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By Root 1889 0

learned that several manufacturers of components -allies of the wireless experimenters and antagonists to the prescribing of complete sets-had approached the Daily Mail to run a "propaganda campaign" against a royalty system on the basis that it would impede experimental science. Noble was concerned enough to press the big six to "rush" the formation of the BBC to head off the possibility. They did. The propaganda campaign went ahead anyway, however. The mass press now set itself up as the defender of participatory science. "It is intolerable," the Express thundered, "that tens of thousands of scientifically inclined British subjects should be prevented from carrying out experiments." It was impossible to predict which citizens might make crucial discoveries, it charged. "The more experimenters, the more discoveries." According to Fleet Street, "an amateur who makes his own set is an experimenter in the truest sense of the word. He is constantly manipulating it, probing mystery after mystery, and the whole history of great inventions has shown that it is in this way that discoveries are made." Thousands of amateurs were working to find a cheap alternative to crystal, for example: "Surely this is experimenting." This being so, "the mere intention to make a set should entitle anyone to an experimenter's licence." And the Mail ran a series to help laypeople qualify as experimenters so as to "enjoy the full freedom of the ether."13 The conservative newspapers' campaign for "free air" did not let up throughout the difficult early years of broadcasting (figs. 13.1 and 13.2), and this evocation of the lay scientist was central to it.

FIGURE 13.1. The anti-BBC press. "Kitten on the keys." Daily Express, April Ii, 1923.

CITIZENS AND SCIENTISTS

How many "bona fide" experimenters did Britain really contain? Nobody had any idea. Originally, estimates had been of the order of five thousand. No one had supposed that there were even ten thousand "genuine experimenters" in the country- thevery idea had been dismissed as "extreme."24 But as the license system came into being, such estimates fell by the wayside very fast. Increasingly anxious, the BBC told the Post Office that 8o percent of the applicants for experimenters' licenses could not possibly be "bona fide." It urged resolute action against suppositious experimenters, and a stiff rise in their license fee. Without at least a threefold increase, it warned, everyone would soon be claiming to be an experimenter.25 Noble suggested that "the great bulk of the high grade amateurs" would surely accept such an increase, since it would "eliminate many of the amateurs who are not bona fide experimenters." The police might well need to get involved too, the company warned darkly. But its pleas met a frosty reception. The Post Office agreed to dispatch inspectors, but without enthusiasm or optimism, and Chamberlain "scoffed" at the very idea of enforcement. The government dismissed outright the demand for an increased experimenters' fee, despite signs that the Radio Society of Great Britain was indeed willing to entertain the idea. "Out of the question," a Post Office official scrawled flatly on the memo proposing a 300 percent increase.26 Panicking, the company then demanded an outright moratorium on experimenters' licenses. But this was even less likely to happen. One MP reacted byproposing that the licenses be issued to all applicants, however unqualified, in order to "encourage the attainment of a scientific acquirement by the people." An exasperated postmaster general would eventually threaten to do just that- and to authorize a second broadcaster to boot. That would have terminated at a stroke the economic, political, and technical justifications for the BBC's very existence.

FIGURE 13.2. The anti-BBC press. "Open the window." Daily Express, April 7,1923.

What qualified someone to be counted an experimenter? The BBC was revealingly equivocal on this question. With its very survival at stake, it declared itself "quite certain" that the true number of experimenters was but a small