The Pedal Radio

June 10, 2006 The population density of the world’s continents says it all: North America (32 people/sq mile), South America (73), Europe (134), Asia (203), Africa (65) and Australia with just 6.4 people per square mile. Given that 90% of Australia’s population live in large cities in the South Eastern corner, the immense interior known as “the Outback” is one of Australia’s defining features. Eighty years ago, with almost no telecommunication infrastructure beyond the seaboard, the tyranny of distance loomed much larger in the Outback as the nearest doctor could be several thousand miles away, with no method of contacting them in an emergency. Hearing that German WW1 soldiers had used hand-cranked radios for battlefield communications, Alf Traeger set about creating a radio powered by bicycle pedals. The invention of the pedal radio in the late 1920s enabled the famous Flying Doctor service, and offered remote settlements access to telecommunications for th first time,

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