WEBVTT - Hugo Gernsback 0:00:01.280 --> 0:00:04.280 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:13.400 of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:13.400 --> 0:00:17.800 I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy he Wilson. So Tracy, 0:00:17.840 --> 0:00:19.080 I think you might be like me where there are 0:00:19.120 --> 0:00:21.239 some subjects to the podcast that are at the top 0:00:21.239 --> 0:00:24.360 of the list for a really long time, and in 0:00:24.400 --> 0:00:26.480 my case, I feel like I'm sort of circling them 0:00:26.520 --> 0:00:28.800 like an animal stocking prey. I'll do a little bit 0:00:28.840 --> 0:00:31.200 of research on him and then back away, and it's 0:00:31.200 --> 0:00:33.360 like I want to tackle them, but I'm also a 0:00:33.360 --> 0:00:36.120 little unsure of when to jump for a variety of reasons. 0:00:36.720 --> 0:00:39.400 Uh And Hugo gerns Back has been one of those 0:00:39.520 --> 0:00:42.960 for a very long time, and he's tricky for a 0:00:42.960 --> 0:00:46.600 few different reasons. For one, he was ceaselessly interesting, and 0:00:46.640 --> 0:00:48.720 he did a lot of things that influenced the world 0:00:48.760 --> 0:00:51.480 we live in today. And topics like that are hard 0:00:51.520 --> 0:00:53.600 because you don't want to get into the like a 0:00:53.600 --> 0:00:56.120 big minutia party where you just list all the stuff 0:00:56.160 --> 0:00:59.840 that they did and touched and and and how it's 0:01:00.120 --> 0:01:03.600 you know, echoing in today's world. But you also don't 0:01:03.600 --> 0:01:05.440 want to leave any of the important stuff out so 0:01:05.480 --> 0:01:07.200 it could just be a little bit wilming to try 0:01:07.240 --> 0:01:09.160 to figure those out, and for another he can be 0:01:09.200 --> 0:01:12.040 a little bit polarizing. There are people who laud him 0:01:12.040 --> 0:01:14.759 as a genius, and there are others who label him 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:17.960 as a crackpot opportunist, but they do usually acknowledge that 0:01:18.000 --> 0:01:22.440 he was an insightful crackpot opportunist. Um. He is the 0:01:22.480 --> 0:01:24.880 man who, in the words of Ray Bradbury quote made 0:01:24.959 --> 0:01:27.800 us fall in love with the future. But he's also 0:01:27.880 --> 0:01:30.960 been berated as kind of a hack whose proclamations about 0:01:31.000 --> 0:01:34.000 what does and does not qualify as science fiction have 0:01:34.120 --> 0:01:38.039 been problematic and limiting from the start. But even people 0:01:38.080 --> 0:01:40.600 who have very little nice to say about the man 0:01:40.720 --> 0:01:44.720 acknowledge his influence and importance on the world of science fiction. 0:01:45.480 --> 0:01:49.880 He was also an inventor of some wacky and marvelous 0:01:49.920 --> 0:01:53.360 things and a writer himself. He was also a prognosticator 0:01:53.360 --> 0:01:57.040 of the future with some startling lee accurate insights, and 0:01:57.120 --> 0:02:00.040 odds are very good that you have come across references 0:02:00.080 --> 0:02:02.480 to him, whether you know it or not. So. Author 0:02:02.520 --> 0:02:05.760 William Gibson, who penned one of my top three books 0:02:05.760 --> 0:02:09.280 of all time, Neuromancer, wrote a short story called The 0:02:09.320 --> 0:02:12.920 gerns Back Continuum in eight one to reference him, and 0:02:12.960 --> 0:02:16.360 in nineteen eighty five Steven Spielberg created a TV series 0:02:16.440 --> 0:02:20.280 inspired by Gernsback's magazine Amazing Stories. There was also a 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:24.560 revival of Amazing Stories in and Today the Hugo Awards, 0:02:24.600 --> 0:02:28.240 recognizing science fiction and fantasy writers for excellence each year 0:02:28.280 --> 0:02:31.040 are given out in his name. That was an award 0:02:31.160 --> 0:02:34.480 that started when he was still alive, even though he 0:02:34.560 --> 0:02:37.680 was not the one that gave it. One journalist once 0:02:37.720 --> 0:02:41.880 described him as part scientist, part inventor, part joker, part 0:02:41.960 --> 0:02:44.320 little boy, and I kind of feel like that might 0:02:44.320 --> 0:02:46.680 be the best way to think of him as we're 0:02:46.760 --> 