Enrique Telémaco Susini
One year later, he joined the Argentine military, where he conducted research about the influence of electric and acoustic stimuli on the human body and set up a laboratory for veterinary vaccines.
[6] In 1915, the community had become large and sophisticated enough for a newspaper article to mention that the radio amateurs "formed a sort of fraternity, exchanging news, talking with each other over long distances, and even transmitting little piano or violin concerts over their connections.
Soon they acquired the nickname Locos de la Azotea ("the crazy people from the roof"), because their hobby involved activities - sometimes bordering on the acrobatic - on top of tall buildings, where they mounted the long wire antennas required by early-type radios.
[6] During this time, the group first played with the idea to use radio as a means for cultural dissemination, a fact that Susini himself later ascribed to their shared passion for theater and music.
[2] At the outbreak of the World War in Europe, radio communication had become a technology of great military significance, and its development accelerated considerably during the following years.
Together with his friends, he started planning for a radio transmission from there, strongly supported by the two Italian owners, Faustino da Rossa and Walter Mocchi.
[8] During 1920, while the group was working on the project, news reached them of Marconi's successful broadcast of a concert of Nellie Melba in Chelmsford that had taken place on June 15.
Susini and his coworkers had set up a 5W transmitter on the roof using a RS-5 Telefunken tube, operating in 350m,[9] along with a wire antenna connected to the dome on top of a neighboring building.
The polyglot Susini himself performed songs in Spanish, French, German, Italian and Russian, assuming a different stage name each time so the listeners would not notice.
[13] With its relay stations in Paraguay, New York City and Madrid,[14] the company, operating under the brand name "Vía Radiar", had considerable financial success.
Moving aggressively against competitors by reducing prices, it soon managed to control the majority of radio traffic between Argentina and Europe, in close cooperation with the Spanish administration's telegraph service.
[11] One year later, Susini, by now married to singer Alicia Arderius, and his three companions founded the film company Lumiton (from Spanish luminosidad and tono: "light" and "sound"), which would become one of the major players during the following decade, known as the "Golden Age of Argentine Cinema".
[11][15] With equipment bought during a trip to the United States, the four partners set up the most modern film studio in the country at the time, which included its own laboratory.
After setting in scene the opera Oberon in 1938 at the Teatro Reale in Rome to great critical acclaim, he was called to work as director at the Scala in Milan.
During his life, Susini authored more than seventy theater plays, receiving the National Culture Award in 1951 for his comedy En un viejo patio porteño ("In an old Buenos Aires back yard").
[8] However, what remains certain is that Susini established the first radio broadcast station in South America on his personal initiative, overcoming serious difficulties in the process.
