The First Radio Transmitter in Victoria

Another local historic radio pioneer… my wife’s grandfather, John Taylor, installed the first radio transmitter in Victoria on Gonzales Hill in 1907. J. D. Taylor had quite the life working for Marconi, based in England. He travelled across the Atlantic, up and down the Atlantic coast setting up marine radio stations from Newfoundland to Boston. He went to South Africa during the Boer War and then to Mexico and finally to Victoria. All of the Marconi Company records were donated to the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

The July 27, 1907 edition of the Daily Colonist reports: “John D Taylor has a contract for the building of the station on Shotbolt’s hill [Gonzales Hill] in this city.” $2,000 was paid for an acre of land on the Hill. Construction and installation of the station began almost immediately. Main equipment was a Fairbanks-Morse 3 horsepower gasoline engine, driving a 1,000 Watt alternating current generator. The transmitter was the Shoemaker type, with the open core transformer, tubular glass condensers, fixed spark gap with the inductance coil helix. A crystal detector radio receiver rounded out the installation. A 150-foot wooden mast supported the antenna. The single floor building consists of three rooms which hold the equipment and an operations area. Eddie Haugton is station manager. Call sign VSD.”  Two years later the equipment was upgraded to 2 kilowatts, along with the note “It was found having the transmitters and engines in the same building as the operator’s residence just wasn’t to anyone’s benefit.”.

More info and photos of Gonzales station: https://www.roughradio.ca/stations/Victoria.html

In July 1907 the Union Steamship “Camosun” was the first vessel on this coast to be fitted with Marconi wireless equipment in anticipation of the promised coast stations. The Marconi Company had a strict policy of not communicating with another station, either a ship or fixed, unless it too was fitted with their equipment.

JD Taylor left Marconi after WW1 and settled in Victoria. He worked as a radio inspector until he retired about 1945 as Superintendent of Radio in Victoria.