FROM OUR FILES
TEN YEARS AGO Friday July 3, 2009 Engineers off to a flying start
A group of young Tarbert engineers is powering into the national finals of a top design event.
Six boys from Tarbert Academy are members of the Tarbert Young Engineers, who recently competed in the Shell Green Power Challenge in Alford, Aberdeenshire.
Callum MacDonald, Christopher Johnstone, Luke Scott, Jake Sim, Adam Currie and Josh Barker have secured themselves a place in the national finals in Greenwood after coming third overall in the Scottish qualifiers in Alford.
The boys designed and built an electric car, which took them just two months to complete. They then raced their carefully constructed machine in a fierce competition against 20 other competitors.
As well as coming third the boys also brought home the title ‘Best Newcomer’.
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO Friday July 8, 1994 When Fessenden’s folly made history at Machrihanish
Machrihanish made history just over 85 years ago. On a cold November’s night in 1906 an operator at the experimental radio station at Machrihanish picked up a radio voice message between two sister stations on the east coast of America. Until that moment only Morse code radio signals had crossed the Atlantic.
Less than a month later a terrible storm snapped the 450-foot radio mast at Machrihanish in two. It was never repaired. Most of the history books mention Machrihanish in connection with the first transatlantic two-way radio communication in Morse code with a sister station at Brant Rock in Massachusetts.
Few mention the part played in the first transatlantic voice transmission. It was 4am one night in early November when one of the technicians at the Brant Rock station sent a message to a sister station in Plymouth, about 11 miles away, about the operation of a dynamo. Sitting on the other side of the Atlantic at Machrihanish, operator James Armour clearly heard the message. He had been listening in, hoping to hear a Morse code message.
The storm a month later meant that the experience was not repeated. The radio pioneer behind the broadcasts, Canadian Reginald Fessenden, ran into financial difficulties and the Machrihanish station was not rebuilt.
On Christmas Eve 1906, weeks after the disaster at Machrihanish, Fessenden had another radio first when he made the first long-distance wireless programme broadcast.
Fessenden telegraphed ship’s captains on board vessels which had the kind of equipment he had pioneered and told them to listen for a special transmission. At the appointed hour, radio operators, used to Morse code, heard Fessenden’s voice coming through on their headphones. He then proceeded to play the amazed operators a tune on his fiddle before reading them a Christmas story from the Bible.
Fessenden went on to design an echo sounder for measuring the depth of water, a radio compass, a submarine signalling device and turbo-electric drive for battleships. He died in 1932.
Little remains of his radio station at Machrihanish. It was demolished for scrap in 1917. But in 1905 it was the talk of Argyll – despite the cloak of secrecy surrounding it.
FIFTY YEARS AGO Thursday July 3, 1969 Rents petition
Residents in the Smith Drive, Castlepark, council houses have sent a petition to the Town Council protesting about the proposed rent increases and requesting an early meeting with them to discuss the increases.
In the petition, they say that most of the sitting tenants have already expended a considerable sum towards the comfort of their homes and they feel that an increase in rent is hardly justified in their case.
They state that they were promised new toilets, basins, etc., which as yet have not been forthcoming but when they are supplied no one will mind the increase in rent.
The petition came before the finance committee of the Town Council on Monday night and after some discussion it was agreed that a deputation from the petitioners should have an opportunity to meet the whole council and discuss the proposed rent increases in relation to the condition of the pre-war houses in Smith Drive.
Early last month a special meeting of the Town Council decided by nine votes to three to raise council house rents following a decision by the Scottish Housing Association that the rents of their houses would have to be raised by £19 a year, irrespective of the size of the house.
The Campbeltown increases were fixed at £10 per annum for a two-apartment house, £11 for a three apartment, £12 for a four-apartment and £13 for a five apartment, with a single person’s house being increased by £7.
At that special meeting a proposal, that smaller increases should not be applied to the pre-war houses until they were modernised, was defeated.
The convenor of the finance committee, Hon. Treasurer George Halbert commenting on the petition, said that there was nothing they could do about this now, although he had every sympathy with them.
ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO Saturday July 5, 1919 Argyllshire Education Authority
Meeting in Campbeltown - The second statutory meeting of the Education Authority of the County of Argyll was held in the Grammar School, Campbeltown, on Thursday of last week, when the members in attendance were: Kintyre - Rev D.S. Brown, Bailie A. Campbell, Miss Mary B. Turner, Rev D. J. Macdonald, Messrs Jas. A. Hunter, and W.W. Philip. Mid-Argyll - Rev Roderick MacLeod, and Messrs A.E. Lewis, Duncan Maclean, James Craig and Duncan Strang. Mull - Rev Arch. Dewar and Messrs Chas McQuarrie and W.W. Campbell. Lorn - Messrs John Munro, Dr Kenneth Campbell, J. M. Skinner, Rev Malcolm McCallum, Rev. Alex Boyd, Bishop Martin, and Dan Macgregor. Cowal - Major A.J.M. Bennett, Messrs R. Murray Macintyre, Rev. A.W. Mitchell, Donald Munro and Mrs Burnley Campbell of Ormidale. Islay - Messrs Archibald Campbell, Rev. J. Mackinnon, Rev. Neil Ross and Rev. Roderick Mackenzie.
Major A.J.M. Bennett, Chairman of the Authority presided.
Teachers’ salaries - A minute of meeting of the Teachers’ Committee, having considered the question of teachers’ salaries, Major Bennett moved that the committee recommend the adoption of the Craik scale, with full placings as from 16th May: whereupon Rev. D.S. Brown moved as an amendment that the question of the adoption of a scale of salaries for teachers be deferred until the proposed national scale has been received for consideration, and that when that scale has been adopted it should take effect retrospectively as from 15th May. The amendment became the recommendation of the committee.
Mr Murray Macintyre moved that the Authority do not accept this recommendation. He pointed out that the teaching profession had waited a considerable time for the Craik scale, and no time was given for the consideration of the national scale which they were promised. Meantime some of their teachers were hardly getting a living wage.
The effect of the Committee’s recommendation seemed to him to be, ‘Live old horse and you’ll get grass’.