Wireless World June 1975

Getting towards the end of this process now but still encountering interesting, prescient or full circle finds in the last areas being unearthed.

This edition features an article with a very early reference to the European Broadcasting Union’s then future work to agree a common standard for digital radio broadcasting across its members. This would later become known as the Eureka 147 project and would ultimately establish the technology we know today as Digital Audio Broadcasting or DAB.

Incidentally, having found quite a few of these old magazines of my Dad’s in a box at the back of the garage, I brought in the house and read this on the old computer desk. Realising that the first time I ever heard a digitised radio broadcast was in fact, via a dial-up modem, using that family computer placed on said desk in March 1996. Nicely full circle I thought.

Nowadays of course, broadcasting and audio technology has evolved way beyond what those June 1975 writers could have ever imagined. If they could be transported 50 years forwards in time, I wonder what they might make of platforms like Spotify and BBC Sounds enabling live radio to be rewound and super high quality audio streamed to a smartphone instantly via the 5G network. Perhaps they might also like to know that DAB is a super established robust broadcasting system and can be driven flawlessly from Falmouth to Fraserburgh without any dropout or in-perfection.

In the digital world of May 2025 there isn’t any great need for Wireless World, but if people are musing about the future developments in technology it makes you wonder what the next 50 years might bring.

A nice prescient find for me today.