Call sign

There's a piece of the A425 South Way/Abbey Street roundabout in Northamptonshire that will forever be BBC World Service. Artist Tim Ward was commissioned by local developers to produce a piece of "public art" for the junction; he came up with three options, Daventry Council set up a Facebook poll - and the winner (artist's impression below) is "Daventry Calling".

The BBC first built a transmitter at Borough Hill, Daventry, in 1925 (moving a longwave set-up from Chelsmford), and in 1932 started broadcasting the BBC Empire Service from the site, on short-wave and then medium wave, using "Daventry Calling" as the station ID.  This had more impact on the town than just worldwide fame; until then, locals pronounced the name "Daintree". London was unaware. The Empire Service morphed into the Overseas Service in 1939, and with the addition of a European Service in 1941, the BBC department was called "External Services". That changed to World Service in 1965.

The transmitters were used rather differently in 1935, to give the first practical demonstration of radar. Inventors Robert Watson-Watt and Arnold Frederic Wilkins rigged up a radio receiving array in a field three miles away, to pick up signals bounced back off a metal-clad Handley Page Heyford bomber flying across the radio transmissions from the bigger masts. The interference picked up from the aircraft allowed the two to calculate the plane's navigational position.

The Daventry analogue transmitters were finally switched off in 1992, and now there's only one mast remaining (happily chuntering out DAB signals). The new sculpture will be 7 metres high and will consist of five ‘masts’ with a laser-cut ‘radio wave’ text ring.  You won't miss it - it's near McDonalds, and the new Abbey Retail Park - gateway to modern Daintree.