Abstract
ON the occasion of the death of His Majesty King George V on the night of January 20, the organisation of the British Broadcasting Corporation was utilised in communicating the official bulletins to the whole of the British Empire. From 9.30 p.m. onwards, the ordinary broadcasting programmes were stopped, and all the stations of the B.B.C., including those conducting the short-wave Empire service, were linked together, but were kept silent except for the transmission of the official bulletin at 15 minute intervals. At 10 o'clock, a short service of recollection and prayer for the King was broadcast, after which the silent watch between bulletins was resumed. The final announcement of the peaceful death of the King came shortly after midnight. In this way was the great organisation of British broadcasting used in the manner of a gigantic public address system, with literally millions of listeners in all parts of the world constituting the audience. Thus were listeners able to share with the Royal Family the tense anxiety of the last few hours, and to receive simultaneously the news of the passing of our Sovereign. Never before in the history of the world has it been possible for the whole human race to unite in sympathetic response to the messages thus conveyed from Sandringham to listeners everywhere. Truly, “Their sound is gone out into all lands, and their words unto the ends of the world”, and the heart of man cannot fail to be touched by this great achievement of science. The imagination of a poet like the late Mr. Rudyard Kipling might well have been stirred by this theme of waves of emotion encompassing the earth to trace the changes which history has seen in methods of proclaiming to the nation the loss of its beloved King.
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Broadcast Announcement of King George's Death. Nature 137, 141 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/137141a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/137141a0