0:02:50.040 talking through his life story, because he could be very mercurial, 0:02:50.200 --> 0:02:52.080 and he would make a case or stayed an opinion 0:02:52.120 --> 0:02:54.960 about something and then not very much later, say something 0:02:55.000 --> 0:02:58.440 completely contradictory to that other statement. But he didn't seem 0:02:58.480 --> 0:03:00.840 to see how that was a problem. Was just always 0:03:00.880 --> 0:03:05.000 exploring ideas from a fairly conceptual place without getting two 0:03:05.120 --> 0:03:08.080 mired in the details, and he seemed to have no 0:03:08.240 --> 0:03:11.200 problem at all jumping from one idea or project to another. 0:03:12.200 --> 0:03:16.280 He is always described as ceaselessly energetic and following his 0:03:16.360 --> 0:03:19.120 thoughts down whatever path they led. Some of those and 0:03:19.160 --> 0:03:22.920 we will talk about them very problematic. But lately I 0:03:23.000 --> 0:03:25.520 keep running into references to him, even when I am 0:03:25.560 --> 0:03:29.880 looking at things that seemed completely unrelated. So it seems 0:03:29.880 --> 0:03:32.160 like the universes like, girl, just do that Hugo episode, 0:03:32.200 --> 0:03:36.760 already do it? Uh, So here we are. Hugo Gernsbach 0:03:36.920 --> 0:03:43.200 was born Hugo Gernsbacher on August four and Luxembourg City, Luxembourg. 0:03:43.920 --> 0:03:47.720 His family was quite comfortable. His father, more as Gernsbacher, 0:03:47.760 --> 0:03:51.480 was a successful wine wholesaler who had moved to Luxembourg 0:03:51.560 --> 0:03:55.600 from Germany. Hugo was the third son born to Mori 0:03:55.600 --> 0:03:59.400 ITTs and his wife Bertha Derlocker Gernsbacher, and from a 0:03:59.520 --> 0:04:03.480 very lie age, Hugo Gernsback was a tinkerer. When he 0:04:03.520 --> 0:04:06.160 was six years old, he was given a battery bell 0:04:06.280 --> 0:04:08.440 kit by the man who took care of the Gernsbaka 0:04:08.560 --> 0:04:12.520 State of handyman named Jean Pierre Gorgan, and Gorgon taught 0:04:12.600 --> 0:04:15.080 Hugo how to wire the bells to a battery called 0:04:15.080 --> 0:04:19.479 the le clanche. So Hugo loved this entire process and 0:04:19.600 --> 0:04:22.880 particularly was captivated by the green sparks that were admitted 0:04:22.880 --> 0:04:25.000 when the bell rang. He told the story over and 0:04:25.040 --> 0:04:28.280 over throughout his life, and he was soon ordering additional 0:04:28.320 --> 0:04:31.320 supplies from Paris to create new, bigger iterations of this 0:04:31.400 --> 0:04:34.479 simple system. And he said to have eventually wired his 0:04:34.560 --> 0:04:38.440 family home with intercoms and little buzzers, and soon he 0:04:38.480 --> 0:04:42.320 was assembling similar setups for his friends and neighbors homes. 0:04:42.680 --> 0:04:46.200 And from there he was basically constantly working on batteries 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:50.160 and battery powered devices and became recognized in his community 0:04:50.200 --> 0:04:52.680 as something of an expert. By the time he was 0:04:52.720 --> 0:04:56.320 a teenager, the local Carmelite convent hired him to install 0:04:56.400 --> 0:04:59.120 buzzers in their building. This was a bit of a 0:04:59.200 --> 0:05:04.040 sticky situation aation though, because Gernsbach had turned thirteen after 0:05:04.200 --> 0:05:07.240 the Mother Superior of the convent had hired him, he 0:05:07.320 --> 0:05:09.880 was suddenly considered to be a man in the eyes 0:05:09.960 --> 0:05:12.440 of the church, and according to him, that meant he 0:05:12.520 --> 0:05:16.039 was not allowed to enter anymore. But the Mother Superior 0:05:16.120 --> 0:05:18.880 got a special dispensation from the Pope to allow the 0:05:18.920 --> 0:05:22.000 young Hugo to do the work, and that permission letter 0:05:22.120 --> 0:05:26.279 from Rome became a prized possession throughout his life. I 0:05:26.360 --> 0:05:28.919 have always wondered, having heard this story many times in 0:05:29.000 --> 0:05:32.039 relation to him, if he forged that letter. Yeah, I 0:05:32.120 --> 0:05:36.640 had a question being for real, Yes, because his wife 0:05:36.680 --> 0:05:39.200 even talked about it after he had passed, and how 0:05:39.240 --> 0:05:41.000 she still had it and it was something you loved. 