But Avlis was 'in the news' long before the Greek broadcasting service decided to install its short wave transmitters there. In ancient times a great fleet of ships had been assembled in the harbour there, ready to set sail for Troy, following the abduction of the beautiful Helen of Sparta by Paris, the young Prince of Troy. But there had been no wind for many weeks, and the sea was dead calm. Agamemnon, the King of Mycenae, who had himself contributed over 100 ships to the fleet, decided to consult his Seer. As was the custom, the Seer slaughtered a young lamb and scrutinised its entrails. He then announced that the wind would come up if Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia on the Altar of Sacrifice. King Agamemnon despatched a messenger to Mycenae (no VHF repeater being available in those days) to tell his wife Queen Klitemnestra to send their daughter Iphigenia to Avlis (Aulis). The King said he was planning to marry her off to Achilles, the most eligible bachelor of the day. When poor Iphigenia arrived she was quickly placed on the Sacrificial Altar--and had her pretty throat slit. However, there seems to be another version to the end of the story. Just before the human sacrifice was due to be made Artemis (Diana, the famous Goddess of Hunting) sent a small deer which was placed on the altar instead of the girl. Iphigenia was secretly spirited away to Taurida, in northern Greece, and put in charge of Diana's temple there. (This story is the subject of a well-known classical Greek play.) Historical note on the Marconi-Stille steel tape recording machine. At the beginning of the century Professor Poulsen, one of radio's earliest pioneers, discovered that a magnetic impression could be made on a moving length of wire which remained on the wire even after it had been rolled up. He used his machine to record the Morse code only, that is magnetism 'on' and 'off'. In 1924 Dr. Stille in Germany made a machine which could record sounds. The B.B.C. sent two engineers to Berlin, and after a demonstration they offered to buy the machine, but in the end they returned to England empty-handed. In 1931 Mr Louis Blattner managed to buy a machine and bring it to England. He called it the Blattnerphone. By this time Dr. Stille had replaced Poulsen's wire with a flat steel tape 6 mm wide. Each reel of tape could only accommodate 20 minutes of recording. There was a constant and heavy background hiss, due to the inherent quality of the steel tape itself.