Monument park De Driehoek - Radio Kootwijk

On 28 February 1928, in Kootwijk, the first successful test of the short-wave radiotelegraphic link between the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies took place. Technological developments were rapid at the time. A few years earlier, it had been discovered that messages in Morse code could be sent via longwave, which were received in the Dutch East Indies. However, the technology still proved very unreliable and the connection variable.

In 1929, it also became possible to establish an intercontinental radiotelephonic connection via shortwave. On 7 January 1929, Queen Emma officially opened this connection by making a telephone call to the Governor of the Dutch East Indies, Andries Cornelis Dirk de Graeff and his wife in Bandung. (Present-day Bandung.) In doing so, the Queen Mother uttered the legendary words, "Hello Bandoeng, can you hear me?"

In 1938, this first successful intercontinental connection was commemorated with a monument. The monument, a copper globe on a plinth, with a star at the site of Radio Kootwijk, as the focal point of communication, stands in the little park named De Driehoek. In the same little park is a granite boulder from the ice age. Sculptor Titus Leeser (Cologne 1903- Zwolle 1996) chiselled a shouting head out of it, on the spot, with the text "Hello Bandoeng!"

The little park lies in front of the houses built in the 1930s for the PTT employees who worked at the transmitting station.