The Broadcast Century and Beyond

In the Beginning

Before electronic media, many different message systems were developed. For example, the Greeks developed a system of signaling between ships by using flags. Today, ships at sea can still communicate using semaphore flags. Check out this site from the Canadian Navy.

Many of the electronic communication inventions that led to the discovery of broadcasting had their beginnings in the late 1800s. Newspaper reports helped to prepare Americans for the introduction of new, wonderful inventions created by men and women who had dreams and imagination. Some of modern history's most colorful characters contributed to the development of early communication devices.

Samuel F. B. Morse invented the telegraph and a code that could be used to transmit letters of the alphabet electronically, but it was Ezra Cornell (from the Cornell University Library) who really made it work. These sites will give you a good understanding of how the telegraph came about. The telegraph crushed time and space. Now, for the first time communications from point-to-point became instantaneous.

The telephone, invented by Alexander Graham Bell (from the Library of Congress), became the most lucrative patent ever filed. Look at Tom Farley’s Telephone History site for extensive documentation on how telephones work. Bell's invention ultimately led to the creation of the modern communication network. But before broadcasting, telephones connected cities together and brought new, important communication resources to rural communities.

Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian-born Englishmen, is generally considered to be the father of the wireless (from the Nobel Prize Organization.) Although others theorized about the capabilities of Hertzian waves, Marconi received the first patent for the wireless in June 1896. Marconi's invention made possible wireless ship-to-shore communication.

In the first decade of the 20th century, rapid advances were made in wireless technology. Lee DeForest, the American father of radio, originally wanted to beat Marconi in creating a wireless ‘Empire.’ DeForest was constantly searching for the answers that would make him rich and famous. (This PBS site is a great resource for DeForest).

David Sarnoff, (from Time.com), a young Russian émigré, worked for Marconi and received distress signals from the Titanic. Later, Sarnoff would go on to head Radio Corporation of America, the company that founded NBC.

There were many other pioneers who made radio possible. Reginald Fessenden and Edwin Armstrong (from Columbia University) were among the more important inventors who made modern broadcasting possible, but DeForest is perhaps best remembered because of his invention, the Audion. (You can read the article that DeForest wrote for the Scientific American at United States Early Radio History).

Many other inventors contributed to the body of knowledge necessary to make the wondrous invention, radio. Click on The Pioneers to see the list of names of early radio pioneers.