Phonograph Witnessing

The next step in making the preaching work more effective was the introduction of phonographs. Records with Brother Rutherford’s brief Bible sermons translated into Danish could now be heard sounding out from doorsteps. Soon publishers were seen in the territory carrying portable phonographs.

However, hauling a phonograph, even a portable one, on a bicycle was tricky. Sister Rømer remembers: “We had to walk our cycles not only up but sometimes down hills because they were so steep and the roads so rocky that the spring holding the phonograph in place would snap if we rolled quickly downhill.” This obstacle did not cool their zeal. They rose to the challenge by inventing and building one amazing device after the other in order to mount the phonograph on the bicycle safely. One brother recalls that of the 135 persons he has had the pleasure of helping into Jehovah’s worldwide preaching organization, about 40 came in as a result of the phonograph work.

Besides this, so-called phonograph meetings were held where talks could be heard booming from larger phonographs. Some brothers in Kalundborg rigged a sound system on an old car of Daniel Nielsen (son of Albertine, who had been baptized in Sejerø Bight back in 1902). When he sold the car, a small cart pulled by a bicycle was pressed into service. “Out we went on long trips,” relates Brother Nielsen, “out to the villages where we preached by means of the phonograph talks.”

[Picture on page 97]

A witnessing group with phonographs mounted on bicycles