May 1994

These days It Is easy to forget how small the world once was and what big news it was when an expedition entered the interior of some far off place. The Terry HoIden Expedition was one such journey. It was widely covered by RCA, whose radio equipment was used by the expeditioners. The top card is from the expedition ham station, while the bottom one is a QSL which NBC apparently used to acknowledge reports of various Terry Holden programs which originated from the expedition site and were carried over the NBC radio network. This presumably included shortwave. The card is very similar to the one used by NBC for verifying programs on its shortwave stations.

From the May 1938 Issue of RADEX: "Our camp was same 600 miles up the Essequibo and Rupanuni rivers, and after we set up the radio shack we began to receive visitors. For a couple of weeks the most faithful of these were a group of Wai-wai Indians. who came to inspect the radio equipment and everything else we had. . . . Then there was a little girl who came with her mother. She listened to the strange noises coming out of our receiver while we were talking to NBC In New York. She looked first under the table, then up at the ceiling to find out where the voice was coming from. Then she went outside and looked up at the roof. All of a sudden there was a loud wail. The only way we could stop her was to let her manipulate the dials. It finally dawned on her that the voice was coming out of the radio apparatus."