R2 - History of Radio

Radio has been around for hundreds of years. It started as a luxury but then became one of the main ways of giving news to a large number of people at one time. However the dependence on radio has changed over the years to due to increase of social media

Relationship discovered between magnetism and electricity

1820

Hans Christian Ørsted discovers the relationship between electricity and magnetism in a very simple experiment. He demonstrates that a wire carrying a current was able to deflect a magnetized compass needle.

First Radiowave to ring a bell

1895

November 1894: In Calcutta the Indian physicist Jagdish Chandra Bose, building on Lodges published work, uses radio wave transmissions to ignite gunpowder and rang a bell at a distance.[

First development of radio

1896

1895: Marconi pursues the idea of building a wireless telegraphy system using Hertzian waves (radio). This is considered the is the first development of a radio system specifically for communication.

First Radio Factory

1899

1898: Marconi opened the first radio factory, on Hall Street, Chelmsford, England, employing around 50 people.

Inventor of Radio - Marconi

1905

1904: The U.S. Patent Office reversed its decision, awarding Marconi a patent for the invention of radio.

Installation of Radio in ships

1910

1910: The Wireless Ship Act was passed by the United States Congress, requiring all ships of the United States traveling over two-hundred miles off the coast and carrying over fifty passengers to be equipped with wireless radio equipment with a range of one-hundred miles. The legislation was prompted by a shipping accident in 1909, where a single wireless operator saved the lives of 1200 people.

Audio Broadcasting

1916

1916: First regular broadcasts on 9XM (now WHA) - Wisconsin state weather, delivered in Morse Code

First US Broadcasting Station

1920

October 1920: Westinghouse in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania became the first US commercial broadcasting station to be licensed when it was granted call letters KDKA. (Their engineer Frank Conrad had been broadcasting from his own station since 1916.)

Television

1920

1920s: Radio was first used to transmit pictures visible as television.

After the War

1948

1948: A new wavelength plan was set up for Europe at a meeting in Copenhagen. Because of the recent war, Germany (which was not even invited) was only given a few medium-wave frequencies, which are not very good for broadcasting. For this reason Germany began broadcasting on USW, "ultra short wave" (nowadays called VHF). After some amplitude modulation experience with VHF, it was realized that FM radio was a much better alternative for VHF radio than AM.

First Pocket Radio

1960

1960: Sony introduced their first transistorized radio, small enough to fit in a vest pocket, and able to be powered by a small battery. It was durable, because there were no tubes to burn out. Over the next twenty years, transistors displaced tubes almost completely except for very high power, or very high frequency, uses.

Out of Space

Sep 1980

Human communication from a space shuttle Sony introduces consumer synthesized radio receiver

Internet

1990

Yahoo! Internet radio broadcasting Internet television broadcasting

Digital Broadcasting

1996

Late 1990s: The digital transmissions began to be applied to broadcasting.

Google!

1998

Google was created

Social Media & Radio

2003

iTunes music service online Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) – digital AM radio with FM-quality sound Second Life MySpace

New Developments

2005+

Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Kik etc. Podcasting.