In the early 1900's ham radio operators pioneered the wireless.
*Prior to 1920, most Americans couldn't even fathom the idea of
voices and music coming into their homes over the air. The industry
would grow rapidly from 5,000 in-home radio sets in 1920 to more
than 2.5 million in 1924. "Wireless" ham radio became commercialized.
Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian electrical engineer, transmitted the
first wireless signal in 1895. By the turn of the century he had
formed telegraph companies in England and opened the first wireless
office in New York City. In 1901, Marconi telegraphed the letter "S"
across the Atlantic Ocean. The U.S. Navy was so impressed that it
replaced a flock of carrier pigeons with the "wireless" for
ship-to-shore communications.
Shortly after, Lee de Forest was lauding his new, three-element
electron "audion" tube as a "new receiver for wireless telegraphy."
Edwin Armstrong's development of practical regenerative and
super-heterodyne circuits led to modern radio reception and
transmission as we know them today. On Good Friday, 1917, the U.S.
declared war on Germany after German U-boats torpedoed and sank four
American ships without warning. President Wilson directed the Navy to
take over all wireless stations during the emergency, including
Marconi's ship-to-shore operations
The Radio Corporation of America
The federal government's takeover of the wireless industry during the
war accomplished two things: it focused efforts and funds on further
technological improvements and it sorted out the tangle of patent
infringements that had crippled industry development. Wartime
experience convinced Assistant Navy Secretary Franklin D. Roosevelt
that radio patents should be kept under American control. General
Electric, which was planning a major sale of broadcasting equipment to
the British Marconi company, was asked instead to take the lead in
organizing an American radio concern. GE agreed, and the Radio
Corporation of America was formed in October 1919. RCA took over the
assets of American Marconi and responsibility for marketing the radio
equipment produced by GE and Westinghouse. Conceived as a "marriage
of convenience" between private corporations and the government for
the development of wireless communication, RCA soon grew in a
different direction.
Just six years later, RCA's revenues from "wireless" came to $4
million. Revenue from the sale of consumer Radiolas and related
equipment had grown to $46 million and the gap was widening.
Westinghouse, one of RCA's manufacturers, received the first
commercial broadcasting license in 1920. A few days later, station
KDKA went on the air with the returns of the Harding-Cox presidential
election. RCA was on the air with the world heavyweight boxing
championship by the next summer, a marketing brainstorm of RCA General
Manager David Sarnoff.
Baseball's first broadcast of the World Series came just a few months
after the first official radio station went on the air. During radio's
infancy as an entertainment medium, engineers were busy finding other
ways to use the newly-harnessed frequencies. RCA transmitted the first
radio photograph, a precursor to the fax machine, across the Atlantic
Ocean in 1924. The number of radio stations had doubled in just two
years. By the time Charles Lindbergh made his historic transatlantic
flight, some six million radio sets were in use. Surveys indicated
that an average of five people listened to each set, making a potential
market of 30 million people.
RCA's David Sarnoff saw the potential for a nationwide network, and in
1926 RCA, GE and Westinghouse bought WEAF in New York and designated
it as the anchor station for the National Broadcasting Company.
NBC soon stretched to 25 stations nationwide.
The Rose Bowl game of 1927 was heard coast to coast, thanks to the NBC
network. In 1927, another remarkable development was taking place:
California engineer Philo Farnsworth sent out a signal in a pioneering
television experiment. His broadcast sent a picture of a dollar sign
through the air. A year later, the president of RCA predicted that
Kodak's newly-developed color film might someday be applied to
television.*
In the 1990's the telephone was surgically implanted in millions
of women's heads. It was called the cell phone. In the 1999 Al Gore
claimed he invented the Internet. In the 1990's KA9FOX established
the internet's most popular ham radio web site. By 1999 40,000,000
people worldwide were surfing the internet.
In the year 1999 the ARRL will sponsor Sweepstakes, the oldest
continuing running contest, established in the 1930's. Shortly
thereafter K1DG was cloned, the clone was known as K1AR, or
was it visa versa? In the early 1990's N6TR, K8CC & K1EA wrote
contesting logging programs based in DOS. In the latter 1990's
W5XD & KK4KD wrote Windows based contest logging programs.
In 1998 through inovative contest log checking software development
by N6TR & N5KO, contesting was forever changed.
*Factual text via K2LXC
Sincerely,
dr.bafoofnik
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