Breaking the Silence

Wireless before the days of broadcasting At the end of the last century the atmosphere began to be torn apart by man-made electrical disturbances. Wireless telegraphy had arrived. During the next twenty years or so those first crude Morse signals developed into broadcasting as we know it today. In tonight's film the early years are recalled by some of the people who helped ' break the silence 'home experimenters, schoolboys, ships' wireless operators, pre-BBC broadcasters, engineers ... ' We were regarded by the general public as magicians, something supernatural, and I think we rather revelled in that-it amused us,' says R. D. Bangay who joined the Marconi Company in 1903.