On this day in History - BBC Site

[The Voyageur]

On 6 March 1923, Scotland’s first radio broadcast took place. The broadcast took place from Rex House, 202 Bath Street in Glasgow. The BBC's founder, Lord Reith of Stonehaven, opened the station. Orchestra, pipe band, choir, solo singers, actors and speech makers were all squeezed into a small attic for the first broadcast. By the summer of 1924, stations had opened in Edinburgh and Aberdeen, and, by the eve of the Second World War, over 90% of the Scottish population were served by BBC transmitters.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/history/o ... =03&day=06

Any old pics kicking around of this place?

[Dexter St. Clair]

[Apollo]

I assume they really meant to say "Scotland's first public or voice radio broadcast". Or of course, BBC.

Marconi set up the first radio sation in Scotland in a hut in Fraserburgh, in 1904, being in morse code at that time.

[job78989]

Nice picture, I did not know any of this stuff!

[Apollo]

Can't find my notes, so I can't give the details, but Marconi also transmitted from London (I hope) to Glasgow in the early 1900s, with the receiver being installed in Glasgow's Central Hotel.

Some years back, they installed a plaque there to commemorate the event, and it gives the details too.

Doesn't seem to have made it to any web resources (yet?), but I found another Glasgow story.

Marconi had set up a permanent wireless station at the Royal Needles Hotel on the Isle of Wight, paired with another at the Madeira Hotel in Bournemouth. When Lord Kelvin (with Lord Tennyson) visited in 1898, he sent a test message to Bournemouth, which was forwarded by land line as a telegram to the University of Glasgow. At the time, it would have been illegal for anyone other than the Post Office to send a commercial telegram, as their telegraph service was a strictly controlled monopoly.