Different "voices"

Good little thing. Frankly, I do not like the latest news on the radio. Some girls always informing about the names of places always report them. In addition, each third of them is a little tongue -tied, as if they were deliberately selected. My globe is much more convenient, especially since I need to know events for sure. For example, you see this piece of the earth, the side of which is washed by the ocean? Look, here it is poured with fire. The war began there. If you bring your eyes, you will see details.

Yes, Woland had the Internet and webcams around the world. But ordinary people of the twentieth century lived their age with radio. From the reproduct, they learned about the troubles and joys of mankind, he was for them a source of knowledge and aesthetic pleasure. In my childhood there was no TV in poverty, but there was a box with a wire, the fork of which stuck into a special outlet in the kitchen - a radio. She worked even when electricity turned off in the house, and this happened often. The box transmitted the records of the famous performances of the Moscow Art Theater and Small, direct broadcasts from large, including ballets. In the dark, the rustle of ballet packs and the topot of the swans were especially clearly heard.

Then there appeared transistor receivers with a short -wave scale, and those who had them began to listen to "enemy voices." In August 1968, in the Gagarin Pioneer camp named after Gagarin, the counselor Fedya included his “speedla” in the evenings, and we listened to reports about the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. It was then that I first doubted: is my country so good, and if not so, then why? "The Gulag Archipelago" and "Moscow - Petushki" I then read, and at first I heard - on Radio Liberty, in the brilliant reading of Julian Panich.

In the fall of 1991, I first arrived in New York, called the Freedom studio and heard in the tube a long-familiar voice of Peter Vile, which was familiar to me. Yes, and he, as it turned out, knew me in absentia. Nine years later, in Washington, at a briefing in the White House, I met Irina Lagunina, with whom we once together, but from different publications covered the largest world events. And I became a freelance Washington correspondent of the Russian service.

Each has its own history of communication with the Votes. These voices were recognizable even through the crack of Soviet radio sides. They were distinguished by the inimitable, relaxed intonation, the momentum of speech, even the timbre. Soviet radio and television did not say that.

The foreigner began in the golden age of the radio-the 30s of the last century. During the Second World War, it became a powerful weapon in the fight against Nazism, but the Nazis successfully poisoned the ether with hostility and hatred.

Annovation is not a privilege of great powers. Even today, when the main “voices” have gone online, foreign -language radio stations of many countries work on the air, and industry continues to produce short -wave radio receivers because these stations have their own audience.

We hope that our cycle will become not only the history of the radio, but also the radio source, the sound chronicle of the century. The sound is often more eloquent in pictures and certainly smarter. However, we will also use the film and video chronicle when such an opportunity is presented. The main thing is not to miss anything ...

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Chapter 1

At the dawn of radioers

American inventor Reginald Fessenden

In the early years of the twentieth century, radio messages were transmitted using the ABC Morsa and almost exclusively a military fleet. The problem was to convey the sound on the radio. This task was solved by the American inventor Reginald Fessenden.

On December 24, 1906, radio operators of ships located off the eastern coast of the United States heard human speech at first in the headphones - it was a brief introduction of the inventor, then - the Ombra Mai Fu recorded on the Opera of Handel Kerserx. Fessenden in his diary does not indicate in whose performance, but I think that it was Enrique Karuzo, who just performed on the stage of the New York Opera Metropolitan theater and producing a large splash. The record placed below was made much later, on January 19, 1920, but these are the same Gandel and Caruso.

SERSE

Frondi Tenere E Belle
Del Mio Platano Amato,
Per Voi Risplanda Il Fato.
Tuoni, Lampi, E Procelle
Non v'oltragino mai la car,
Né Giunga a Profanarvi Austro Rapace.

Ombra mai fu di vegetabile
Cara Ed Amabile
Soave più ...

(XERXES

Delicate and beautiful leaves
My beloved Platan
Let your lot be happy.
Thunder, lightning, and storms
Let them never break your peace
Let the birds of prey do not desecrate you.

I have never seen before
More tender and affectionate
Shadows of foliage ...)

The program continued the melody of the Christmas song by Adolf Adams "Oh, Holy Night", performed on the violin by the inventor himself. In our project, it is performed by the famous Dutch conductor and violinist Andre Ryo.

Then followed the Christmas anthem Charles Guno to the verses of Anatoly de Segur Le ciel a visité la terre. The French soprano of Marta Angelichi sings it - then she, however, was not only singing, but she was not born.

And, finally, the male voice-it was again Reginald Fessenden himself-read one phrase from the Gospel of Luke. It is pronounced by the heavenly army on the occasion of the birth of Jesus:

The transmitting antenna of Fessenden. Mail postcard 1910

Glory to God, and on Earth, the world, in human powder! (Luke 2:14)

Such a festive, composed with great taste, was this first entertaining radio program in history.

