First transatlantic radio broadcast
March 14, 1925
For
one of the few times so far in this survey, I find myself stymied. Fortunately,
no one could write a better explanatory essay on this entry than Cary O’Dell’s,which you can find here. The recording in question is not readily available,
and most of it is of abysmal sound quality.
As
O’Dell states, this was not the first transatlantic communication, but it was the
first airing of a transatlantic broadcast intended for the public. It was a
signal that was passed through a variety of long- and short-wave conduits on
its way to home receivers, and that signal deteriorated with every step of the
process. It’s not surprising that the end result was not much to brag about.
It
was a necessary first stage, however. There was not much of a push from
commercial interests to import foreign broadcasts. However the transmission of
information, specifically news, from Europe would grow in importance as the
Second World War loomed. This provided important perspective to millions of
listeners from the first generation of broadcast journalists such as William L.
Shirer, Edward R. Murrow, and Eric Sevareid.
Two
years later, Lindbergh would be the first to fly across the Atlantic. The world
was shrinking.
The National Recording Registry
Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the
National Recording Registry in chronological order. Up next: Louis Armstrong’s
Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings.
No comments:
Post a Comment