ort period and then returned to Athens on
October 12th 1944 for the Liberation.

"Finally, I would like to say that in the dark days before
Montgomery's breakthrough at Alamein, when it was quite on the cards
that General Rommel might take Cairo, Mr Joly and I were sent to
Jerusalem to make arrangements for the foreign language broadcasts to
be continued from there. Fortunately the situation changed and we
were recalled to Cairo, where we arrived just in time for me to
broadcast the historic communique announcing the victory at Alamein,
which marked the turning point of the war in the Middle East.

CHAPTER NINE

MISCELLANY

1. The first broadcasting stations of the world.

Speech was first transmitted for reception by the general public
from Washington D.C. in 1915 when Europe was still at war. During
1916 the first 'broadcasting' station in the world began regular
transmissions from a New York suburb.

In 1919 Dr. Frank Conrad, then Assistant Chief Engineer of the
Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company, set up, in his own
garage in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, a 75-watt transmitter (8XK) from
which he broadcast musical entertainment for other radio enthusiasts.
This was the first continued scheduled broadcasting in history. The
Westinghouse Company realised the potential value of Conrad's work and
built KDKA, the first regular commercial broadcasting station in the
world, which began its career by announcing the results of the
Harding-Cox election returns on the November 2nd 1920.

The first broadcasting station in Europe was PCGG which began
transmitting on November 6th 1919 from the Hague in Holland. Hanso
Steringa Idzerda, a 35 year old engineer, obtained the first licence
granted in Europe for the transmission of music and speech for general
reception, as opposed to the wireless telegraphy stations which had
been operating point to point services. From the end of 1919 to 1924
this station transmitted a series of musical programmes three times a
week called 'The Hague Concerts'. The original wavelength of
670 metres was later changed to 1,150 metres.

At that time most of the people who heard these concerts would
have been using headphones and they would not have been very critical
about the quality of the sounds they were hearing compared to the
magical novelty of snatching voices and music apparently out of thin
a