A NEW BOOK - PUBLISHED IN 2010

"Hello CQ. The concert’s ending, Ending for 2MT!”

Radio Station call-sign ‘2MT’ and a small Essex village called Writtle.

 Just over eighty-five years ago, at eight o’clock in the evening of a cold and frosty St. Valentine’s Day in 1922, regular radio broadcasting came to the British Isles for the first time. 2MT at Writtle was the birthplace of British Broadcasting.

But it had all started in Chelmsford two years earlier..............

The great lady herself, Dame Nellie Melba, when at the Marconi Works in Chelmsford in 1920 for her historic broadcast was shown the huge 450 ft twin masts towering over the factory and the town. It was explained to her that from the top her voice would be heard throughout the world. Her answer is now radio folklore, “Young Man, if you think I’m going to climb up there you are very much mistaken”. The lady sang and was heard throughout Europe, but the Post Master General decided that Britain wasn’t ready for broadcasting.

Dame Nellie Melba's Chelmsford Concert

The 2MT Writtle team

Then it started again in a small Essex village called Writtle............

A weak and static laden radio signal crackled out from an old army hut on the edge of a partly flooded field. The new art of broadcasting had come to Essex and Britain had gained her first official voice. The radio station and its ‘Two Emma Toc’ call sign went on to achieve their own place in the history of radio communication.

But 2MT was so much more than an experimental radio station. The whole thing was conceived and run by the irrepressible Captain Peter Pendleton Eckersley. A brilliant engineer, ‘ PPE’ liked to play records pivoted at some other point than their centre, invent wireless noises, bang half filled milk bottles and never suffered from the dreaded disease of microphone shyness. With its impromptu comedy sketches, the first ever broadcast radio play, children’s five minute spots, guest artistes, burlesque entertainment’s, parodies of grand opera and a new type of entertainment radio station 2MT made history.

The power behind the microphone, Peter Eckersley became Britain’s first DJ, and the light-hearted spirit which pervaded the whole proceedings and sheer joie de vivre that bubbled across the ether were not only a first but truly unique in the history of broadcasting.

Often a one-man show, but always a team effort, the radio station known as 2MT at Writtle established an individuality all its own which forever remained a pleasant memory to its broadcast audience and wrote a crucial chapter in the history of radio and broadcasting.

The young Writtle radio engineers work led directly to the formation of station ‘2LO’ and then the BBC. Peter Eckersley became the BBC’s first Chief Engineer taking with him most of the Writtle pioneers to build a National Broadcasting service from the ground up.

Marconi Engineer  W T Ditcham seated alongside the early Chelmsford transmitter

2MT Writtle – The Birth of British Broadcasting’ by Tim Wander charts the full story of the early struggle to achieve a national broadcasting service in this country – from the famous 1920 broadcast of Dame Nellie Melba in Chelmsford, through Writtle’s sparkling success to the birth of the BBC in 1923. It has been written for a wide readership, not just lovers of historic tomes and technical journals. The book also includes separate technical/historical appendices on the Writtle, Chelmsford and 2LO transmitters, the Dutch station PCGG, and early pioneers such as Grindell Matthews, Reginald Fessenden and David Hughes. It has new sections on the History of Writtle village and the Cock and Bell Pub. and charts the development of speech transmission during the First World War. It also covers the start of broadcasting in America, and provide non technical explanations for the mysteries of radio transmission.

22 years ago, Tim Wander published the first edition of 2MT Writtle – The Birth of British Broadcasting - drawing on much previously unpublished archive material and photographs. The first print run sold out within a year. This completely rewritten and revised new edition benefits from 21 years more research, the internet and modern technology, and now has over 200 photographs, many previously unpublished.

2MT Writtle.
The Birth of British Broadcasting.
By Tim Wander.

Laughter from the Earliest Days of British Broadcasting.

AVAILABLE NOW.
The new edition is just £18.95.
Postage and packing - UK £3.50. Europe and ROW £5.50

For internet orders email timwander{at}compuserve.com - payment by paypal to same address.

Or alternatively you can purchase online HERE on the Authors Online site.