0:05:41.120 --> 0:05:43.760 And part of me is always like, is she hanging 0:05:43.760 --> 0:05:47.560 onto a like a fake document that she but I 0:05:47.600 --> 0:05:51.360 don't know. Uh. Hugo was educated by private tutors. As 0:05:51.360 --> 0:05:54.320 we said, his family was very comfortable financially, and he's 0:05:54.320 --> 0:05:58.120 often referred to as having received a technical education in Luxembourg. 0:05:58.880 --> 0:06:01.599 He actually did y poorly when he was enrolled in 0:06:01.600 --> 0:06:04.920 an industrial school as a teenager, and his performance at 0:06:04.960 --> 0:06:09.160 college and bing in Germany was similarly underwhelming. But he 0:06:09.240 --> 0:06:13.240 was an avid reader throughout his youth and enjoyed applying 0:06:13.279 --> 0:06:17.320 his technical knowledge to speculation about the future and problem solving. 0:06:18.000 --> 0:06:21.760 He told the story that a translated copy of Mars 0:06:21.920 --> 0:06:24.800 as the Abode to Life by Percival Little sent him 0:06:24.839 --> 0:06:27.320 into just the delirium when he read it at the 0:06:27.360 --> 0:06:32.040 age of nine, and that set his imagination so ablaze 0:06:32.080 --> 0:06:35.400 that the family called a doctor to watch him while 0:06:35.440 --> 0:06:39.360 he talked endlessly about the creatures and technology that could 0:06:39.680 --> 0:06:43.760 possibly be on the Red planet. But this story and 0:06:44.080 --> 0:06:47.760 many of the others about his youth are solely from 0:06:47.960 --> 0:06:53.640 Gernsbach himself, and so they're hard, if not impossible, to substantiate. Yeah, 0:06:54.279 --> 0:06:57.120 and then you know he was a storyteller. Uh. In 0:06:57.200 --> 0:06:59.599 nineteen o four, at the age of nineteen, Hugo moved 0:06:59.640 --> 0:07:02.760 to the United States, shortly after his father died. His 0:07:02.880 --> 0:07:06.080 father had never really understood his son's drive to pursue 0:07:06.080 --> 0:07:08.760 a career in the emerging field of electrics. He kind 0:07:08.800 --> 0:07:11.400 of hoped he would go into wine like he did. 0:07:12.000 --> 0:07:15.000 But once there was no longer a disapproving patriarch in 0:07:15.040 --> 0:07:17.560 the picture, Hugo made his move and shipped off to 0:07:17.600 --> 0:07:21.280 New York. He changed his name to the americanized Gern's 0:07:21.320 --> 0:07:24.720 Pocket and eventually became a naturalized US citizen. He had 0:07:24.720 --> 0:07:27.800 always had a fascination with the US and US culture 0:07:28.280 --> 0:07:31.720 that was driven in part by reading popular American authors 0:07:31.720 --> 0:07:37.840 like Twain and Poe. Additionally, European patent offices hadn't granted 0:07:37.920 --> 0:07:40.840 him various patents he had applied for, and he was 0:07:40.880 --> 0:07:44.600 hoping to do better with patenting his inventions in North America. 0:07:45.200 --> 0:07:49.160 He was very aware of personal presentation and he cultivated 0:07:49.200 --> 0:07:52.320 a style for himself that was distinctive and conveyed a 0:07:52.440 --> 0:07:57.400 sort of eccentric European aristocrat persona. He was known to 0:07:57.440 --> 0:08:00.080 wear a monocle that he didn't need. He always had 0:08:00.200 --> 0:08:04.240 very formal, beautiful suits, then the occasional opera cape. He 0:08:04.360 --> 0:08:07.120 was also very charming and witty, and that added this 0:08:07.200 --> 0:08:10.480 other layer of a lure. Yeah, he definitely was good 0:08:10.480 --> 0:08:13.960 at putting together like the man he wanted to be. 0:08:14.040 --> 0:08:16.960 He was also multi lingual, so people just automatically like 0:08:17.080 --> 0:08:20.320 gave him a certain degree of of like cloud. He's 0:08:20.360 --> 0:08:25.160 just amazing European genius. He is said to have worn 0:08:25.240 --> 0:08:28.040 a formal three piece suit even on the boat crossing 0:08:29.640 --> 0:08:34.280 to land at hoboken Um. Hugo's intention in the States, 0:08:34.280 --> 0:08:37.320 in addition to those patents, was to parlay his electrical 0:08:37.360 --> 0:08:40.600 and battery knowledge into a career, and he first approached 0:08:40.640 --> 0:08:43.040 Packard Motors and showed them a battery that he had 0:08:43.040 --> 0:08:47.160 designed for use in automobiles. His original design needed to 0:08:47.160 --> 0:08:49.520 be tweaked to work, but he did get a contract 0:08:49.520 --> 0:08:52.199 with Packard and he used that money that he yearned 0:08:52.200 --> 0:08:54.640 on that job to go into business for himself under 0:08:54.640 --> 0:08:58.280 the company name Electro Importing Co. Which had a storefront 0:08:58.320 --> 0:09:01.679 at sixty nine West Broadway. One of the first radio 0:09:01.800 --> 0:09:04.720 sets offered to the general public was a design of 0:09:04.800 --> 0:09:08.360 Hugos that he created in his early years as a businessman. 