History of Radio Timeline

Using various patents, the British Marconi company was established in 1897 by Guglielmo Marconi and began communication between coast radio stations and ships at sea. It operated much the way American Telephone and Telegraph operated until 1983, owning all of its equipment and refusing to communicate with non-Marconi equipped ships.

The company Telefunken was founded on May 27, 1903 as 'Telefunken society for wireless telefon' of Siemens & Halske and the Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft as joint undertakings for radio engineering in Berlin. It continued as a joint venture until Siemens left in 1941.

Image source: Telefunken

To enhance safety, the Wireless Ship Act of 1910 marked the first time the U.S. government regulated radio, requiring ships to carry wireless equipment.

Image source: Wireless Ship Act of 1910

In 1911, Kaiser Wilhelm II sent Telefunken engineers to West Sayville, New York to erect three 600-foot (180-m) radio towers there.

This factor played a role during the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. In 1912 distress calls to aid the sinking Titanic were met with a large amount of interfering radio traffic, severely hampering the rescue effort. Subsequently, the US government passed the Radio Act of 1912 to help mitigate the repeat of such a tragedy.

Image source: Sinking of the Titanic

The test case was against Bamberger's Department Store in Newark, New Jersey in 1922. With this ruling ASCAP began collecting licensing fees from radio stations in 1923, and had to defend their right to charge fees again in 1924. Radio and TV licensing became the single greatest source of revenue for ASCAP.

Image source: American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers

The Radio Act of 1927 gave the Federal Radio Commission the power to grant and deny licenses, and to assign frequencies and power levels for each licensee. In 1928 it began requiring licenses of existing stations and setting controls on who could broadcast from where on what frequency and at what power. Section 29 stated broadcast content should be freely present without government interference.

Image source: Radio Act of 1927

Radio ownership grew from two out of five homes in 1931 to four out of five homes in 1938. Meanwhile, record sales fell from $75 million in 1929 to $26 million in 1938 (with a low point of $5 million in 1933), though the economics were also affected by the Great Depression.

The introduction of the Communications Act of 1934 led to the establishment of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Image source: Communications Act of 1934

At a meeting in Copenhagen in 1948, a new wavelength plan was set up for Europe.

Image source: History of radio

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was the first significant overhaul in over 60 years amending the work of the Communications Act of 1934. Its effects have been seen, but some changes it set out to fix are still ongoing problems, such as being unable to create an open competitive market.

By the fall of 1900, he successfully transmitted speech over a distance of about 1.6 kilometers (one mile), which appears to have been the first successful audio transmission using radio signals.

In 1904, Austrian physicist Otto Nußbaumer was the first to transmit music wirelessly at Albert von Ettingshausen's university lab in Graz.

Image source: Otto Nußbaumer

The first car radio was introduced in 1922, but it was so large that it took up too much space in the car. The first commercial car radio that could easily be installed in most cars went for sale in 1930.

Image source: Vehicle audio

The invention of the superheterodyne receiver solved tuning problems, and the first radios with a heterodyne radio receiver went for sale in 1924. But it was costly, and the technology was shelved while waiting to mature; in 1929 the Radiola 66 and Radiola 67 went for sale.

Image source: Superheterodyne receiver

Documents including maps and photographs went by radiofax, or wireless photoradiogram, invented in 1924 by Richard H. Ranger. This method prospered in the mid-20th century and faded late in the century.

Image source: Radiofax

In 1926 the first radios with electrodynamic loudspeakers went for sale, which improved sound quality significantly. Other inventions included automatic volume control (AVC), first commercially available in 1928, and in 1930 a tone control knob was added to radios.

Image source: Loudspeaker

The first radios still required batteries, but in 1926 the 'battery eliminator' was introduced to the market. They still required batteries to heat vacuum-tube filaments, but after the invention of indirectly heated vacuum tubes, the first completely battery free radios became available in 1927. In 1929 a new screen grid tube called UY-224 was introduced, an amplifier designed to operate directly on alternating current.

Image source: AC adapter

In 1933, FM radio was patented by inventor Edwin H. Armstrong. In 1937, W1XOJ, the first experimental FM radio station after Armstrong's W2XMN in Alpine, New Jersey, was granted a construction permit by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Image source: FM broadcasting

After early service in St. Louis in 1946, AT&T then introduced Mobile Telephone Service to one hundred towns and highway corridors by 1948. It was expensive, costing US$15 per month plus $0.30–0.40 per local call, equivalent to about $176 per month and $3.50–4.75 per call in 2012 dollars.

