Maud Basham, also known as Aunt Daisy, was famous as the host of a radio show focused on domesticity. Upon the success of the broadcasts, she wrote accompanying cook books, and was awarded an MBE in 1956.
Hello My Dearie became one of the first songs to hit the New Zealand airwaves when physics professor Robert Jack broadcast this country’s first radio programme on 17 November 1921. Transmitted from Dunedin, the broadcast was heard as far away as Auckland.
Robert Jack was born at Quarter in Scotland on 4 November 1877 and educated at the University of Glasgow, the Université de Paris and Göttingen University. He came to New Zealand in 1914 to take up a post as professor of physics at the University of Otago.
The state's monopoly of commercial radio broadcasting was challenged by the pirate station Radio Hauraki's first scheduled transmission from the vessel Tiri in the Colville Channel.
From the family sheep station in Shag Valley, East Otago, amateur radio operator Frank Bell sent a ground-breaking Morse code transmission. It was received and replied to by London-based amateur operator Cecil Goyder.