0:09:08.960 --> 0:09:13.760 This was the Talimco Wireless. That particular invention, which guaranteed 0:09:13.840 --> 0:09:16.280 that it would work up to one mile, was written 0:09:16.360 --> 0:09:20.040 up in Scientific American in nineteen o five. That article 0:09:20.120 --> 0:09:23.160 was written by CERN's back himself under the pen name 0:09:23.320 --> 0:09:28.240 Huck after the Twain character. This tiny radio was ahead 0:09:28.240 --> 0:09:31.400 of its time enough that it wasn't all that useful. 0:09:32.320 --> 0:09:35.720 There weren't many radio stations in operation yet for it 0:09:35.760 --> 0:09:39.440 to actually pick up. It was also considered suspicious enough 0:09:39.480 --> 0:09:42.320 that police insisted on a demonstration of the device to 0:09:42.360 --> 0:09:47.000 make sure that he was not making fraudulent claims. Yeah yeah, 0:09:47.760 --> 0:09:49.320 like yeah, but how do we know if it works 0:09:49.320 --> 0:09:53.880 if there's no radio station. Hugo got married for the 0:09:53.880 --> 0:09:56.160 first time in nineteen o six to a woman named 0:09:56.240 --> 0:09:58.520 Rose Harvey. They had a daughter in nineteen o nine, 0:09:58.559 --> 0:10:01.880 but that marriage did not last. He started a magazine 0:10:02.040 --> 0:10:07.520 called Modern Electrics. In this featured articles largely written by 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:11.760 gurn's Back himself, often under alias is that touted the 0:10:11.800 --> 0:10:15.120 technology used than many of his inventions. It was an 0:10:15.120 --> 0:10:19.360 outgrowth of his earlier electro importing catalog, which he started 0:10:19.400 --> 0:10:23.960 in nineteen o six. Over time, this expanded to include 0:10:24.000 --> 0:10:28.040 wider coverage of radio and other tech that home enthusiasts 0:10:28.040 --> 0:10:30.840 were eager to learn about, as well as letters to 0:10:30.880 --> 0:10:35.559 the editor from subscribers. Girls Back employed numerous freelancers to 0:10:35.600 --> 0:10:38.360 work on this magazine, as well as getting his company's 0:10:38.400 --> 0:10:42.320 staff to contribute. He worked on inventions and experiments with 0:10:42.400 --> 0:10:46.680 his brother Sydney, as well as his collaborators Louis Coxhall 0:10:46.760 --> 0:10:50.840 and Harry Winfield, and Modern Electrics included articles that tracked 0:10:50.880 --> 0:10:54.360 their progress and music experiments. In some cases, he would 0:10:54.360 --> 0:10:56.880 be describing the development of a product that he would 0:10:56.880 --> 0:11:00.400 then sell, often through the magazine, which has led to 0:11:00.480 --> 0:11:02.880 some modern criticism that it was sort of a long 0:11:02.920 --> 0:11:07.360 haul sales mechanism. Yeah. Yeah, He was definitely not shy 0:11:07.400 --> 0:11:10.440 about being his own hype man anyway. He was very 0:11:10.480 --> 0:11:14.480 willing to write up his work and praise himself under 0:11:14.520 --> 0:11:18.880 other names. The growing popularity of Modern Electrics magazine led 0:11:18.920 --> 0:11:21.760 Gernsbach to delve into a new creative space as he 0:11:21.840 --> 0:11:26.080 hustled to assemble enough material for each issue. So the 0:11:26.120 --> 0:11:29.679 story goes that in April nineteen eleven, he was coming 0:11:29.760 --> 0:11:32.960 up short on his magazine, so to fill pages, he 0:11:33.040 --> 0:11:35.920 decided to write a piece of fiction, and that was 0:11:35.960 --> 0:11:39.160 the birth of a character that on page is Ralph 0:11:39.320 --> 0:11:43.040 one to four c four one plus sign and it's 0:11:43.200 --> 0:11:45.520 meant to be read as it plays out in the 0:11:45.960 --> 0:11:49.080 pages of the book, or