1953: NTSC compatible color television introduced in the US. By 1963, color television was being broadcast commercially (though not all broadcasts or programs were in color).

Image source: NTSC

In 1954, the Regency company introduced a pocket transistor radio, the TR-1, powered by a 'standard 22.5 V Battery.' In 1955, the newly formed Sony company introduced its first transistorized radio, the TR-55. In 1957, Sony introduced the TR-63, the first mass-produced transistor radio, leading to mass-market penetration of transistor radios.

Image source: Transistor radio

1962: Telstar 1, the first communications satellite, relayed the first publicly available live transatlantic television signal. By 1963, the first (radio) communication satellite, Telstar, had been launched.

Image source: Telstar 1

Frequencies specified in number of cycles per second (kilocycles, megacycles) were replaced by the more specific designation of hertz (cycles per second) about 1965.

Image source: Hertz

The first integrated circuit (IC) radio, P1740 by General Electric, became available in 1966.

Image source: Integrated circuit

One of the first developments in the early 20th century was that aircraft used commercial AM radio stations for navigation, AM stations are still marked on U.S. aviation charts. In 1987, the Global Positioning System (GPS) constellation of satellites was launched; it was followed by other GNSS systems like Glonass, BeiDou and Galileo.

Image source: Global Positioning System

According to some sources, notably Fessenden's wife Helen's biography, on Christmas Eve 1906, Reginald Fessenden used an Alexanderson alternator and rotary spark-gap transmitter to make the first radio audio broadcast, from Brant Rock, Massachusetts.

Image source: Reginald Fessenden

In February 1907 he transmitted electronic telharmonium music from his laboratory station in New York City. In July 1907 he made ship-to-shore transmissions by radiotelephone—race reports for the Annual Inter-Lakes Yachting Association Regatta held on Lake Erie—sent from the steam yacht Thelma to his assistant Frank E. Butler.

Image source: Lee de Forest

Launched by Lee de Forest in the Highbridge section of New York City, station 2XG began daily broadcasts in 1916, but went off the air when the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, and did not return to the air.

Powered in Medford, Massachusetts, 1XE was an experimental station that started broadcasting in 1917. It had to go off the air during World War I, but started up again after the war, and began regular voice and music broadcasts in 1919. However, it did not receive its commercial license, becoming WGI, until 1922.

Image source: WGI (radio station)

On February 17, 1919, station 9XM at the University of Wisconsin in Madison broadcast human speech to the public at large. 9XM was first experimentally licensed in 1914, began regular Morse code transmissions in 1916, and its first music broadcast in 1917. Regularly scheduled broadcasts of voice and music began in January 1921.

Image source: WHA (AM)

The Dutch company Nederlandsche Radio-Industrie and its owner-engineer Hanso Idzerda made its first regular entertainment radio broadcast over station PCGG from its workshop in The Hague on 6 November 1919. Its popular program was broadcast four nights per week using narrow-band FM transmissions on 670 metres (448 kHz), until 1924 when the company ran into financial trouble.

Image source: Hanso Idzerda

KQV, one of Pittsburgh's five original AM stations, signed on as amateur station '8ZAE' on November 19, 1919, but did not receive a commercial license until January 9, 1922.

Image source: KQV

At 9 pm on August 27, 1920, Sociedad Radio Argentina aired a live performance of Richard Wagner's opera Parsifal from the Coliseo Theater in downtown Buenos Aires.

Image source: LOR Radio Argentina

On 31 August 1920 the Detroit News began publicized daily news and entertainment 'Detroit News Radiophone' broadcasts, originally as licensed amateur station 8MK, then later as WBL and WWJ in Detroit, Michigan. It has carried a regular schedule of programming to the present and also broadcast the 1920 presidential election returns just as KDKA did.

Image source: WWJ (AM)

Union College in Schenectady, New York began broadcasting on October 14, 1920, over 2ADD, an amateur station licensed to Wendell King, an African-American student at the school.

Image source: Union College

It is commonly attributed to KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which in October 1920 received its license and went on the air as the first US licensed commercial broadcasting station on November 2, 1920, with the presidential election results as its inaugural show, but was not broadcasting daily until 1921. Technically, KDKA was the first of several already-extant stations to receive a 'limited commercial' license.

Image source: KDKA (AM)

In 1922 regular audio broadcasts for entertainment began in the UK from the Marconi Research Centre 2MT at Writtle near Chelmsford, England.