Dame Nellie sings

This month marks the centenary of British radio broadcasting and nowhere will this celebration be most affectionately remembered than here in Essex

- Tim Wander

Dame Nellie Melba sings at Chelmsford on June 15, 1920

During World War I, the science of wireless telephony – sending and receiving speech instead of Morse code – had taken huge strides. Based on new developments in thermionic valve technologies, the Royal Flying Corps had developed lightweight reliable equipment capable of over 100 miles’ range, including air to air communication. This technology would soon enable the birth of civilian mass air transport.

The Marconi Airborne Wireless Development Department in Writtle, under Peter Eckersley, would provide the first air traffic control systems, coupled with accurate wireless direction finding, based on Captain Henry Joseph Round’s work during World War I.

In March 1919, really as a piece of pure blue sky research, the Marconi Company began a project to develop a new range of high power wireless telephony transmitters. A new 3kW telephony transmitter was installed at the Ballybunion station in Ireland and Round and his colleague, Marconi engineer William Theodore Ditcham, began broadcasting a daily experimental speech ‘programme’. At this time Ditcham and Round probably knew more about high power radio speech transmission than any other engineers in the world. The tests were successful and Ditcham became the first European voice to cross the Atlantic.