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Many inventions have impacted the world throughout history but in my opinion one of the most impactful one’s was the invention of the radio . This invention provided society with many things which include entertainment, communication, and easier access to information. Radio is still a central part of the society today but just like any other invention radio has an interesting history of how it progressed through time.
Every invention ever known to man had pioneers or people who contributed to the creation of the product. Radio had many pioneers that allowed for its creation and their names are Heinrich Hertz, Nikola Tesla, Ernst Alexander, Edwin Armstrong, Guglielmo Marconi, Lee DeForest, Frank Conrad, Reginald Fessenden, and Edward Armstrong. It all started with a German physicist named Heinrich Hertz who in 1884 proved that you could transmit and receive electric waves wirelessly. Hertz thought that the work he had done had no use whatsoever but little did he know that what he done is considered the fundamental building block of radio, and that is the reason why every frequency measurement is named after him (Short). In that same year a Serbian-American inventor named Nikola Tesla came to the U.S and sold patents to his inventions to a man named George Westinghouse. After that Tesla established his own lab which is where he built the tesla coil , an induction coil that is still used in radio today (Short). The next progression of radio focused on more than just the transmission of waves, the new focus was transmission of speech. The first to begin to add speech into the radio mix was Ernst Alexander, a Sweden born inventor who developed the first alternator to make speech transmission possible (Short). This was so new to the s...
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Radio waves were first discovered in 1887, but radio itself was initially invented by Italian Guglielmo Marconi in 1895 (1). His biggest mentioned success was in 1901, when he managed to broadcast the letter “S” across the Atlantic Ocean (1). However, he focused primarily on point-to-point transmissions, not large scale broadcasts from one point (F). As such, three American inventors - Lee De Forest, Edwin Howard Armstrong, and David Sarnoff - took credit for making radio as it is today a success (F). De Forest was born and raised in Alabama and he thought of everything in terms of patents and eventually held more than 300, but many claimed that he simply stole the inventions of others (2). In 1900, he patented a device to enhance weak signals and in 1902, he formed the De Forest Wireless Telegraph Company (1). In the same year. Reginald Fessenden, a Canadian, invented the “electrolytic detector”, which later became the spade detector that brought De Forest so much fame (F). In 1904, John Fleming invented the oscillation valve, which later became De Forest’s audion, and De Forest won the gold medal at the St. Louis World’s Fair for his “spade detector” (F). De Forest gained quite a bit of fame by broadcasting music live from the Eiffel Tower and from the Metropolitan Opera; however, many believed that this was a scam and that he had actually had the device broadcasting the signal only a few blocks away (F). In 1906, he envisioned bringing music and voices to all American households, but as it turns out Canadian inventor Fessenden had already broadcasted a Christmas greeting and music to the crew of a ship off the coast of Canada on Christmas Eve a year earlier (F). In 1912, Armstrong became prominent by inventing regeneration, wh...
Radio is device that use technology of using radio waves to transfer information, such as sound, by using the properties of electromagnetic energy waves transmitted through space, such as their phase, amplitude, frequency, or pulse width. If radio waves passing an electrical conductor, the oscillating fields induce an alternating current in the conductor. The information in the waves can be get back into its original form.
The radio has had a huge impact on bringing information to the public about war and other government issues. Advertising and broadcasting on the airwaves was a major step in bringing war propaganda to a level where people could be easily touched nationally. Broadcasting around the clock was being offered everywhere. Before there was television people relied on the radio as a way to be entertained, the means of finding out what was going on in the world, and much more. During the World War II time period, 90 percent of American families owned a radio, and it was a part of daily life. So it was an obvious means of spreading war propaganda. During this time period, propaganda was spread throughout the radio by means of news programs, public affairs broadcasts, as well as through Hollywood and the mainstream. The average person had not even graduated high school at the time, and the average reading level of the American was somewhat low. The radio made it possible for stories and news to be delivered to everyone in plain simple English. The radio served as a medium that provided a sense of national community. Although it took time, the radio eventually rallied people together to back up the American war effort.
In 1937, Canadian inventor Donald L. Hings created literally a big thing in size and value wise. He called it a two-way field radio but it is now known as the Walkie Talkie. The Walkie Talkie when first created was the size of a back pack and i...
