Music by Wireless (A bit of history, 1917)

[Lance]

From The Electrical Experimenter, August, 1917, page 255:

MUSIC BY WIRELESS
Tina Lerner's Playing on Board Ship Heard on Other Vessels 500 Miles Away

Imagine sailing on a ship in mid-ocean and being able to hear your favorite pianist in a concert that she is giving on board a vessel hundreds of miles away! The possibility is not so remote as one might surmise, for on Washington's birthday last, Tina Lerner, the distinguished young Russian pianist, gave a recital on board the Ventura on her homeward journey from Honolulu, and enjoyed the unique thrill of feeling that her music was being heard by wireless, operators on board passenger and freight steamers as far as 500 miles away.
In the concert room where Miss Lerner was playing, a transmitter was placed, and by means of a recently perfected wireless telephone apparatus, the music was sent out over a large radius.
The experience of listening to this concert was far more novel than participating in the demonstrations which have recently been tried successfully, when singers and speakers in San Francisco were heard at meetings and banquets in New York and other cities. At these functions the guests were provided with telephones thru which they heard every tone distinctly. Even the applause that the singers received on the Pacific Coast was accurately transmitted, and all the thrills that attended the real concert were felt by this "proxy audience" on the other side of the continent. That, however, was over telephone wires. To play the piano while isolated in mid-ocean and have the notes float thru the air and bring pleasure to those far distant, does much toward the complete annihilation of space and causes us to wonder what tomorrow may bring forth.
When we are far from home--and think of the loved ones left behind, shall we be able to commune with them thru music?

[Ralph]

And only five years after RMS Titanic sent the first SOS call.

[Richard Mullany]

That is fascinating Lance. It is so easy to forget our technology is made up of steps like this.
We take things for granted that once made news, inventions that changed our lives became commonplace. Can any of us imagine a young person reading of something like this in that tiime, feeling they were living in an age of magic...
I recall reading an article in Popular Science back in the thirties about a new invention, a record changer it was called and it seemed hard to believe that a machine could handle a record, could drop it onto the turntable without hitting the arm or breaking the record. Revolutionary!!
I pored over that article countless times just marveling at it all. I was about ten then and it was easy to marvel at a lot of things I didn't understand. Now, old and easily confused I still can marvel as easily now as then at things I don't quite "get". A compact disc fairly stuns me.
An adequate description of it involves numbers beyong my ken, I am left to swoon over Pavoratti(sp?) singing Nessun Dorma as well as well as to the cold glitteriing technology that brings him alive, into my room.
It is wonderful to be able to share with another age the thrill of music present but not present, wafted through space. I'm sure an audio critic would carp at the sound quality, or lack of such back in the early days of radio. But to the hearers able to appreciate the real art, the shared experience of the musician and the music lover, the sound must have been glorious..
I really enjoyed your post Lance, thank you.

[Lance]

Thank you, Richard. I really am a sentimentalist and can almost relive those experiences just be reading them. We truly are living in an incredible age and time. One wonders, though, what the next 500 years will bring let alone only 100 years! Now, if we could just straighten out the mess the world seems to be in, everything would be hunky-dory.