Nellie Melba

So, you’ve invented the technology of radio. It’s all very exciting. But there comes a time, when ‘1-2-3 testing’ gets a little dull. There are no radio stations; and few folk are listening. No-one really knew if they ever would, frankly.

The Marconi Company was making the transmitters in Essex. The test output was hardly inspiring: Morse Code alongside bits out the paper or the railway timetable. A few of the engineers even developed into early radio personalities, lending their creative energies to this new art.

In January 1920, they upped their game. A programme of speech and ‘gramophone music’ was aired. The programmes remained limited as they were still just ‘tests’ of a maximum half-hour duration. Singers would pop in too for spontaneous recitals.

What next? Well, Dame Nellie Melba was a huge Australian opera star. She agreed to appear on-air on 2MT, for a payment kindly arranged by the Daily Mail. Good old Nellie broadcast from the workshop, but legend has it when she was told where her voice would be heard from, she feared she'd be plonked on top of the two 450 ft masts. Aired on 15th June 1920, the microphone was made from an old cigar box.

Reception reports from this Marconi 15 kW telephone transmitter were received around the World. Co-channel interference was rare back then, one imagines. The broadcast seized the title of “First live public entertainment Broadcast in the World by a celebrity”.