page_title: Robert Goldschmidt
section_title: First European scheduled broadcasts
hierarchical_section_title: Robert Goldschmidt / Career / Radio / First European scheduled broadcasts
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of a radiotelephone transmitter in use at the Laeken, Belgium radio station circa 1914. The device used a high-frequency spark transmitter developed by Riccardo Moretti of Rome and a microphone invented by Giovan Battista Marzi of Cornigliano Liguria, Italy. The station was under the oversight of Robert Goldschmidt.
context_page_description: Robert B. Goldschmidt was a Belgian chemist, physicist, and engineer who first proposed the idea of standardized microfiche.
  Goldschmidt was a polymath who also made advances in aviation and radio, among other fields. In 1913 he constructed a major radio facility at Laeken, Belgium, where in 1914 he and Raymond Braillard inaugurated Europe's first regular radio concert broadcasts. He was also a participant in the first and second international Solvay Conferences reviewing outstanding issues in chemistry and physics.
context_section_description: The Congo stations and the high-powered Laeken station had standard spark-gap transmitters which were only capable of transmitting the dots-and-dashes of Morse code. However, prior to the destruction of the Laeken facility, experimental work was done to develop equipment capable of making audio transmissions, which led to Europe's first organized entertainment radio broadcasts. (These appear to be the second oldest known regularly scheduled radio concerts, preceded only in the United States by Charles "Doc" Herrold in San Jose, California, who began a similar series of weekly concerts in the summer of 1912.)
  Because the spark transmitters required trained operators who could send and receive Morse code, Goldschmidt and Braillard began to investigate whether the stations could be converted to radiotelephone operations which would be easier to staff. In 1913 they began work on audio transmissions using a special high-frequency spark transmitter developed by Italian Riccardo Moretti, which was roughly capable of producing the "continuous-wave" signals needed to make audio transmissions. (Moretti's transmitter only approximated a true continuous-wave transmission, which limited sound quality, and reportedly when no audio was being sent, instead of silence the result was "a terrible noise in the ears"). The common practice at this time for "modulating" the transmission in order to encode sound was to insert a microphone in the aerial transmission line. This required a robust microphone that could handle strong electrical currents. In the fall of 1913, the Laeken experimenters began to employ a microphone that had been developed by Italian Giovanni Battista Marzi. Initial tests conducted in 1913 were heard by nearby amateur radio enthusiasts in Belgium and northern France, who were intrigued because previously they had only heard Morse code transmissions. The equipment was perfected to the point that by 13 March 1914 a test transmission was successfully heard at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, about 350 kilometers (220 miles) away.
  Due to the increasing interest in the test transmissions, it was decided to introduce a series of concerts to be given at 5 p.m. each Saturday. The first of these concerts was given on 28 March 1914, and consisted of a mixture of live performers and phonograph records. On this date a second concert was given at 8:30 p.m., which was dedicated to the Belgian royal family. (Belgium's queen, Elisabeth, had shown an early interest in the radio experiments. A crystal receiver had been provided for her use, and she also received instruction in receiving Morse code.)
  Very little information is available about the subsequent programmes, in part because of the loss of records caused by the chaos of World War I. Raymond Braillard later stated that the concerts lasted for only about four months, ending in July due to the start of the war. Entertainment radio broadcasts would not resume in Europe until November 1919, when a station established by Hans Idzerda, PCGG, began weekly concerts from The Hague in Holland, and they did not return to Belgium until 1923. On 28 March 1934, the Institut National de Radiodiffusion produced a broadcast commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the debut concert.
caption: Laeken radiotelephone equipment, using a Moretti high-frequency spark transmitter and Marzi microphone. A series of weekly radio concerts was inaugurated on 28 March 1914.[12]
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