PROVINCE BROADCASTS NEWS AND MUSIC BY RADIO    The Province March 14, 1922

      Broadcasting a budget of news and several musical selections a radiophone service was inaugurated by The Province on Monday night.  For the first time in the history of the Canadian West, radio waves carried the news of the day to scores of districts, many of them so much beyond the reach of the mailed evening newspaper that news with them by ordinary channels is often 3 or 4 days old.  Last night's test was thoroughly successful.  The central despatching station used by The Province is in the  Merchant's Exchange, Vancouver.  During several weeks past negotiations and experiments has been proceeding, last evening at 8:30 the first messages were sent out.  The mechanical devices used are of the latest type and are supplied by the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company. 

     Heard in Alberta. . . .   Bright and early, this morning, from points up and down the coast, messages were received describing the clearness and satisfactory nature of the service supplied last night.  The greatest distance covered was recorded by the government station at High River, Alberta, which is 600 miles away across the Rockies.  "Perfect music and speech received from your station last night," says Mr. Gorman, opeator at Thurston Harbour, about 200 miles up the coast.  Another coast point about 100 miles distant, the Forest Branch Radiophone at Myrtle Point "heard voice and music perfectly."   Seattle, Victoria and New Westminster all sent messages that the voice sounds had been received quite clearly.

      Tone was clear . . . Besides the official stations enumerated, scores of amateurs throughout Vancouver and the district listened for half an hour to the new and uncanny call of the wireless phones.  In several Vancouver sets which were tested the tones were rather better in clearness and quality than the best wire telephone.  And as for the music, you close your eyes and you imagine you are listening to a phonograph in the same room with you.  The sending machine, one of the newest manufactured recently arrived from England, for installation at the Merchants' Exchange.  There is a very expensive and complicated machine encased in a cabinet, but so far the operator in concerned is concerned the method of transmission is exceedingly simple.  He talks into a telephone receiver of the ordinary type.  The waves of sound are caught up and sent out from a great aerial which extends across the roof the Metroolitan Building to the Post Office.  They disappear in the ether or ozone or whatever is the transmitting agent to be caught up by every wireless outfit around the country.  of these there are several hundred amateur sets in Vancouver alone.  Others in North Vancouver, New Westminster and Nanaimo, even one at Roberts Creek, where a lonely rancher every night can listen for the news and the music from Vancouver, Seattle and even as far away as Seattle. 


        The sending station may be equipped with a most complicated and costly machine, but the little receiving set which any boy can have installed with a 40 foot aerial on the roof is an extremely simple and inexpensive device.  A few have been mad almost entirely by the amateurs themselves while the Marconi Company manufactures very satisfactory ones costing from $25 to $100.  These instruments can be attuned not only to hear one but a number of radio stations.  Tests made last night showed that not only could The Province be heard with great distinctness but calls from stations at the north end of Vancouver Island and musical selections being played in San Francisco or Oakland were not beyond the range of the receivers here. 

      Tonight, news will be broadcasted starting at 8:30.  Interest tonight centres on getting a good service to Penticton, where a new machine has been set up today.  The broadcasting test will continue every night this week, peniding the issue of permanent licenses by the Federal Government.