as the story as one 0:11:49.120 --> 0:11:53.360 to four see for another. Ralph was an astronaut living 0:11:53.360 --> 0:11:57.320 in the twenty seven century. The story begins in sixty 0:11:58.080 --> 0:12:01.320 The story was very much pulpic shin right down to 0:12:01.400 --> 0:12:05.760 the damsel in distress trope. This was alice to one 0:12:05.840 --> 0:12:09.439 to be four to three, but it was also filled 0:12:09.440 --> 0:12:12.800 out with futuristic detail that was rooted in Hugo's knowledge 0:12:12.840 --> 0:12:16.240 of science and technology. The opening description of the character 0:12:16.320 --> 0:12:20.560 sets the tone for the whole work. Quote. His physical superiority, however, 0:12:20.720 --> 0:12:24.160 was nothing compared to his gigantic mind. He was Ralph 0:12:24.200 --> 0:12:27.040 once to foresee for one plus one of the greatest 0:12:27.080 --> 0:12:29.920 living scientists and one of ten men on the whole 0:12:29.920 --> 0:12:33.480 planet Earth permitted to use the plus sign after his name. 0:12:35.840 --> 0:12:40.720 Ralph's adventures were fairly formulaic, but this story really captivated readers, 0:12:41.520 --> 0:12:43.680 and while Gernsbach may have initially thought he was just 0:12:43.720 --> 0:12:46.680 filling out the page count to modern electrics, it turned 0:12:46.720 --> 0:12:48.880 out he had started a new feature series, and one 0:12:48.920 --> 0:12:52.600 that was extremely popular. He had closed that initial story 0:12:52.679 --> 0:12:55.600 on a suspenseful cliffhanger, so it was pretty natural to 0:12:55.679 --> 0:13:00.160 keep going, which he did for eleven more installments. The 0:13:00.200 --> 0:13:04.400 writing isn't spectacular. An amazing aspect of these stories was 0:13:04.480 --> 0:13:07.600 the way they wave science and inventive ideas into the 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:12.240 narrative story. One installment includes a diagram and description that 0:13:12.320 --> 0:13:15.760 is essentially radar, well before these systems were in use. Quote. 0:13:15.800 --> 0:13:20.760 A pulsating polarized ether wave, if directed on a metal object, 0:13:20.880 --> 0:13:23.480 can be reflected in the same manner as a light 0:13:23.600 --> 0:13:27.360 ray is reflected from a bright surface. By manipulating the 0:13:27.520 --> 0:13:31.120 entire apparatus like a searchlight, waves would be sent over 0:13:31.160 --> 0:13:35.199 a large area. Sooner or later these waves would strike 0:13:35.240 --> 0:13:38.080 a space flyer. A small part of these waves would 0:13:38.080 --> 0:13:40.560 strike the metal body of the flyer, and these rays 0:13:40.559 --> 0:13:43.960 would be reflected back to the sending apparatus. Here they 0:13:44.000 --> 0:13:47.400 would fall on the Actina scope, which records only the 0:13:47.480 --> 0:13:52.000 reflected waves, not direct ones. From the intensity and elapsed 0:13:52.080 --> 0:13:55.439 time of the reflected impulses, the distance between the Earth 0:13:55.480 --> 0:13:59.760 and the flyer can then be accurately estimated. Another prescient 0:13:59.840 --> 0:14:03.319 description in the series pre dates video chat by decades, 0:14:03.720 --> 0:14:07.200 but describes exactly that he wrote quote. Stepping to the 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:09.440 telefot on the side of the wall, he pressed a 0:14:09.440 --> 0:14:11.640 group of buttons, and in a few minutes, the face 0:14:11.679 --> 0:14:14.960 plate of the telefont became luminous, revealing the face of 0:14:14.960 --> 0:14:18.720 a clean shaven man about thirty, a pleasant but serious face. 0:14:19.280 --> 0:14:21.520 As soon as he recognized the face of Ralph in 0:14:21.600 --> 0:14:25.280 his own telefonte, he smiled and said, Hello, Ralph. The 0:14:25.400 --> 0:14:28.720 twelve part series was collected into a novel for publication, 0:14:28.800 --> 0:14:34.360 but not until that was fourteen years after their serialized release. Yeah, 0:14:34.400 --> 0:14:36.680 that's still in print today. You can get it very, 0:14:36.760 --> 0:14:40.200 very easily, and you can usually get a pretty inexpensive 0:14:40.400 --> 0:14:43.920 E reader edition if you are curious. But again, this 0:14:44.000 --> 0:14:46.920 is not where you go for great literary writing. Next up, 