by cart_machine » Sun Aug 11, 2019 2:09 am
Radio, the great and mighty peacemaker!!
It didn’t happen, did it?
Part of the end-piece waxing on about technology saving the world can be found in Dennis Duffy’s book Imagine Please. It’s published in full below. (Maybe, some day, someone will call their station “The Porcupine.” There’s been no end of ridiculous monikers over the last number of years).
The Vancouver Province wasted no time in publishing testimonials about how great its new radio station sounded. Strangely, when it took over operation of CFCB three months later, it stated the old Province station was hampered by interference, but the new station, well, how clear and great it sounded!!
King Cavalsky was one of the technicians who got CFDC on the air in Nanaimo. It later moved to Vancouver and became CKWX (Cavalsky went to work for BC Tel in Vancouver).
I don’t know the fate of young Master Longmire. His father was a bank manager.
cArtie.
Wednesday, March 15, 1922
Another Big Budget Of News Is Distributed
Province Radio Service Again Heard Up and Down Coast.
Dr. King’s Election and Other Interesting Features Are Included.
A GREAT budget of news was distributed Tuesday night by The Province Radiophone Service. That it was clearly heard up and down the Coast and into the interior of B. C. was demonstrated this morning when further telegrams were received.
Mr. W. A. Pierce, wireless operator on the steamer Princess Louise, lying at Victoria, said: "Your music and news broadcast clearly received at Victoria."
J. K. Cavalsky, an amateur at Nanaimo, wires: "Congratulations. Your music and spoken words perfectly received here tonight."
Mr. F. G. McGee at Myrtle Point, 100 miles from Vancouver, wired this: "News received last night far exceeds any previous tests. Exceptionally clear and very strong. Perfectly modulated, audible twenty feet from phone."
First messages with a new machine at Penticton were not entirely satisfactory last night. A new test will be carried out tonight.
One of the most enthusiastic amateurs in the city is George Longmire, aged 14, who lives at 2130 Williams [sic] street, Grandview. He "got" everything that the radio sent out last night.
The instruments at the Merchants' Exchange send wave-lengths of 2000 metres and receiving sets should be attuned to that distance to give best results in hearing.
MARKET REPORTS GIVEN.
The first bulletin sent out last night was that announcing the election of Hon. J. H. King in East Kootenay. Powell River, Bull Harbor, Victoria, Nanaimo, Roberts Creek, North Vancouver, Chilliwack and many other points got this information almost the name moment that it was posted on The Province bulletin board on Hastings street. Then followed nearly a score of bulletins of news of worldwide interest, some from London and New York and one giving the latest news from the strike situation in Johannesburg. Then came the weather report, the official forecast for the next forty-eight hours. The third section was given to market reports, for the benefit especially of rural communities, where prices of wheat, oats and eggs are of Interest. A number of excellent musical selections rounded out a fine programme that was not complete until nearly 10 o'clock.
AN IRISH CONCERT.
Tonight the programme will be along similar lines. On Thursday night there will be a special Irish concert. For this event, a receiving set has been placed in St. Andrew’s Church, Forty-ninth avenue east, South Vancouver, and the radio numbers will be a feature of the entertainment. These numbers will be played as usual from The Province Merchants' Exchange set starting at 8 o'clock, and will, of course, be heard by every other station which listens in, as well as in the church for which the programme is specially designed. From 9 to 9:30 on Thursday evening the regular news bulletins and market reports will be issued.
In a later issue, detailed announcement will be made of the specifications, cost, etc., of receiving sets, which the Marconi Company will be able to supply for use by all who wish to avail themselves of The Province radiophone service. The intention is especially to reach all those points where daily mails are not available. Enquiries for sets are being received from such places as Lillooet, Alta Lake, Alberni, Brookmere, Quesnel and a hundred and one slightly remote settlements up and down the coast.
FOM CABIBOO.
Rev. Dr. McKinnon, formerly of Kitsilano and now travelling mission superintendent for the Presbyterian Church, writes to The Province from Cariboo a very interesting and pointed letter on the radio project. He says:
“With the inauguration of wireless and radiophone service as now contemplated, the rural districts and isolated mining centres which have long waited their opportunity will come to their own. The present trend of rural depopulation and urban congestion will not only be stemmed but reversed. Nothing can save the world like this advance. Get the people on the land satisfied and get all the people that can be removed from the cities on the land and we shall have no more unemployment and no more radical agitation inflaming people to rage and acts of disloyalty to their country. When wireless and radiophones can be installed at nominal cost in every nook and corner of the land, the cause for the loneliness which often seizes the dwellers in isolated places will be removed, and they will feel that they are one with their fellow-men all over the planet.
LIKE PORCUPINES.
“People are like the porcupines we read of in fables stories. A group of porcupines once decided to organize into a society. First they agreed to live close together but they found it unsatisfactory as their quills annoyed one another. They tried to live far apart but they found that inconvenient. Finally they agreed to live within hearing distance of one another but not close enough to interfere with each other in the slightest.
“People do not want to be closely and densely huddled together and they do not want to live ‘in a finite shivering solitude.’ They want to live with sound of each others’ voices and to see each other as they will be able even when they are many miles apart. The cry ‘back to the land’ can now be listened to without a haunting sense loneliness stealing into the mind, and within next decade, it is safe to conjecture that millions of people now stranded and half in the cities will enjoy the freedom, leisure and happiness unattainable alone in rural areas. It is a safe forecast if this wireless communication of important news, worthwhile concerts, thought-provoking addresses, inspiring operas and ennobling and uplifting sermons can be supplied to dwellers in the remote plains and interior belts of British Columbia, that people can be numbered by hundreds of thousands in a few years, where now we can find only a few hundreds. The world is on the eve of great advances which portend the end of discontent and the ushering in a longer and brighter day of peace."