A captured German sub brings unforeseen benefits to Ceylon in 1923

Going on the air

By Kumudini Hettiarachchi

With gramophone music going over the waves from a tiny corner room in the Central Telegraph Office (CTO) in Fort, Ceylon becomes the first British colony in Southeast Asia to get into this field of communcation. The project is handled by Chief Telegraph Engineer J.S.B. Harper, along with Assistant Chief Engineer J. Shillitoe and Telecom Inspector A.W. Dharmapala, who will go down in this country's history as the first Sinhala voice to go on the air. 

For Ceylon, June 27, 1924, when the Governor delivers his message to the Engineering Association on air, is recorded officially as the date when broadcasting is formally introduced. In December 1925, a regular broadcasting service is launched with a transmitter being built by the Telegraph Department and 176 licences for receivers being issued. 

And this is the third thread in communications, along with telegraphy and telephony, that Telecom officials will weave into their massive 'collage' of the past which will be on exhibition at the Telecom Museum to be opened in January next year. 

A radio used in the 1940s

With broadcasting also comes local performances on radio and acoustics of sound, experienced even today by organizers of entertainment shows. Way back in 1935, a young telecom officer, S. Rajanayagam writes in the magazine, 'The Micro 1935' under the title 'In the studio': "In Ceylon there is one particular difficulty that is experienced. Several singers, themselves play the violin or seraphina. The instrument cannot be separated from the artiste; and the microphone has to be placed near both. As a result one frequently hears the artiste's voice very feebly on the loudspeaker." 

The pressure to develop this popular line of communication leads to radio transmissions moving from the CTO to a larger room provided by the University College of Colombo and the subsequent opening of a studio at Torrington Square in 1927.

Then on a lazy Sunday in June 1937, listeners hear the voice of John Kotelawela addressing them from a second studio and transmitter opened by him as Minister of Communications and Works. On June 6, that year he tells them: "I am speaking to you from the new studio at Torrigton Square, and my words are being broadcast by the new 5-kilowatt transmitter. I am pleased to have this opportunity of using both for the first time.......... One studio has been found to be insufficient for continuous programmes. With only one studio and one waiting room, it has been difficult to arrange for a concert party to be ready to take its place at the microphone as soon as the previous performers have left. Furthermore, a second studio was essential in view of the proposal to bring into use a second transmitter and thus provide two simultaneous broadcast programmes. 

"I trust that we shall now attract listeners in Anuradhpura, Jaffna and other outstation places where in the past they found it difficult to receive our programmes. Listeners in Malaya and South India will, no doubt, appreciate the increase in the power of the station. The transmitter represents a unique achievement for the Department, in that it was designed departmentally, and a large number of the component parts were made in the department's workshop."

From then on broadcasting is on a high wavelength. The success of this line of communication prompts the public-spiritedness of the Telegraph Department to come to the fore in 1949 and it provides 949 receiver sets to people in far-flung villages for "educational, cultural and entertainment purposes". The first is installed at Dodangaslanda in February 1949. 

Dubbed RECEPURA, the project is meant to educate backward people by taking to them, as an official at the time has said, "in the most interesting and assimilable form matters of which they stand in the direst need i.e., sanitation, nursing, better methods of agriculture, farming, world and local news, and a knowledge for correct appreciation of and pride in their own languages, cultures and traditions". The expectation of the department is that "in time we shall have in this country a people self-respecting and self-reliant, who will not only take their rightful place in the world organisation but will also contribute to the culture and happiness of the world".

Most of the receivers are installed in remote places where there is no electricity. Hence they are battery operated. Installed in community centres (praja mandala), rural development society offices, village committee offices, hospitals, co-ops, boutiques and even private homes, schools, preaching halls (bana sala), sub-post offices, temples and churches, the receivers are maintained by department staff free of charge.

However, this fledgeling mass education programme is not trouble-free. 

The 'maintenance' is time consuming as the batteries are charged at central stations. Departmental vans take the batteries weighing a heavy 55 to 60 pounds as far as there are roads and then labourers carry them along footpaths. 

"There are no roads at all to some places, the only path being through thick jungle. Breakdowns of motor transport while going on these bad roads have been frequent. In some areas, places have been inaccessible for weeks due to floods, mud or earthslips. In one place in the Central Province, the battery has to be carried by labourers for 18 miles over hills and valleys and through a pathless forest. The place is so remote and so few people go there that there is hardly a footpath all the way. The battery has to be transported some 25 miles by van first. It takes four days for two men to replace the battery of this receiver, and return to their headquarters. On such trips the men have to spend the nights out, and suitable accommodation is difficult to find. Finding food is also difficult," states an official writing a report in 'The Micro _ April 1951'. 

The same officer complains of an "omission" _ the non-instalment of receivers in maternity homes in rural areas. "The women, mothers and housewives of rural Ceylon, spend a certain period in these maternity homes before and after the arrival of their babies and with very little to do during this period are a section of the people who can very profitably be reached by radio and who really need guidance and instruction," he states.

But Recepura catches on and the frequency and promptness with which complaints are received, if there is even a day's delay in changing a battery are testimony to its popularity.

Even now, in this new century, what strikes the eye of any visitor to a remote village, is the pride of place given to a radio or TV in wattle- and- daub homes, in rural Sri Lanka.

Not only the power of this form of communication, along with telegraphy and telephony, but also its humble beginnings are what the Telecom Museum will highlight for the younger generation of Sri Lankans who have never known a day without so many radio and TV channels. 

For the dedicated people who have been working behind the scenes for the past 27 years, with help from the successive heads of the Telecom Department, to make this museum to be located at the Havelock Town house a reality, it is not an onerous task. Only a labour of love. 

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