0:14:47.000 --> 0:14:50.120 we're going to talk about Girl's Box continuing work in radio, 0:14:50.240 --> 0:14:51.960 and we will do that after we pause for a 0:14:51.960 --> 0:15:02.920 sponsor break. While Hugo Gernsbach continued to write fiction after 0:15:03.040 --> 0:15:06.880 Ralph one to four See for one plus, most of 0:15:06.920 --> 0:15:09.960 his publishing efforts were in electric and radio journalism and 0:15:10.040 --> 0:15:15.160 advocacy for years. As the wireless radio community grew, Gernsbach 0:15:15.240 --> 0:15:18.840 formed the Wireless Association of America in nineteen o nine 0:15:18.880 --> 0:15:21.920 and published a directory of operators called the Blue Book 0:15:21.960 --> 0:15:24.400 once a year so that people could connect more easily 0:15:24.440 --> 0:15:27.640 to one another. He also wrote a lot about best 0:15:27.680 --> 0:15:30.960 practices that would keep them from interfering with government radio 0:15:31.000 --> 0:15:35.360 stations and suggested ways that radio frequencies could be allocated 0:15:35.400 --> 0:15:39.280 and managed. He thought government regulation was only going to 0:15:39.320 --> 0:15:43.000 be problematic, writing that the creation of a wireless telegraph 0:15:43.080 --> 0:15:46.560 board to regulate quote is of no practical value whatsoever 0:15:46.880 --> 0:15:49.600 un American, and will keep down the progress of a 0:15:49.680 --> 0:15:53.120 young and useful art, which in time may develop into 0:15:53.160 --> 0:15:56.120 an as yet undreamed of asset of the nation's power. 0:15:57.000 --> 0:16:01.040 Wireless telegraphy and telephony in a country of vast distances 0:16:01.120 --> 0:16:05.080 as America, is a very valuable means for cheap transmission 0:16:05.120 --> 0:16:07.960 of intelligence, and it is the duty of the government 0:16:07.960 --> 0:16:10.760 to encourage it and not to pass a resolution to 0:16:10.840 --> 0:16:14.000 throttle it, like England and Germany have done, in which 0:16:14.040 --> 0:16:18.320 two countries the art is almost unknown. On the one hand, 0:16:19.840 --> 0:16:26.680 this sounds like discussions about internet regulation happening today. On 0:16:26.720 --> 0:16:31.000 the other hand, we definitely need radio bands that emergency 0:16:31.080 --> 0:16:34.320 services can use that are not overrun with other traffic. 0:16:35.040 --> 0:16:37.520 So Hugo would later claim that his writing on these 0:16:37.560 --> 0:16:40.520 issues which suggested a number of common sense measures that 0:16:40.560 --> 0:16:44.920 could be self regulated by users, uh, which I feel 0:16:44.960 --> 0:16:47.520 like is optimistic, But that was used word for word 0:16:47.760 --> 0:16:50.920 in the Wireless Act of LVE. But that's really not accurate. 0:16:51.080 --> 0:16:54.480 His concepts are all there, but the act itself is 0:16:54.520 --> 0:16:57.640 not in his words. But the start of World War 0:16:57.680 --> 0:17:01.800 One really put an end to amateur wireless broadcast activities 0:17:01.800 --> 0:17:05.840 so that naval operators were the sole users. This was 0:17:05.880 --> 0:17:09.120 an issue that caused just a great deal of chagrin, 0:17:09.200 --> 0:17:12.280 and that all played out in the pages of Gerns 0:17:12.320 --> 0:17:15.840 Box periodical. Yeah, he was left a little bit kind 0:17:15.920 --> 0:17:18.439 of um scrambling to figure out what he was going 0:17:18.520 --> 0:17:20.720 to do, since suddenly all of the people that were 0:17:20.800 --> 0:17:24.240 buying his magazine to build things and to to talk 0:17:24.280 --> 0:17:27.840 about what they were working on weren't allowed to build 0:17:28.000 --> 0:17:31.680 or work on those things anymore. Uh Guern's box sold 0:17:31.720 --> 0:17:35.000 Modern Electrics in nineteen to the publisher of Electrician and 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:38.520 Mechanic magazine, and it eventually became part of Popular Science 0:17:38.560 --> 0:17:42.480 Monthly after many changes and shifts, and then he started 0:17:42.520 --> 0:17:46.119 a fresh magazine called The Electrical experiment Er, and this 0:17:46.240 --> 0:17:48.439 was similar in tone to Modern Electrics, but it was 0:17:48.480 --> 0:17:51.639 also a lot more focused on building the community of 0:17:51.680 --> 0:17:55.400 