Music Radioed U.S. to England and Back Again

1928: SCHENECTADY, Feb. 21–Radio broadcast listeners to-day heard for the first time a two-way radio telephone communication between the United States and England. They also heard the rebroadcast in the United States of a phonograph record after the music had made a 1,000-mile round trip across the Atlantic.

The broadcast was an experiment on the part of the General Electric Company at Schenectady and the station of the British Marconi Company at Chelmsford, England. The transmission from the United States to England was by experimental station 2XAD of the General Electric Company, operating on a wave length of 21.96 meters. The transmission from 5FW, the Chelmsford station, was on a 24-meter wave.

Both the receiving and the transmitting instruments fed their output into the transmitter of WGY, operating on a wave length of 379.5 meters, by which the entire proceedings were rebroadcast. The experiment lasted an hour.

“Hello, 5FW; this is 2XAD,” said L.A. Taylor, who was talking from Schenectady.

After a pause the reply came:

“Are you there, 2XAD? This is Chelmsford. Can you hear me?”

“Not very clearly,” replied Mr. Taylor.

“Suppose we send you over a gramophone record,” said the British announcer, whose name was Wilson.

Then came the strains of a musical composition which, Wilson said, was entitled “Twenty Million Frenchmen can’t go wrong.” [title sic]

During the transmission of the phonograph music, conditions improved, and then C.P. Edwards, of the Canadian Department of Marine and Fisheries at Ottawa, who is visiting in England, sent a message of greeting to be transmitted to E.P. Edwards, of the General Electric plant at Ottawa.

Schenectady and Chelmsford then compared notes on the quality of reception of previous trans-Atlantic broadcasts. Schenectady inquired regarding “intelligibility.”

“I say that’s a regular two shilling word,” the Englishman answered.

The experiment of rebroadcasting phonograph music sent by the Schenectady short wave station to Chelmsford, and rebroadcast from there back to the United States and then “put on the air” by WGY followed. The record chosen was “Down South” by the British composer Myddleton. The rebroadcast, as measured by delicate time-pieces, was one-twentieth of a second behind the original production.