Comment by andyjohnson0
4 days ago
The distances and remoteness mentioned in the article are impressive. And is the human need and ingenuity for communication. It reminded me of William Gibson's description of 1950s farmers in the US using metal wire fences as radio antennas.
In the 70s and 80s (and probably before) in the UK, the BBC used to broadcast occasional "sos messages" [1] prior to the main daily news summaries on FM radio - for people who were away from home and, for whatever reason, uncontactable. They usually related to a relative being dangerously ill. I remember hearing them on my parent's car radio on summer camping trips.
Obviously the uk is a small and quite densely populated island but, without two way personal communications, some needs were similar to those described in the article. It changed a lot of things.
[1] https://swling.com/blog/2012/09/radio-4-and-now-an-urgent-so...
Honestly I'm very sad that the AM broadcast bands (for those unaware there's two in Europe: long wave and medium wave) have been allowed to fall out of use in the UK without regulatory reform. Fair enough the BBC and commercial broadcasters don't want it any more, Absolute Radio stopped on AM because the fine from Ofcom was actually less than running the transmitter estate for example, but there's no reason community/heritage efforts like Radio Caroline need to be subject to a burdensome licensing regime from an era AM was big business when their band is currently almost dead. In my view we should do the opposite, the whole band should be opened to hobbyist broadcasters for a nominal fee and a power limit of a few hundred watts; it's not like most people have the space to put up an aerial that'll go very far on AM.
It feels very wasteful of a scarce resource to leave this spectrum abandoned, especially when it has interesting properties.
We will come to regret this. I hope they at least properly mothballed the whole thing and will keep the antennas in good shape because we may well need that capability at some point in the future.
maybe it is a form of control.
if anyone could broadcast to so many so easily, that is considered dangerous nowadays. if there is no one there to receive (no one remembers AM, no AM receivers), you can still broadcast but no one will listen.
What, like some kind of amateur radio?
I visited a maritime museum which showed a film clip from WW2 about a radio broadcast set up so that merchant sailors could get messages from their family.
I am unable to find an online resource with more info, though I know from general reading and from visiting WW2-era museum ships that sailors were listening to radio shows while at sea. I assume it was all shortwave, back in the time when radio dials included city names.
I was reading Moby Dick earlier this year and was surprised that the mail service seemed to be "I am a ship returning to port, I have a bag of letters meant for sailors SOMEWHERE in the ocean, I will give it to this ONE ship and maybe they will cross paths with these sailors". Curious how often the messages ended up getting to where they needed to go.
"For the long absent ship, the outward-bounder, perhaps, has letters on board; at any rate, she will be sure to let her have some papers of a date a year or two later than the last one on her blurred and thumb-worn files. And in return for that courtesy, the outward-bound ship would receive the latest whaling intelligence from the cruising-ground to which she may be destined, a thing of the utmost importance to her. And in degree, all this will hold true concerning whaling vessels crossing each other’s track on the cruising-ground itself, even though they are equally long absent from home. For one of them may have received a transfer of letters from some third, and now far remote vessel; and some of those letters may be for the people of the ship she now meets. Besides, they would exchange the whaling news, and have an agreeable chat. For not only would they meet with all the sympathies of sailors, but likewise with all the peculiar congenialities arising from a common pursuit and mutually shared privations and perils." - https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2701/pg2701-images.html
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> farmers in the US using metal wire fences
More yonder https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/barbed-wire-telephone-...
Oh, I remember the equivalent service in National Spanish radio, I think up until the 90s. It was called "Servicio de socorro".
The UK is not all that small or all that densely populated. Great Britain is the world's ninth largest island. its marginally smaller than Honshu which has a bigger population, and England alone is about the size of Java (which has a bigger population than Russia). I know offhand that it has a lower population density than Sri Lanka
Its a long way from even Cornwall to the North of Scotland, and significantly further between the islands.
People in Sri Lanka are not the ones exchanging personal messages via AM radio broadcasts. Much of this article is about the province of Chubut https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chubut_Province which has a population density of 2.6 people per square kilometer. The UK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom has a population density of 287 people per square kilometer. Scotland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotland has a population density of 71 people per square kilometer. The northernmost district of Scotland, Caithness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caithness has a population density of 41 people per square kilometer.
41 is not the same order of magnitude as 2.6.
In conclusion, from the perspective of the people this article is about, the UK is very small and densely populated.
> Its a long way from even Cornwall to the North of Scotland
Indeed, driving from Land’s End to John o’Groats is basically the same distance as the longest drive across Texas!
Google maps says it is a 15-hour drive. That is a long day but still is just a day. It would be akin to Seattle to SF, or Vancouver to Calgary. Most people with cars on the west coast wouldn't really blink at such a drive. It is still in that range where one can debate flying v driving in terms of money/time/pollution.
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As I say in the other post, it is unevenly populated (much like Honshu). The thing is that parts of Scotland have been deliberately depopulated by the aristocracy (and to a lesser extent government).
The UK is unevenly populated and it certainly isn't the one island. In Scotland alone, for example, we have had dozens of inhabited islands varying from one or two people up to thousands. We also have places with low population density due to the Highland Clearances (historical ethnic cleansing) and terrain.
Thats certainly true, and I enjoy spending time in such places when I can. I was backpacking in Knoydart and on Skye this past summer -- and in many places there was no phone reception, and I was several hours walk from the nearest habitation or road, with nobody knowing quite where I was.
As for "small island" - I was trying to make a point about the size of the uk on a global scale, and compared to vast places like the Argentinian campo. But perhaps "island group" or "archipelago" would have been a better choice.
I come from northern Scotland. I've never really thought of it as one island. Even England has some notable ones like the Isle of Wight and Lindisfarne. (Wales and Northern Ireland have Anglesey and Rathlin.)
When you get to the Hebrides and Northern Isles, the scales are still pretty big. Most people don't realise that Shetland, for example, is a hundred miles from end to end (including Fair Isle).
It's also the best part of a hundred miles from Inverness to John O' Groats, and the road is bad beyond Easter Ross. Unlike the Faroe Islands, there has been little attempt to create tunnels... Just small bridges and causeways.
The smaller islands can get cut off in storms and power cuts come happen.
Knoydart and Moidart only used to be reachable by boat, despite being on the mainland. (You can walk but it's not easy.) They were so remote that the Protestant Reformation never reached them.
Even in the south west you have to factor in distance. For example, Campbelltown looks close to Glasgow on the map but takes at least three or four hours by bus. Tarbert to Campbelltown is thirty miles. The Isle of Jura to the west takes a long time to get to, unless you have a helicopter. (A shout to Galloway which is as far south as you can get in Scotland, and gets further south than Newcastle upon Tyne, but still has awful roads in many places.)
Places like Moidart, Knoydart, Kintyre, Glenelg, and even Cowal and Caithness function a bit like islands despite being on the mainland. Deliveries and utilities are horrible in these areas and they are being discriminated against by private delivery etc (the Royal Mail when it functioned better was a blessing to them.)
Of course there are parts of major continents which are much more remote, but these are bad enough. I've spent time in Australia where distances are incredible. Even Tasmania which looks small on the map is slightly smaller than Ireland.
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