the readership. Subscribers were encouraged to submit their own designs 0:17:55.400 --> 0:17:58.399 for prizes, and there were how to sections for setting 0:17:58.480 --> 0:18:02.200 up a homework area, aggregation and discussion of all the 0:18:02.280 --> 0:18:06.040 latest developments in the electrical field. There was also a 0:18:06.040 --> 0:18:09.119 column for helping readers get their inventions patented, with a 0:18:09.240 --> 0:18:11.919 Q and a element where a reader could send in 0:18:11.960 --> 0:18:14.520 a question along with a dollar and get advice on 0:18:14.560 --> 0:18:19.159 their invention and their application for patent. The Electrical Experimenters 0:18:19.200 --> 0:18:23.520 more carefully plotted out contents yielded a growth and readership 0:18:23.600 --> 0:18:27.760 to a hundred thousand subscribers. As the magazine continued to 0:18:27.880 --> 0:18:33.240 expand through its combination of practical advice and speculative technological ideas. 0:18:33.400 --> 0:18:37.720 Gernsbach also hired illustrators to help readers imagine what the 0:18:37.760 --> 0:18:40.920 future might look like if some of them mentioned ideas 0:18:40.920 --> 0:18:46.119 were implemented. The Electrical experiment Er eventually changed names to 0:18:46.359 --> 0:18:51.120 Science and Invention, covering not only the at home, grassroots inventor, 0:18:51.280 --> 0:18:54.879 but also including stories that covered work in science and 0:18:55.000 --> 0:18:59.480 engineering at the corporate level. Science and Invention became influential 0:18:59.600 --> 0:19:02.399 enough that other publications around the world started picking up 0:19:02.400 --> 0:19:06.360 their articles and stories for reprint. To maintain the connection 0:19:06.400 --> 0:19:11.080 to that independent home inventor demographic, he launched a new periodical, 0:19:11.280 --> 0:19:15.080 Radio Amateur News, which later shortened to Radio News, and 0:19:15.080 --> 0:19:18.320 he would continue to launch new titles in response to 0:19:18.320 --> 0:19:21.600 the changing times to keep growing his readership and offer 0:19:21.760 --> 0:19:26.200 niche information to his long term audience. He always maintained 0:19:26.240 --> 0:19:29.080 that the most exciting work was being done in what 0:19:29.200 --> 0:19:32.200 we today would call open source or even crowdsource style, 0:19:32.560 --> 0:19:35.640 with the sharing of ideas, rather than behind the doors 0:19:35.680 --> 0:19:40.040 of research and development divisions at corporations, writing quote, everyone 0:19:40.200 --> 0:19:42.840 knows that the more people who are working on an art, 0:19:42.960 --> 0:19:45.360 the more rapid the progress will be in the end. 0:19:46.040 --> 0:19:50.400 In one Gerns Black married his second wife, Dorothy Cantrowitz. 0:19:50.960 --> 0:19:54.480 Information on Dorothy is pretty sparse. This marriage was not 0:19:54.680 --> 0:19:57.800 his last, and it's not really clear how it ended. 0:19:58.359 --> 0:20:02.280 In guns By founded a radio station w r n 0:20:02.480 --> 0:20:06.159 Y under the auspices of his publishing company, experiment Or Publishing, 0:20:06.240 --> 0:20:10.480 and this was an experimental station. Hugo and his collaborators 0:20:10.480 --> 0:20:13.399 would test new media and technology on the station and 0:20:13.440 --> 0:20:17.399 then keep track of how the station's listeners reacted. The 0:20:17.480 --> 0:20:21.080 station would later broadcast early television broadcasts and was one 0:20:21.119 --> 0:20:25.320 of the first broadcast entities to regularly broadcast television signals 0:20:25.320 --> 0:20:29.240 on a schedule. These are very short. He published schematics 0:20:29.280 --> 0:20:32.720 for a receiver for these broadcasts in his magazine so 0:20:32.960 --> 0:20:37.240 enterprising readers could order their supplies, put them together, and 0:20:37.240 --> 0:20:40.960 then watch these short like five minute daily programs on 0:20:41.000 --> 0:20:44.080 a screen about the size of a postage stamp. He 0:20:44.160 --> 0:20:47.719 also introduced television magazine to capitalize on interest in the 0:20:47.720 --> 0:20:52.000 new medium. In he Go launched his first magazine venture 0:20:52.080 --> 0:20:56.879 with the strictly fiction focus. On April six, the first 0:20:57.000 --> 0:21:00.040 issue of Amazing Stories came out, and in it in 0:21:00.160 --> 0:21:04.480 Sboch laid out his aspiration for the periodical quote. At 0:21:04.520 --> 0:21:07.560 first thought, it does seem impossible that there could be 0:21:07.680 --> 0:21:11.439 room for another fiction magazine in this country. The reader 0:21:11.480 --> 0:21:14.680 may well wonder, aren't there enough already with the several 0:21:14.760 --> 0:21:19.080 hundred now being published. True, but this is not another 0:21:19.160 --> 0:21:23.639 fiction magazine. Amazing Stories is a new kind of fiction magazine. 