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a ‘positive nuisance’, a hindrance to what was regarded as wireless’s most likely application in point-to-point communication. Briggs quoted Lodge, in a parliamentary select committee report of 1907, making the first small intellectual gropings towards something different – that it might have a purpose for ‘reporting races and other sporting events, and generally for all important matters occurring beyond the range of the permanent lines’.
    The First World War hastened developments. As the early BBC employee Hilda Matheson wrote in her book Broadcasting (1933), ‘The Great War … gave an impetus to wireless communications, as to other forms of practical science, destructive as well as constructive. Directions could be sent by code, or en clair , to troops on land, to ships in distant oceans, to submarines, and to aeroplanes deploying over enemy territory.’ It was after the war that the advantages of sending one signal to a multitude of receivers were recognised. Many of those who had been working as wireless engineers for the military slipped into work for companies such as Marconi. But the appetite for broadcasting came from ‘the man in the street’, recalled Matheson: a community of wireless enthusiasts grew up, at first more excited by the notion that broadcasting could be done at all rather than by what was actually to be communicated. She wrote, ‘There was a host of men and boys with a passionate interest in mechanical contrivances – making amateur telephones from tin cans, rigging up improvised magnetic and electrical apparatus, in sheds, basements and attics, wherever they could find undisturbed corners in which to use lathes, batteries and tools in peace … from their ranks came much of the persistence and enthusiasm which provided the first public for broadcasting.’
    In the meantime, wireless also became a topic of popular interest – an apparently miraculous phenomenon followed in the newspapers with wonderment. Manufacturers of wireless sets, such as Marconi, held licences granted by the Post Office to conduct experimental transmissions. On 15 June 1920 the Daily Mail arranged for arecital by Dame Nellie Melba, who travelled down to the Marconi headquarters in Essex and sang for a half-hour, ending with ‘God Save the King’ via ‘Addio’ from La Bohème – her voice was heard clearly across Europe, and the event was widely reported. For the first time, broadcasting was planted in the British imagination as a medium replete with possibilities for entertainment. But, as these experiments continued, so disquiet in military circles grew. Wavelengths were being commandeered for ‘frivolous’, non-military use, it was felt. Briggs quoted a letter of complaint: ‘A few days ago the pilot of a Vickers Vimy machine … was crossing the Channel in a thick fog and was trying to obtain weather and landing reports from Lympne. All he could hear was a musical evening.’
    A new settlement was needed. The wireless manufacturers’ experimental broadcasts were banned, and then, under pressure from the amateurs, allowed to continue under controlled conditions. The postmaster general, in response to a question in parliament about the future of broadcasting in April 1922, responded that ‘it would be impossible to have a large number of firms broadcasting. It would result only in a sort of chaos.’ Talks between the wireless manufacturers and the Post Office resulted in a scheme whereby the government would license wireless sets. A new British Broadcasting Company – with a monopoly on broadcasting – would finance its operations from a share of the licence fee and of royalties from sales of sets. Thus a funding mechanism for the service was devised, and the problem of the scarcity of wavelengths for civilian use solved. Moreover, the Post Office had followed apleasing path of least resistance – it had neatly avoided having to provide the service itself. To many, it seemed an eminently