Since the turn of the century (not that one, the one before that) the tower has been used for radio transmission. The first signals were sent from the Eiffel in 1898! Eugène Ducretet successfully sent these first radio signals to the Pantheon. He took that to the French military authorities in 1901 with a plan to make the Tower into a long-distance radio antenna. thaty liked the idea a bunch. By 1903 a radio connection was made with the military bases around Paris, and then a year later with the East of France. A permanent radio station was installed in the Tower in 1906.
On 20 November 1913 the Paris Observatory, used the Eiffel Tower as an antenna, exchanging wireless signals with the United States Naval Observatory in Arlington, Virginia. The object of the transmissions was to measure the difference in longitude between Paris and Washington, DC. These shortwave broadcasts continued into the 1950s. In 1957 the set of antenna wires the ran from the summit to anchors on the Avenue de Suffren and Champ de Mars were removed. They were connected to long-wave transmitters in small bunkers. In 1957, the tower started transmitting both FM radio and television.
In 1921 when a radio studio was opened in the tower transmissions of the first French radio station, Radiola Paris began. They beat the BBC to the air by one week. In 1924 it changed its name to Radio Paris.
Today the Eiffel Tower has a 70-feet antenna on the very top which makes its height 1,070 feet. Today there is still a radio studio which is underground and near one of the four legs. There are other rooms for the actual transmitters at the top. The transmitter tower is still in active use for FM radio broadcast. Eiffel lived long enough to hear the first European public radio broadcast from an aerial on the Tower in 1921.
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Thanks for these very interesting details about our National Symbol (I'm French and most of us don't know that the 1889 Exhibition was linked to our 1789 Revolution !). Please however note that the long waves antenna cables were removed far sooner than 1957... around 1946 in fact, after the Tower had moved to Medium Waves in the Thirties : private Radio-Paris had been sold in 1933 by SFR company to the French Government that renamed it "Poste National" (Home Service). So France couldn't keep two national LW frequencies and Eiffel Tower was forced to move to MW. After local private stations were nationalized in 1946, all transmitters left Paris and were grouped in nearby cities of Villebon (South)for high power MW and Romainville (East) for low power MW local stations.
ReplyDeleteTV started as far as 1937 from the top of the tower (in 455 lines). German lieutenant Kurt Hinzmann converted it to Berlin's 441 lines standard in 1943, that remained active until a fire destroyed the transmitter in 1956. Meanwhile the HD 819 lines service had been launched in parallel from the top of the tower in 1949. First three FM transmitters were indeed installed in 1956-1957. Eiffel now broadcasts dozens of FM radios and of DVB-T UHF TV channels. VHF/UHF analog TV closedown occurred in 2010 in the Greater Paris area.
Louis Marie Foratier (France)
Thanks for the correction about 1957, and the update as well. Most tourists probably think it's purely decorative. It most certainly is not.
ReplyDeleteWHAT is more important, Eiffel Tower ALSO is antenna for low frequencies to keep France always in state on disturbance, mess, materialism, kinda mind control waves transmitter :
ReplyDeletefound a link once, two american esoteric researchers claim that as long (made by francmason Eiffel ) tower is there, France will find no peace...
France is v e r y occult infested, with mind control crap Disneyland to brainwash kids from the very beginning , Eiffel tower, and one of the most diabolic govts in Europe...
Salutations,
The antenna receives signals from the future. Sattelites use special relativity to transmit signals from the future.the idea came from ancient obelisks
ReplyDelete