When I found the battered olive green book in the miscellaneous shelves of The Children’s Society charity bookshop in the Victorian model village of Saltaire, I was at once intrigued. I thought it sounded like a spy-catcher’s guide, some manual for a secret counter-espionage department out of an Eric Ambler or Graham Greene thriller. Finding Foreign Stations it was called, by R.W. Hallows M.A. (Cantab), who sounded like he ought to be a county parson with antiquarian interests, not a chap involved in sinister clandestine operations. Perhaps, though, English parsons often being keen train buffs, it was about a tour of overseas railway stations? The sub-title, Long-Distance Wireless Secrets, gave some of the game away, while still promising a certain element of mystery and adventure.
In fact, the 1932 book was a practical guide for Thirties radio hams seeking out signals from overseas wireless broadcasts. A former owner had annotated the endpapers with notes of places to get equipment. Britannia Works (Dept W) of 25-21 St Pancras Way London N.W.1 could supply Flexible Remote Control outfits. The Ever Ready Company (GB) Ltd Sales Dept (Technical) of London N7 offered a Comprehensive List of their Power Pack Range. Hivac Ltd of Stonefield Way South Ruislip Middlesex were the place to go for DC Subminiature Valves. These could of course all be code names, or their recondite equipment might prove to have murky uses.
I liked the photographs of European wireless stations and their transmitters, nearly all of them modern and art deco in style, pleasingly angular and streamlined in form. At the same time, there was a sort of grey melancholy about the monochrome images. I hope at least some of these structures have been preserved.
R.W. Hallows turned out in the library catalogues to be Ralph Watson Hallows. He was born in Doncaster on 12 June 1885 and died in Suffolk on 16 August 1962. He also wrote books on radar and atomic energy, so was evidently a well-informed scholar at the cutting edge of the most contemporary developments in science and technology.
Much of the book comprises the sort of technical detail that has me scratching my head and murmuring “Hmmm, yes, is that so?”, but on the other hand there are some splendidly weird diagrams and jargon and there is no mistaking the earnest enthusiasm to reach out to overseas transmissions to hear what the rest of the world is saying, in a highly cosmopolitan, League-of-Nations sort of way. ”It has often seemed to me,” says Hallows, “that foreign listening should be warmly encouraged by those responsible for broadcasting in this country, since it provides the owner of a receiving set with a ‘change of station’ which is just as valuable in its way as the change of air that we enjoy when taking a holiday.” Furthermore, “there are times when the home station is silent” (the BBC usually closed for the night around midnight) and “many foreign stations are ready to fill the gap.”
In an illustration at Figure 1, the author gives “An Evening’s Wireless Tour of Europe.” At 7.30, his intrepid listener can tune in to ‘Viola d’amore. Recital’ at Oslo; at 7.45 they may skip across to ‘Viennese Folk Music’ at Frankfurt-am-Main, at 8 o’clock the restless digits find an Orchestral Concert at Langenberg (Germany), but do not pause too long with the Mendelssohn etc before flitting at 8.30 to a Singing Programme at Berlin, at 9 o’clock to an opera in Milan and finally, in this sortie, to ‘Dance Music and Light Music’ at 10.30 from Warsaw, where we may leave them foxtrotting and tangoing away into the rapidly darkening hours.
(Mark Valentine)