0:21:23.680 --> 0:21:27.760 It is entirely new, entirely different, something that has never 0:21:28.000 --> 0:21:31.840 been done before in this country. There is the usual 0:21:31.960 --> 0:21:35.160 fiction magazine, the love story and the sex appeal type 0:21:35.200 --> 0:21:39.080 of magazine, the adventure type, and so on. But a 0:21:39.160 --> 0:21:45.520 magazine of scientifiction is a pioneer in its field in America. 0:21:45.640 --> 0:21:49.760 By scientifiction, I mean the Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, 0:21:49.800 --> 0:21:53.720 and Edgar Allan Poe type of story, a charming romance 0:21:53.760 --> 0:21:58.280 intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision. And he used 0:21:58.320 --> 0:22:01.359 this new platform to both draw readers in with established 0:22:01.359 --> 0:22:04.600 content like worked by Jules Vernon H. G. Wells, and 0:22:04.680 --> 0:22:08.080 to test out new stories and new writers. And because 0:22:08.080 --> 0:22:10.639 of all of this, Hugo Gernsbach is often credited with 0:22:10.720 --> 0:22:14.720 inventing the science fiction genre, and Isaac Asimov even called 0:22:14.800 --> 0:22:17.639 him the father of science fiction. But that's not because 0:22:17.680 --> 0:22:20.439 Gernsbach wrote the first works in the space, because he 0:22:20.440 --> 0:22:25.720 absolutely did not, and really he's not considered a literary genius, 0:22:25.760 --> 0:22:28.320 but because he was the first person to group such 0:22:28.400 --> 0:22:31.240 stories together and kind of try to create a genre 0:22:31.359 --> 0:22:34.720 of them. Although it was all fiction, Amazing Stories had 0:22:34.760 --> 0:22:40.080 a lot of the community crowdsourcing character of Gernsbach's nonfiction magazines. 0:22:40.600 --> 0:22:43.639 There was still a busy letter column which often was 0:22:43.680 --> 0:22:46.480 home to ongoing back and forth among readers and with 0:22:46.560 --> 0:22:51.120 the publisher, and readers were invited to suggest plot ideas. 0:22:51.760 --> 0:22:55.479 Amazing Stories was very, very popular, but Gernsbach was not 0:22:55.760 --> 0:22:58.560 really great with money. He was known to have problems 0:22:58.600 --> 0:23:00.480 with his writers when it came to paying them in 0:23:00.520 --> 0:23:03.119 a timely manner or to rate that they felt was fair. 0:23:03.800 --> 0:23:08.359 He also underpaid his staff, both under his electric standard 0:23:08.480 --> 0:23:11.879 under his publishing compared to industry standards, but he did 0:23:11.960 --> 0:23:15.639 give himself and his brother very comfortable salaries, and his 0:23:15.680 --> 0:23:19.520 paper supplier eventually took legal action against his company, experiment 0:23:19.600 --> 0:23:24.520 Or Publishing, for non payment. According to HP Lovecraft biographer 0:23:24.520 --> 0:23:27.919 Els breg to Camp, Lovecraft and other writers referred to 0:23:27.960 --> 0:23:32.920 Gernsback as Hugo the Rat. After Experimenter was declared bankrupt 0:23:32.960 --> 0:23:36.840 by the court, it went into a receivership. The staff remained, 0:23:36.880 --> 0:23:40.199 but Hugo and his brother were forced out. Amazing Stories 0:23:40.240 --> 0:23:43.280 has continued on over the years, passing through multiple hands 0:23:43.280 --> 0:23:47.040 of ownership and sometimes switching to an online only publishing model. 0:23:47.480 --> 0:23:50.679 In response to losing his position of power and Amazing Stories, 0:23:50.800 --> 0:23:56.480 Gernsbach launched two competing magazines with similar content. In they 0:23:56.480 --> 0:24:00.640 were called Science Wonder Stories and Air Wonder Stories. We'll 0:24:00.640 --> 0:24:03.960