SHORTWAVE RADIO WILL SEND COURSE LECTURES ABROAD

Experimental international broadcasting of classroom lectures will be inaugurated here on February 17, and if the undertaking proves successful it will be continued during the coming academic years.

On Wednesday, February 17, at 4:30 o'clock, George P. Weston '97, associate professor of Romance Languages, will lecture on "Dante" in Emerson Hall, and his voice will be broadcast by short wave, at 11.79 megacycles, from station WIXAL in Boston.

WIXAL is a non-commercial station financed by private donations and by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, and is devoted entirely to educational and cultural programs. Wires have recently been installed from the lecture halls to the station in the University Club.

This is said to be the first time a university has broadcast lectures on an international scale. This venture is a result of the success of the WIXAL broadcasts of the Tercentenary Conference of Arts and Sciences last September, Letters praising these broadcasts came from many part of the United States and several foreign countries.

"In undertaking this program of broadcasting the University is frankly experimenting," explained George H. Chase '96, Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, who is chairman of the Committee on Broadcasting.

"We believe that most of the public lectures given in Cambridge and many of the lectures which form parts of formal courses offer orderly discussions of problems of general interest and, without any attempt to adapt them for broadcasting, will appeal to many listeners. Chapel services and musical programs clearly require no adaptation.

"The non-commercial station, which does not observe such strict limits of time as commercial stations, offers an ideal medium for our purpose. If the program proves successful, the University will have found another way to render public service in its proper field of education.

"We shall watch the response of these efforts with great interest, and shall welcome criticism."

The classroom broadcasts are expected to include lectures in the fields of Literature, Music, Philosophy, Government, Economics, History, and some of the Sciences. Lectures delivered in class in the morning will not be put on the air immediately, but will be recorded and broadcast later in the day at a time more convenient for most listeners.

Announcement of further broadcasts will be made later. Schedules will then be obtainable from station WIXAL. University Club, Boston.

The Committee in charge of the broadcasts includes Dean Chase, Harry Rowe Mimmo, Dean of the School of Engineering, Loring B. Andrews '25 of the Harvard Observatory, and Dr. David M. Little '17, Secretary to the University.