Wired radio broadcasting technology in Britain: The early years

The largely unregulated early years of Canadian radio were vital to development of broadcasting policy. The Report of the Royal Commission on Radio Broadcasting in 1929 and American broadcasting both changed the direction of Canadian broadcasting, but were mitigated by the early, largely unregulated years. Broadcasters operated initially as small, independent, and local broadcasters, then, national networks developed in stages during the 1920s and 1930s. The late adoption of radio broadcasting policy to build a national network in Canada allowed other practices to take root in the wake of other examples, in particular, American commercial broadcasting. By 1929 when the Aird Report recommended a national network, the potential impact of the report was shaped by the path of early broadcasting and the shifts forced on Canada by American broadcasting and policy. Eventually Canada forged its own course that pulled in both directions, permitting both private commercial networks and public national networks.

Download Full-text

Time and Space in Early Norwegian Radio

Nordicom Review ◽

10.1515/nor-2017-0115 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 32 (2) ◽

pp. 95-110

Author(s):

Wenche Vagle

Keyword(s):

Social Interaction ◽

Detailed Analysis ◽

Present Article ◽

Early Years ◽

The Other ◽

Radio Broadcasting ◽

Production And Distribution ◽

Sense Of Time ◽

The One ◽

Special Meaning

Abstract The present article takes its points of departure in medium and modernity theory (Meyrowitz 1985), as well as in the research on the special meaning patterns in developed broadcasting referred to as “para-social interaction” (Horton & Wohl 1956) and “flow” (Williams 1974, Ellis 1982). The empirical focus is on the early years of radio broadcasting in Norway (1925-1940). Through a detailed analysis of the relation between radio’s production and distribution technologies, on the one hand, and the formation of the medium’s textuality and discursive roles and relationships, on the other, the article assesses which stage in the fostering of a new sense of time and place Norwegian broadcasting had reached when the 1930s ebbed out. It is shown that very little in the way of the “blurring” of traditional distinctions between here and there, live and mediated, personal and public had become realities in the Norwegian context of the 1930s.

Download Full-text

D-Day at Bletchley Park

Colossus ◽

10.1093/oso/9780192840554.003.0013 ◽

2006 ◽

Author(s):

Thomas H. Flowers

Keyword(s):

Armed Forces ◽

Early Years ◽

Plain Language ◽

Alan Turing ◽

Radio Broadcasting ◽

Intelligence Services ◽

The Government ◽

British Telecom ◽

German Navy ◽

Work Done

Before the war in Europe started in 1939, I worked as an engineer in the Dollis Hill communications research laboratories of what was then the British Post Office and is now British Telecom. During the war I continued to work in the laboratories; luckily I was not conscripted into the armed forces. Early in 1942 I was directed to go to GCHQ, the Government Communications Headquarters, then at Bletchley Park. I was told that there I would be briefed concerning some top-secret work which they wanted our laboratories to do for them. At Bletchley Park I met Alan Turing. Turing was working on Enigma at that time, and it was he who wanted the top-secret work done—a machine to assist with decoding Enigma messages once the Bombe had produced the message settings. From then until the end of the war, I was a frequent visitor to GCHQ. In the early years of the war, Alan Turing had saved Britain from defeat by the U-boats, by breaking the Enigma code used by the German Navy to communicate by radio with their ships at sea. Radio broadcasting is the only possible way of maintaining contact with mobile units like ships, tanks, and troops, but it is not secret—the transmissions can be intercepted by anyone with a suitable radio receiver. Therefore the messages must be encrypted before transmission. Even then the transmissions are secure only so long as the code remains unbroken by the enemy. The Germans were very sure that their high-grade ciphers could not be broken! British intelligence services had many radio receiving stations at home and abroad, listening continuously to German military radio broadcasts. These stations sent the coded messages they intercepted to Bletchley Park. In 1940 Bletchley Park started to receive teleprinter messages in a code that they could not recognise. The Germans had invented a new coding machine specifically for teleprinter messages. Messages typed into this machine in plain language were automatically encoded before being transmitted. At the receiving end an identical machine automatically decoded the message and printed the plaintext on paper tape.

Download Full-text

The Genesis and Internal Dynamics of El Salvador's People's Revolutionary Army, 1970–1976

Behavioral and Brain Sciences ◽

10.1017/s0140525x13009850 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 38 (01) ◽

pp. 102-129

Author(s):

ALBERTO MARTÍN ÁLVAREZ ◽

EUDALD CORTINA ORERO

Keyword(s):

Latin America ◽

El Salvador ◽

Early Years ◽

Left Wing ◽

Internal Dynamics ◽

Internal Coherence ◽

The 1960S

AbstractUsing interviews with former militants and previously unpublished documents, this article traces the genesis and internal dynamics of the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (People's Revolutionary Army, ERP) in El Salvador during the early years of its existence (1970–6). This period was marked by the inability of the ERP to maintain internal coherence or any consensus on revolutionary strategy, which led to a series of splits and internal fights over control of the organisation. The evidence marshalled in this case study sheds new light on the origins of the armed Salvadorean Left and thus contributes to a wider understanding of the processes of formation and internal dynamics of armed left-wing groups that emerged from the 1960s onwards in Latin America.

Download Full-text

Image quality vs data obtainment in biological electron microscopy

Proceedings, annual meeting, Electron Microscopy Society of America ◽

10.1017/s0424820100141950 ◽

1986 ◽

Vol 44 ◽

pp. 42-43

Author(s):

J. E. Johnson

Keyword(s):

Electron Microscopy ◽

Endoplasmic Reticulum ◽

Electron Beam ◽

Image Quality ◽

High Speed ◽

Early Period ◽

Early Years ◽

Fluorescent Screen ◽

Embedding Medium

In the early years of biological electron microscopy, scientists had their hands full attempting to describe the cellular microcosm that was suddenly before them on the fluorescent screen. Mitochondria, Golgi, endoplasmic reticulum, and other myriad organelles were being examined, micrographed, and documented in the literature. A major problem of that early period was the development of methods to cut sections thin enough to study under the electron beam. A microtome designed in 1943 moved the specimen toward a rotary “Cyclone” knife revolving at 12,500 RPM, or 1000 times as fast as an ordinary microtome. It was claimed that no embedding medium was necessary or that soft embedding media could be used. Collecting the sections thus cut sounded a little precarious: “The 0.1 micron sections cut with the high speed knife fly out at a tangent and are dispersed in the air. They may be collected... on... screens held near the knife“.

Download Full-text