Eiffel Tower radio history first spoken news broadcast France 1925, Digi Mart USA News (Paris, France): The Eiffel Tower is known around the world, but its role in everyday sound is less familiar. According to the publisher’s article, the tower nearly disappeared, and what saved it was its use as an antenna.
When the tower was completed in 1889, not everyone welcomed it. Artists and writers signed a petition denouncing it as a “tower of Babel in reverse.” Its construction contract was tied to the Universal Exhibition, with an occupancy authorization of twenty years, after which dismantling was expected past 1909.
Gustave Eiffel sought scientific uses for the structure, installing experiments in meteorology, aerodynamics and physics. At the turn of the century, wireless telegraphy, known in French as TSF, began to develop, and the tower’s roughly 300-meter height made it an ideal antenna.
Military interest followed. Transmission tests were carried out from the summit as early as 1903, and the army saw the tower as a strategic communications tool.
As the 1909 deadline approached, the concession was extended and the tower remained standing.
During the First World War, the antenna intercepted and transmitted important messages. After the war, amateurs built receivers and the idea of broadcasting programs to the public gained ground, although early transmissions were small in audience and largely experimental.
In 1925, Radio-Paris launched the program “Le Journal parlé” from the Eiffel Tower. According to the article, it was the first time in France that news was read on air for listeners with receivers, marking a shift from print to listening to the news.
The article notes that this format laid groundwork for later news formats, and that the tower’s antennas later supported television broadcasting and digital terrestrial television, becoming a lasting relay between Paris and the rest of the country.
