New Years Message – The Lloyd C Douglas Page

Unidentified clipping, n.d. In 1918 Scrapbook, Lloyd C Douglas Papers, Box 5, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.

In my last post I told you about the University of Michigan’s participation in a nationwide experiment with wireless technology on the night of December 31, 1919. The school’s radio station would send out two messages: the first, at 8:30 PM, would be “telegraphic,” and the second, at 8:45, would be “telephonic.” The technology was so new that they still hadn’t settled on the lingo with which we would later become familiar. What they meant was that the first message would be in a coded signal (probably Morse code) and the second would be conveyed via human voice. Both messages would be written by Lloyd Douglas, and it was his voice that would be heard in the “telephonic” segment.

His “telegraphic” message was 60 words long:

“Saluting twentieth year of twentieth century our world’s depleted batteries of happiness and hope must be recharged. The century’s newly discovered physical forces have been taught to do evil. They must henceforth be taught to serve, lift, help, heal, else we are better without them. High time to radiate happiness, goodwill, friendly service, human welfare. We wish you happy New Year.” Then it was signed by the national organization that sponsored the event: “COMMUNITY SERVICE.”

This rather austere message was written in the shadow of the Great War (which we now call World War One). When Douglas says the “newly discovered physical forces have been taught to do evil,” he’s referring to all the technological advances that had made the war so horrific. And since his message was being conveyed over an even newer technology — wireless radio — he hoped it would be put to good uses, not bad ones.

He elaborated on this theme in his “telephonic” message, which you and I would consider his actual “radio” speech. He said:

“It is a great pleasure and privilege to speak to you — my unseen friends — in this peculiar way. It is so strange, it is almost uncanny, to feel that my words are going out to you, through the darkness, by means of contact entirely invisible and mysterious.

“I am informed that, so long as I hear no objections from you, I am to conclude that you approve of my sentiments; and if any one of you cannot stay through my entire address, please retire very quietly so that the others in the audience may not be disturbed.” [He was joking. It’s interesting to see him trying to wrap his head around the idea that radio waves could send messages without wires.]

“It appears that the secrets of nature, like long-imprisoned birds, are being released one by one as mankind develops sufficient ingenuity to accept and utilize them.

“The fact that we are now in possession of this new process of communication only means that we are considered wise enough and good enough to be made custodians of this secret.” [He was assuming a bit much here, as he himself would later acknowledge.]

“We are about to enter upon a new year. May I express the wish that it may be a very happy one for you — and if it is to be happy for you, it must be full of activity, for you are not the kind of people who could be contented otherwise.” [He was talking about the people who were forward-looking and industrious enough to be amateur radio operators.]

“We are entering upon a year of great prosperity as a people; probably the greatest prosperity ever registered in the history of any nation in human history. Therefore, we will face many grave temptations; for it is in his prosperity rather than in his adversity that a human being faces his greatest dangers, undefended.

“Let us not boast ourselves overmuch because of our nation’s brave show of wealth and success in material things; for such evidences have always been on display by every nation riding for a fall, and never more gaudily exhibited as on the morning of the last day.

“If we are to make our nation great, it must be great of soul, revealing a magnitude of mind and sensitiveness of conscience that bespeak the possession of certain spiritual qualities which are as far above the natural as the capacity of the ether, through which I speak to you, is above the limitations of wires spanned on poles.

“And if this ennobling of our nation’s soul is to be achieved, it must come to pass in the hearts of the people who compose this republic.

“Many wise men are saying that our social order has come to an hour of great significance, and that our course today, whether it be toward finer and larger progress in the things that really matter or toward an increasing emphasis upon things that have no permanent value to society…” [This sentence cuts off abruptly, which leads me to think that we’re getting this transcript from the receiving end, not from Douglas himself. Maybe it was too long for listeners to write it all down?]

“You and I can only determine that course for ourselves, and in our own hearts. We will have done our part if we decide that question wisely.

“Therefore, as we pass into the new year of 1920, let us go buoyantly, eagerly, expectantly, as travelers who rise to greet the dawn, resolved that, whatever others may do, we will try to make our own lives worthwhile and justify our right to live in this strategic age.”

Another clipping in Douglas’s scrapbook, which does not name the newspaper or give the date (but was probably only a day or two after the experiment), reports that amateur radio operators as far away as Cincinnati (a distance of roughly 250 miles) received one or the other of Douglas’s messages.

It wouldn’t be Douglas’s last experience with radio broadcasting. In the years to come, he would be quite comfortable speaking into a microphone to “unseen” audiences, “through the darkness.” But he was also among the first to do it, well before the average American citizen owned a radio.

by Ronald R Johnson

They called it “wireless” in those days. Only a few enthusiasts throughout the country bought the kits, assembled them, then listened eagerly for messages from other enthusiasts. They could originate from anywhere. That was part of the fascination of it: trying to determine exactly where a message was being broadcast from, and how far it had traveled.

In Lloyd Douglas’s scrapbook, there are two newspaper clippings about an upcoming wireless experiment on New Years Eve, 1919. Neither one tells us the name of the newspaper, but one, entitled “Will Wireless Greetings on New Years Eve” (see above), is either from the University of Michigan or from an Ann Arbor paper; the other (see below) is apparently from the Detroit Free Press and is entitled, “U of M to Radio 1920 Greetings.”

Unidentified clipping (probably from The Detroit Free Press) dated 12/29/1919. In 1918 Scrapbook, Lloyd C Douglas Papers, Box 5, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.

According to the first of these: “On the evening of December 31, [1919,] just before the new year is ushered in, radio operators at the university radio station will send out greetings for the year to all parts of the country. Community Service, Inc., under whose direction the movement is being carried on in all sections of the United States, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, is starting what will probably be an annual event in a great publicity campaign.”

Wireless radio was such a new thing that they had to perform stunts like this to make people aware of its potential. The article continues:

“Every radio station in the United States will send out New Years greetings during the evening, and all amateur operators are urged to ‘sit in’ and copy each message received.”

A paragraph later, the article says that the university “will use both the radio telephone and the radio telegraph.” That’s how new this technology was: what we now call “radio,” they called “the radio telephone” to distinguish it from “the radio telegraph,” which was, apparently, a wireless transmission in Morse code.

From the Detroit Free Press: “The telegraphic message will be sent out at 8:30 the evening of December 31, and the wireless telephone will follow 15 minutes later. The message, which is not to be made public before it is sent, was written by Rev. Lloyd Douglas, Congregational pastor of this city [Ann Arbor], and is 60 words in length.” [They were referring to the “telegraphic” message. His “radio telephone” message would be longer.]

The event would be under the direction of Lieutenant-Colonel John Lucas, head of the signal corps work at the university ROTC, and Professor J. C. Evans of the university faculty. There was an official aura around this technology, with the ROTC providing a kind of military authority to it. Things would be very different later, when radio would become a commercial enterprise.

As both articles said, “A rotary spark transmitter will be used by the university station, and for receiving the telegraph message, receiving tuning sets should be set at 600 meters wavelength. For receiving the radio telephone message, tuning coils should be set at 660 meter wavelength.” The organizers hoped that amateur operators all over the country would write down whatever messages they received, then mail them back to the university with detailed information about their location.

It was an exciting experiment, and it was just the kind of thing that Lloyd Douglas would be involved in, not just because of his interest in science but also because of his eagerness to pursue new ways of expanding his audience. I’ll tell you about his messages in my next post.

Tag: New Years Message

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