How Radio Works
If you want to know more about how radio actually works, and see how your voice is turned into a radio signal, there is a display where you can find out for yourself.
Visitors can speak into the microphone and see their voice turned into an electrical signal, shown on an oscilloscope. The display then shows the same signal as it is modulated on the carrier wave, the high-frequency radio signal that carries the sound frequencies through the air from the transmitter to the receiver.
On pressing a button, the signal is demodulated, cutting off the carrier and restoring the sound signal. This is what happens in the radio set.
The North Regional BBC Transmitter
Also in this area are some parts from one of the first BBC regional transmitters, Moorside Edge, which broadcast the North Regional programme from the high moors near Huddersfield. It was opened in 1931, and the transmitter building was an impressive piece of industrial architecture.
The huge copper coil and the meters mounted on a slate panel were part of the state of the art high power transmitter, shown in a contemporary Exide battery advertisement above the exhibit. The transmitter was built by the Marconi company, and opened in 1931. It was only taken out of service in the 1980s.
The Exide batteries advert came from a radio shop in Newport, South Wales. It had been on the wall in the workshop for at least 60 years.
The shop, Lloyd & Lloyd, was typical of many that diversified into wireless in the 1920s. It was an ironmongers shop, that sold everything from paraffin to agricultural implements, but when the proprietor became interested in wireless, he began to sell sets and parts. They then began to build their own sets for sale, examples of which have been seen.
Later on, they became agents for major manufacturers. The son of the founder said that he remembered his father setting up a horn loudspeaker outside the shop so that passers-by could hear the latest news of the General Strike in 1926. The carbon filament bulb in the Wartime area of the museum was from the unsold stock in the shop, and is at least 50 years old. It has been working every day for several years, and has already outlasted many modern bulbs.
