CFRC
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CFRC is the campus radio station of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
The station has one of the longest radio histories in the world, surpassed only by the Marconi companies. CFRC remains in operation at the present time and serves the Queen's University campus and greater Kingston. The station broadcasts at 101.9 MHz.
A comprehensive oral history of the station was compiled by Arthur Zimmerman, which was broadcast on the station in 1982 and was published in book form in 1991.
Pre-Broadcast History
Radio technology has a surprisingly long history in Kingston, dating back to the early radio experimentations of Queen's first Professor of General Engineering, Lester James Gill. He mounted the first public exhibition of wireless telegraphy at a convocation lecture on April 28, 1902, only four months after Guglielmo Marconi's first successful trans-Atlantic transmission from Signal Hill. By the 1910s regular courses on wireless technology and theory were being taught by Gill, and Professor Gill and many of his students went on to work in the Canadian Signal Corps and contributed directly to the use of wireless and radio technologies by the Allied forces during World War One.
An informal wireless club was formed by a group of its students, who kept experimenting with the latest available wireless technology. With the help of Professor Douglas Jemmett an experimental station license (9BT) was obtained in the Spring of 1922. The station's equipment was housed in the basement of the engineering builing Flemming Hall. It had a power output of approximately one-quarter of a kilowatt, and had an estimated range of 160 kilometers. While there were likely some preliminary , unscheduled broadcasts, the station's first scheduled public broadcast was on October 7, 1923 as Professor Richard O. Jolliffe called the football game between Queen's and McGill.
An alumnus donation in early 1923 made possible the acquisition of better, more reliable transmitting equipment, and a private commercial license was obtained under the call letters CFRC by July 1923.
References
- Zimmerman, Eric Arthur, Ph.D. In the Shadow of the Shield. Self-published, 1991. ISBN 0-9695570-0-0
External link
- official web site (http://www.cfrc.ca/)