RNW Historical Audio Archive: 50 years of shortwave in Holland
On 30 March 1977 Radio Nederland (as we were then called in English) broadcast a special programme marking our 30th anniversary, and 50 years since the first shortwave broadcast from the Netherlands. The complete programme is now available to listen to/download from the RNW Historical Audio Archive. Here’s a synopsis of the programme:- Hendrik (Henk) van den Broek, Radio Nederland’s first director, recorded in 1955, explains why Radio Nederland was set up.
- The origin of Dutch overseas broadcasting goes back to 1927, the pioneering year of shortwave telephony. The Philips Laboratories in Eindhoven experiment with the PCJJ short-wave transmitter. The transmissions reach as far as the East-Indies. Mr. A C de Groot, a technical official of the Netherlands East Indies PTT and a radio amateur, is sitting up all night monitoring the 30 metre band in the hope of hearing amateurs operating in morse code from The Netherlands. Somewhere around 3:00 AM, he hears a voice speaking in Dutch saying “This is an experimental transmission from the Philips Laboratory in Eindhoven, Holland, on a wavelength of 30.2 metres”
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