December 5:

1973:

The Montreal skyscraper that serves as the headquarters for CBC’s French-language operations (and some of its English ones), Maison Radio-Canada, was officially opened. You can listen to its inauguration (in French) here.

1990:

Another round of budget cutting at the CBC as the corporation announced layoffs of 1,100 employees.

1902:

Italian engineer Guglielmo Marconi transmitted the first readable wireless radio signals 3,200 km across the Atlantic from his station at Glace Bay, Cape Breton to Poldhu in Cornwall, England. A year earlier he had sent the first transatlantic wireless test signal – the letter ‘S’ repeated over and over – from Poldhu to his assistant Percy Wright Paget flying a box kite trailing a 121 metre long copper wire antenna on Signal Hill, St. John’s. Nfld.

Canadian inventor Reginald Fessenden sent a radio signal in 1900 from his lab near Washington, D.C. to a receiving station 80 kilometres away. See this clip for more on the Marconi-Fessenden debate.

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