Radiomuseum ROL - The first German broadcast transmitter in 1923

A Transmitter for Berlin in Two Weeks

In 1923, the introduction of broadcasting in Germany was awaited daily. Due to apparently impossible financing (inflation) it failed again and adain.

In the meantime the DRP (Deutsche Reichspost ~ Federal German Post) had taken over the organization. Of coarse everyone imagined the participation in the new facility to be considerably different to what came later. When I emphasized in a meeting that for the time being we had to work mainly with detector receiving sets, I was laughed at by all experts. According to the economic and news broadcasting service, only sealed valve receiver should be used which are tuned in to a certain wave length.

And one day it suddenly got serious. On September 19 in 1923, I was instructed to arrange a breadbord model broadcast receiver within two weeks. It was especially difficult to fulfil the demand that "no further costs may arise".

So we had to set up in a hurry a transmitter wiht parts we had in our laboratory.

We did utmost and finally succeeded in executing the order. On October 1, the transmitter was completed and ready for installation.

Of course, according to today's comprehension, it was all but perfect. The anode voltage was supplied by a 1000-cycle alternating current generator together with a hot-cathode gaseous diode. Of course, as a result of this, a sound of 2000 Hertz could be heard despite of the applied filter elements, what was not very pleasing to the ear, even more as the heating was supplied by a (continuous) current converter.

For recording we used selected carbon microphones of a former type which used to be particularly suitable, above all one of the Telephonfabrik A.-G., formerly J. Berliner, which already had a mica membrane.

In the meantime we had been on the lookout for an installation site for the transmitter. Of course only the city came into question. Soon we got practice in orienting ourselves in the roof frameworks and climbing near the Potsdamer Platz, in doing so, we had the opportunity to become a little bit more acquainted with Berlin from the top view.

Finally we chose the Vox-Haus /Potsdamer Str. 4) where the Vox-Grammophon-Gesellschaft placed a small attic room with a floor space of some square metres at our disposal. It was a special advantage of this room that it had a sloping roof which made it impossible to stand in an upright position in half of the room.

On October 2, the transmitter was brought here and installation was started immediately. Soon the electrical connecting wires were passed and the machines were switched on. In the meantime the telegraph building authority had built up an aerial according to our desires.

Meanwhile a recording studio was prepared. A room on the third floor was cleared out and divided by woollen blankets at an approximate rate of 2 : 1. The larger part of the room, which was loosely draped with crepe paper for sound damping, was thought to be the actual "recording studio"; the smaller part had space for installing the necessary technical equipment. A chair with two address books on it served for positioning the microphones.

Everything was very primítive, even exceedingly primitive, but it works and that was the most imortant thing for the beginning.

From October 18, experimental transmissions had taken place, on the one hand to find the best positioning of the microphones and so on and on the other hand to gain some experience in the range of the transmitter.

In the morning of October 29, Secretary of State Dr.

Bredow came for inspection. Surprisingly he ordered to start regular operations already beginning on the same day.

Now a performance order had to be prepared very quickly and the artists required for the evening had to be consulted. However, we being engineers didn't have worried, because this was the job of the quickly founded "Radio Hour".

In the evening official transmitter operations were started. "Attention, attention, this is Berlin on wave 400 m!" so it was broadcasted into the space. And then Otto Urack played some compositions on the cello, including the - at that time - inevitable "Traeumerei" by Schumann, Rudolf Deman mastered the violin, and tenor Alfred Wilde performed some arias. In between some gramophone records were played, but at that time still without the electrical pick - up, which came up soon after that.

And when at the end of the performance after the German Hymn (also from a gramophone record!) "Have a good night! Please don't forget to ground the aerial!" could be heard, then the first broadcasting day was born out of evening and broadcasting.