This session, however, did not produce any sensation, and they soon forgot about it.

On January 12, 1910, another American, Lee Forest, conducted a new artistic radio broadcast. It was a live broadcast from the Metropolitan theater of Fragment of Puchchinievskaya "Tosca". So de Forest can be considered the ancestor of the opera performances so popular today. And this time a few listeners heard the voice of the great Caruso. This record in time corresponds to the event - it was made on November 6, 1909.

Lee de Forest

By the way, in 1901, de Forest competed with Marconi in the speed of news transmission. On the New York International Sailing Regatta, each with its own apparatus got into the boat and began to transfer messages about the race to the shore. But neither one nor the other did nothing: they worked on the same wave and drowned out each other's signal. De Forest then, with annoyance, threw his transmitter into the water.

Neither Fessenden nor de Forest managed to organize regular broadcasting. This was done by the engineer of Westinghouse Electric Frank Conrad. He was a passionate radio amateur and equipped a studio in his garage in Pitsburg. In his free time, he twisted music from his collection on the air, but he did it when he wanted, and the listeners praised him with phone calls: "When is the next program?" To get rid of annoying issues, Conrad began to air at the same time - in the evening on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

In the end, his collection was exhausted. Then he offered the owner of the gramus store the deal: the store supplies him with musical records for free (then not records, but rollers for the phonograph), and he advertises the store on the air. So commercial broadcasting was born. Frank Conrad, in addition, is considered the world's first DJ.

What music did Frank Conrad's ears delighted with his audience? It was, of course, not Belcanto, but pop melodies. The most fashionable musical genre was then Ragtaym. As a sound illustration, I chose something special. This is the "Russian REG" of the composer George Cobba, based on the Rachmanin Prelude, the Deruza Minor. He wrote it in 1918 on the wax roller of the phonograph Edison, the very popular Erla Fuller orchestra.

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Russian REG

Westinghouse vice president drew attention to Frank Conrad and sensed a commercial perspective. The company began to produce radio receivers and requested an official call sign from the government - in other words, a broadcast license. On November 2, 1920, the world's first commercial radio station KDKA began regular broadcasting.

However, the merit of creating the first American nationwide broadcasting company does not belong to Konrad, but to David Sarnov. He was born in 1891 in the town of Znlyany Minsk province in a Jewish family. In 1900, the family emigrated from the Russian Empire to the United States and settled in New York. David worked as a sale of newspapers, and at the age of 15 he had to quit school and go seriously: his father lost their ability to work, and it was necessary to feed three younger brothers and sister. He entered the "company of the unprofitable telegraph of Marconi" and for 13 years from the boy on the run rose to the post of one of the leading managers. In April 1912, he accepted the distress signal from the Titanic and, together with two other operators, maintained contact with the rescuers, making lists of passengers alive.

Sarnov worked in the broadcasting corporation of America (RCA) since its founding in 1919 and eventually became its president. He believed that the radio should become a public property like libraries or museums, but a big business remained indifferent to his calls to sacrifice money for a good matter. Nothing came out of the idea of introducing a subscription fee. Then Sarnov went along the route of broadcasting and in September 1926 on the basis of RCA created a national broadcasting company (NBC).

In January 1927, the second national broadcaster appeared in America - CBS.

We will still have a reason to return to the biography of David Sarnov. In the meantime, we listen to the NBC program "On the air - the American City Assembly." This is the first American political talk show. His guests - prominent politicians, government members, experts - answered questions from ordinary citizens. The meetings were held in the building called Town Hall and was built by the political education league specifically for such public events. The broadcast was always straight, even when the technical possibility of recording appeared: it was believed that recorded and mounted programs were a deception of listeners. It was this talk show that gave rise to a “meeting in Town Hall”-a traditional format of communication between elected officials, including the president, with voters. The program was aired from 1935 to 1956. Each issue was dedicated to any acute problem. We listen to the third show. His theme sounds topically and today: "Personal freedom and modern state." The program was aired on December 12, 1935.

After the musical introduction, the game screensaver sounds: the doorman the bell convenes the audience into the hall and declares the topic of discussion. The audience throws brief remarks: “Personality and state? They are incompatible!”, “Naps! One is impossible without the other!”, “There is no freedom today!”, “Freedom today is more important than anything else!”, “Because it is now such a rarity?” ... Then the author takes the author, the presenter and producer of the program, George Denni Jr.. He represents the participants, including the author of the book “Coming American Fascism”, and gives the microphone to the professor of the constitutional law of Columbia University Howard Lee Macbein. The professor says that freedom is a multifaceted concept: this is freedom of speech, and freedom of print, and freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion, and freedom of navigation, and freedom of trade, so on, and the like. But in fact, the freedom that the Americans currently talk and think most of all is economic freedom ...

Continuation read here .