...g offshore radio stations and supplying offshore radio stations from the coast of Britain. After this law was passed the government started enforcing the laws previously passed, banning pirate radio in the Thames’ Estuary. This was seemingly the end of offshore radio in Britain, because Radio Caroline disregarded it and continued to broadcast, even though they knew that they won’t be able to do it for long because of troubles with finances. Since they could not be supplied by Britain, they turned to the Dutch, where they accumulated a great debt and ended up impounded by the supplying firm.
Radios in the book show power in many different forms, whether it be propaganda, the ability to know of the outside world or just owning a radio, sets one higher than those without.
The first major invention was the commercial radio channel. In 1920, the Pittsburgh company KDKA broadcast that Warren G. Harding had won the presidential election against James M. Cox. This broadcast caused radios to increase in popularity. This improvement in radio was the only major development in sound technology; most people were working on visual transmissions at this time.
Usually, when people think about the inventor and founder radio, people tend to say it was Guillermo Marconi. However, after watching this documentary, I believe the inventor and founder of radio has to be the combination of the three men profiled in this documentary; Lee De Forest, Edward Howard Armstrong, and David Sarnoff. Lee De Forest is also sometimes considered the Father of Radio, and even the Grandfather of Television, however, there was always a lot of controversy over his work. Under multiple circumstances, his inventions and discoverers were previously discovered by other inventors earlier in time, leading to multiple lawsuits. Even though there was a lot of controversy over his ideas, he did however come up with one of the
When the United States entered the First World War, the government took over all radio operations and shut down both professional and amateur radio broadcasters. The use of radio was reserved exclusively for the war effort. In the air, radio was used for the first time between multiple planes and the ground to keep formations and lead the pilots to their targets. This was the beginning of air traffic control and walkie-talkies. In addition, soldiers who had been wounded were entertained in the hospital by news and music played over the radio. Although radio was not allowed back into public until 1919, it continued to be used by troops coming home to entertain each other and was even used for dances. All of radio’s uses from the war soon became prevalent in everyday life and radio has been used in these ways ever since. Our lives are filled with constant sound most of it coming from the radio being on all the time; whether in the car or at home, music, news, weather, and traffic are provided through radio. There is a station for everyone. Moreover, when we travel by plane, airports would be chaotic and have no way to tell who is taking off and landing if not for radio use to control the traffic and make everything run smoothly. Many jobs also have much use of radio needed to communicate with other workers in careers such as law enforcement and trucking.
The 1920's brought many advancements in technology which allowed Americans to entertain themselves at home; the radio was one of them. The radio was actually developed before the 1920's; however, it was banned during World War I and allowed to reappear after the Prohibition ended in 1919 (Events 72). After the Prohibition ended, and radio broadcasting was being brought back to life, many people started up their first stations, like Frank Conrad (Events 72). Frank Conrad's first broadcast consisted of the Presidential Election results (Events 72). As Conrad was one of the first people to broadcast, KDKA was one of the first radio stations to appear in the Unite...
Encyclopedia of the New American Nation. Television – Tv news and the early cold war. 2013. Web. 15 Dec. 2013.
Mass Media. Ed. William Dudley. Farmington Hills, MI: Thompson Gale, 2005. 121-130.
Many inventions revolutionized society and one example is the telephone, which was introduced to society in 1876. The inventor, Alexander Graham Bell developed this idea and the telephone made him famous because communication would never be the same after the development of the telephone. The telephone made an incredible impact on society. The impact could be seen through the quickness of communication, business, easier communication in wars, and some negative effects too.
middle of paper ... ... In 1933, the Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany, Josef Goebbels, said, “The radio will be to the twentieth century what the press was to the nineteenth.” The radio not only sped up communication, but also the words took on more personality as they were spoken with declamatory, fully animated voices. Issues with anonymity arose, as listeners over the radio can never truly be aware who speaks to them.
The 'Standard'. The NWICO debate, Unit 20 of the MA MA in Mass. Communications (By Distance Learning). Centre for Mass Communications Research, University of Leicester, United Kingdom. Nygren. G.; Witschge T. (2009).