-28. Details from:
http://www.abc.net.au/
radionational/programs/ specialbroadcasts/abc-80th- anniversary/4373618 There is a 16 hour difference between New York and Melbourne during our standard time winters; 19 hours between Los Angeles and Melbourne. “Live” broadcast, therefore, will be at 2 am, Dec. 23-27; repeated at 9 am, Dec. 24-28. No word yet on whether or for how long a podcast of this series will be made available.
John Figliozzi
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
According to English satirist & humanist, Aldous Huxley, we live in the “Age of Noise.” When he wrote this, in 1945, he implicated radio:
“The twentieth century is, among other things, the Age of Noise. Physical noise, mental noise and noise of desire — we hold history’s record for all of them. And no wonder; for all the resources of our almost miraculous technology have been thrown into the current assault against silence. That most popular and influential of all recent inventions, the radio, is nothing but a conduit through which pre-fabricated din can flow into our homes. And this din goes far deeper, of course, than the ear-drums. It penetrates the mind, filling it with a babel of distractions – news items, mutually irrelevant bits of information, blasts of corybantic or sentimental music, continually repeated doses of drama that bring no catharsis, but merely create a craving for daily or even hourly emotional enemas. And where, as in most countries, the broadcasting stations support themselves by selling time to advertisers, the noise is carried from the ears, through the realms of phantasy, knowledge and feeling to the ego’s central core of wish and desire.”
In many ways, this is still true–but not necessarily of radio. I daresay if Mr. Huxley were still around, radio would be the least of his concerns. Radio has gradually become the least invasive of the media that surrounds us, for the “noise” is now primarily visual: unless we make an effort to “quiet” them, images bombard us from all sides….Ironically, radio now requires turning down the volume on these and everything else, in order to experience the same world of noise that Huxley once found so overwhelming.
(He obviously never listened to pirate radio.)
(Photo source: NPR)
Long before the Internet and satellite phone, Phyllis Jeanne Creore Westerman brought soldiers home at Christmas via shortwave radio:
(Source: National Public Radio)
American service members have long spent holidays in dangerous places, far from family. These days, home is a video chat or Skype call away. But during World War II, packages, letters and radio programs bridged the lonely gaps. For 15 minutes every week, “Canteen Girl” Phyllis Jeanne Creore spoke and sang to the troops and their loved ones on NBC radio.
Her Christmas shows were morale boosters. America must “use more sentiment and less tinsel, and that’s the way it should be,” she told her listeners during one wartime Christmas broadcast. Now 96, Phyllis Jeanne Creore Westerman sits in her apartment on New York’s Fifth Avenue, remembering those seasonal broadcasts she recorded 70 years ago.
[…]She did a bit of radio work, found singing jobs with various bands at hotels like the Biltmore, and volunteered at the Stage Door Canteen. That’s where she got the idea for a regular radio show — to reach more troops — across the U.S., and in Europe by short wave.
Read the full article and listen to Susan Stamberg’s interview on NPR.org.
Several months ago, I wrote a post confessing that I recently embraced internet radio, and since then have been using a very affordable Cricket Android Phone as an inexpensive, portable wi-fi radio. You see, though I prefer listening to shortwave radio, and though there are notable exceptions, it’s not always the best source to pipe music through the hi-fi system in our house.
At one point, I actually subscribed to XM satellite radio. I eventually dropped it, and found there were only two things I really missed from XM: Tom Petty’s Buried Treasure, and the 40s on 4 station, which played music from the 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s.
Introducing The UK 1940s Radio Station
Fortunately, there is an excellent radio station–indeed, better than XM/Sirius’ 40s on 4–that fills my need for nostalgic radio, The UK 1940s Radio Station.
The UK 1940s Radio Station runs 24 hour a day and plays an amazing mix of 1940s era music. Unlike 40’s on 40, The UK 1940s Radio Station has authentic recordings of news clips and even original advertisements they play throughout their music mix. The 40s on 4, at least when I last listened, still had a pseudo-1940s-sounding announcer (Ed Baxter) and often reproduced news broadcasts; I prefer the real period recordings, personally. Also, The UK 1940s Radio Station has interviews and commentary from experts on the era.
The UK 1940s Radio Station are supported by their listeners, so if you like their programming, consider supporting them with a donation via PayPal.
Tuning In, a history of early radio in Britain, will be broadcast November 3rd on BBC Radio 4. If you don’t live in the UK, you can listen live on the Radio 4 website where they will also post an archive of the show. (Note that some archived shows are only available for a limited time.)
(Source: Radio 4)
The press fulminated, the enthusiasts were frustrated, and the radio manufacturers fumed. Despite the fact that Marconi had invented radio before Queen Victoria had celebrated her Diamond Jubilee in 1897, radio in Britain took another 25 years to begin an official service to listeners. But when, on November 14th 1922 the British Broadcasting Company’s station at Marconi House radiated to an awaiting nation “This is 2LO calling” for the first time under the company’s name, it marked the start of the first and most distinguished public-service radio station in the world.
As part of the celebrations to mark nine decades of the BBC, historian Dominic Sandbrook explores the long and involved pre-BBC history of radio in Britain, how Britain’s broadcaster got going and developed into an institution dedicated to entertainment, education and information, discovers why Australian diva Dame Nellie Melba was involved, and how the improbably-named Captain Plugge made his first British commercial broadcast from the roof of Selfridges department store in London. From Marconi to Savoy Hill via an old army hut in Essex, the story of the early radio in Britain.