The Power Behind the Microphone

[@felicityduncan4019]

This was great! What a clever idea - excellent actors and singers. Congratulations on celebrating this incredible time in history for us all! Bravo!

[@cliff19555]

I used to work at Marconi Communications, New Street works in 1983. I went on a Marconi tour a few years ago and ended up back at the old Marconi factory, 30 years after i first worked there.

[@chelmsfordses]

Great to see the full broadcast in all its 2020 glory - Thanks to the team that made this possible. - A great event to remember.

[@davidjervis3356]

Good to see this production in its final undisturbed form ! (David Jervis - Grandson of Capt H Henry Round MC)

[@BOYLAKAD]

great voices in the stage

[@steve106b]

Thank you, interesting performance.

[@MartynClarkeMOFS]

Well done pity it was not like this on the Anniversary Sound Level could do with + 6db

[@josiecooks4339]

Good video my friend

[@cliff19555]

Wish i could have filmed this with muli cams !

[@NorwaySpitfireHeroes]

How fitting that the Power of the Microphone should fall victim to an act of God. Way back on June 15, 1920, Dame Nellie Melba did not broadcast from a plush office at Marconi's New Street factory, but a humble shed, all because on the eve of her historic broadcast all the cabling that was specially laid to make it possible caught alight! And the whizz kids were so worried they fitted out a packing shed out back. I can imagine that Marconi must have seen his street cred slowly crumble as his VIP guests were ushered into the factory, headed by Fleet Street baron Lord Harmsworth who had bank-rolled the Ozzie Diva's history making broadcast in the face of the post war plague lockdowns, and he too must have imagined how rival rags would have made a meal of it all on their front pages. But the great dame took it all in her stride, after refusing to climb up the masts to make her broadcast!!! As she stepped into the packing shed, she saw a hastily thrown carpet on the floor and demanded it was dumped, and then the world held its breath, as one moment in time changed the world. So too the Power Behind the Microphone has suffered an act of God, atmospherics, call it what you will, it has mirrored Melba's own triumph over adversity, and like the packing shed an empty Civic Theatre devoid of a seated audience, with fittingly a simple packing shed stage it will become legend as a triumph over Covid19 lockdown.

[@NorwaySpitfireHeroes]

Just discovered from a Back Stage Johnny why the cabling caught fire: "They were laid directly and in parallel to the transmitter aerial and were about a half wavelength long. Nice induction path! I am guessing the length of the wire but the resulting fire suggests the outcome. If you take say a piano string for middle C and another half it length, it you pluck the middle C the shorted one will also vibrate if you then take one a quarter length of the middle C pluck the C again and watch you will find that all three of them will be vibrating. It's called harmonics.Same with radio transmission. Aerial lengths work the same way. So when they tried the evening before, the cables on the ground picked up the reflected power, in this case 15kW into primitive mic line and it quite properly burst into flames. This is why we have balanced, screened and sometimes star quad cabling for mic and transmission lines where there is going to be sources of interference. The above also explains why if you use unbalanced mic lines you can sometimes make an excellent recording of Radio 3 even when you didn't want to!"

[@johntheedom6551]

Interesting, but considering the subject, very poor sound quality and volume, plus too much overacting.

[@JOSEPHtheFREEMAN]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/jHSuhXx_nLd3jsk@@NorwaySpitfireHeroes

[@patricklozito7042]

Bravo! How spoiled and jaded have we become to criticize dB levels. How would one have handled static, fading, and hum. Try to imagine the thrill to hear music, the human voice, appearing "magically out of the ether" for the first time.

[@ChelmsfordCityTheatres]

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