WEBVTT - TechList: The Golden Age of Radio 0:00:05.400 --> 0:00:09.600 Hey there, it's Jonathan Strickland, and I'm here to introduce 0:00:09.760 --> 0:00:14.560 a playlist of ten episodes of my podcast tech Stuff 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:20.000 that are all about entertainment and entertainment related fields, from 0:00:20.120 --> 0:00:25.720 video games to television series, two films to internet videos 0:00:26.000 --> 0:00:30.440 from yesteryear. So I hope you guys enjoy these episodes. 0:00:30.560 --> 0:00:34.440 You can go to the tech Stuff podcast page and 0:00:34.479 --> 0:00:38.000 subscribe to listen to all sorts of episodes about tech 0:00:38.080 --> 0:00:42.240 from all realms, and hopefully this will provide a little 0:00:42.240 --> 0:00:46.040 bit of entertainment, a little bit of education, and probably 0:00:46.080 --> 0:00:49.000 more than a few puns, because that's kind of how 0:00:49.080 --> 0:01:06.240 I roll. Enjoy this playlist. Welcome to text Stuff, a 0:01:06.319 --> 0:01:13.920 production from my Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to 0:01:14.319 --> 0:01:16.920 tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive 0:01:16.920 --> 0:01:19.800 producer with I Heart Radio and I love all things teching. 0:01:19.800 --> 0:01:23.280 Its time for another entertainment playlist episode. This one is 0:01:23.319 --> 0:01:27.560 about the Golden Age of radio. So we're talking about 0:01:27.560 --> 0:01:31.080 the early days of radio when the radio was first 0:01:31.240 --> 0:01:34.399 coming into being. It's an interesting and dramatic story and 0:01:34.520 --> 0:01:38.240 I think it's a pretty entertaining one. Enjoy Today, Christian 0:01:38.280 --> 0:01:41.039 and I are going to talk about a subject that 0:01:41.120 --> 0:01:43.319 was suggested by a listener, and first of all, I 0:01:43.400 --> 0:01:47.160 must apologize to said listener because despite my heroic efforts 0:01:47.240 --> 0:01:50.680 of researching where this suggestion came from, I couldn't find it. 0:01:50.760 --> 0:01:53.160 So I'm guessing this was actually an older one. But 0:01:53.280 --> 0:01:57.000 said the forward thinking, bad prediction story about Hugo Gernsback 0:01:57.080 --> 0:01:58.920 got me thinking about how crazy it must have been 0:01:58.960 --> 0:02:01.160 to have lived through the day you of public radio, 0:02:01.400 --> 0:02:05.040 all the excitement and so little understanding, fireside chats, fearmongering 0:02:05.080 --> 0:02:08.639 about radio death rays. A history episode about the promises 0:02:08.639 --> 0:02:11.800 in popular notions surrounding radio could be fun and uh 0:02:12.040 --> 0:02:15.280 so we wanted to talk about the dawn of broadcast 0:02:15.440 --> 0:02:18.959 radio before we get into that, I should mention that 0:02:19.040 --> 0:02:22.120 way back in April two thousand eleven, Chris Palette and 0:02:22.200 --> 0:02:25.880 I sat down and recorded an episode titled Who Invented 0:02:25.919 --> 0:02:30.320 the Radio, which was mostly about the inventors who discovered 0:02:30.400 --> 0:02:34.120 radio waves and found ways to generate radio waves, obviously 0:02:34.160 --> 0:02:38.280 including the two big names Tesla and Marconi. Anyone who 0:02:38.280 --> 0:02:41.360 knows anything about the patent wars knows about there was 0:02:41.600 --> 0:02:44.880 a big kerfuffle between the two of those guys. Uh 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:48.440 little peek behind the curtain. That is the first time, 0:02:48.680 --> 0:02:51.600 and I think the only time I have recorded an 0:02:51.760 --> 0:02:56.320 entire episode and immediately said, we can't use that, Let's 0:02:56.360 --> 0:02:59.120 do it again. We recorded it all over because the 0:02:59.120 --> 0:03:01.520 ghost of Marcon he was haunting you. There was that, 0:03:01.800 --> 0:03:04.120 and we had in the old studio, we had a 0:03:04.160 --> 0:03:08.040 portrait of Nicola Tesla on the wall. We felt judged, 0:03:08.080 --> 0:03:11.400 but mainly Chris and I both felt that we gave 0:03:11.480 --> 0:03:16.200 such a disjointed story that we were jumping around so 0:03:16.280 --> 0:03:19.239 much that made no sense. And so we after talking 0:03:19.240 --> 0:03:22.800 it through once, we went back re recorded. So that 0:03:22.880 --> 0:03:25.880 first episode that we recorded, it's lost to time. We 0:03:25.919 --> 0:03:27.680 don't have it anymore. I don't wish I could, at 0:03:27.720 --> 0:03:29.760 least hope will be more organized today. But I'll tell 0:03:29.840 --> 0:03:33.520 you just from going through all this research that this 0:03:33.720 --> 0:03:38.480 is such a vast amount of information for this period 0:03:38.480 --> 0:03:40.600 of time, and I feel like and it's and you 0:03:40.720 --> 0:03:44.960 can you can get a PhD in radio communication in 0:03:45.080 --> 0:03:49.040 the history of radio and understanding these things, and it's yeah, 0:03:49.080 --> 0:03:53.280 we will probably only scratch the surface today, I imagine, Yeah, 0:03:53.360 --> 0:03:58.800 there there and there's so many crazy dramatic stories of betrayal, 0:03:59.200 --> 0:04:04.400 of of con men, of big. It's like this pirate 0:04:04.480 --> 0:04:07.680 industry of people just messing with each other. Yeah, it's 0:04:07.680 --> 0:04:10.880 it's fascinating. In fact, there there's probably two or three 0:04:10.920 --> 0:04:13.520 podcast worth of information that we could cover, but we're 0:04:13.560 --> 0:04:16.440 gonna try and get this in one if we can. So, 0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:18.760 first thing I got to mention is that radio and 0:04:18.760 --> 0:04:21.680 broadcast radio are two different things. You know, radio in 0:04:21.720 --> 0:04:24.200 the sense of what Tesla and Marconi were looking at, 0:04:24.240 --> 0:04:28.320 they were looking at ways of transmitting short signals across 0:04:28.520 --> 0:04:32.000 distances without using wires, so that was it. They were 0:04:32.040 --> 0:04:34.960 looking largely at using Morse code. So they might use 0:04:34.960 --> 0:04:40.039 a spark gap technology where they would create sparks and 0:04:40.120 --> 0:04:43.919 send messages that way. But you couldn't really do a 0:04:43.960 --> 0:04:46.679 sustained message that way without creating a lot of static 0:04:46.720 --> 0:04:50.680 and noise, and that was a real problem. So we 0:04:50.760 --> 0:04:55.000 need to look at another person for broadcast radio. That 0:04:55.040 --> 0:04:58.280 would be a Canadian by the name of Reginald Fessenden 0:04:59.000 --> 0:05:03.160 who said actually invented am radio. That would be uh, 0:05:03.240 --> 0:05:08.320 the amplitude modulated radio. And so from your notes here 0:05:09.240 --> 0:05:14.120 your notes, it says he worked with Edison or for Edison. 0:05:14.480 --> 0:05:17.360 He actually he actually worked for both Westinghouse and Edison 0:05:17.400 --> 0:05:19.880 at different points in his career. So yeah, he just 0:05:19.960 --> 0:05:23.479 like Tesla. Tesla also worked for both, although you know, 0:05:23.560 --> 0:05:27.480 again working for like it's like me saying that, you know, 0:05:27.560 --> 0:05:30.960 I worked for the head of our parent company, and 0:05:31.080 --> 0:05:33.960 technically I do, but I don't have any contact with them. 0:05:34.040 --> 0:05:36.440 So uh. He had dropped out of school as a 0:05:36.480 --> 0:05:39.760 young man. He actually did not complete his school work, 0:05:39.800 --> 0:05:43.480 but he was keenly interested in electricity and this potential 0:05:43.520 --> 0:05:47.040 to transmit messages wirelessly, and he was using that spark 0:05:47.080 --> 0:05:49.000 gap technology. But that was the problem, was that it 0:05:49.040 --> 0:05:50.880 was creating so much static and noise that it was 0:05:51.000 --> 0:05:55.240 very difficult to get any intelligible message across. Yeah. So 0:05:55.320 --> 0:05:58.800 actually I want to interject here for sure. So um, 0:05:58.920 --> 0:06:03.480 in like the model of human communication, when scholars are 0:06:03.480 --> 0:06:06.480 looking at how human beings communicate with each other regardless 0:06:06.480 --> 0:06:13.279 of media, they actually use uh this Fessenden Marconi uh 0:06:13.520 --> 0:06:16.880 model of transmissions as like the baseline for it. And 0:06:16.920 --> 0:06:20.400 it's all about like sending and receiving with feedback and 0:06:20.480 --> 0:06:23.520 feed forward and then there's a signal to noise ratio. 0:06:23.839 --> 0:06:26.360 That's how it's all understood. Whether you and I are 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:30.159 sitting here talking in the same room, or it's mass media, 0:06:30.279 --> 0:06:33.880 or it's uh like like in the early days of radio. 0:06:34.120 --> 0:06:36.280 That the way they literally thought of it was two 0:06:36.320 --> 0:06:39.080 ships that were thousands of yards away from one another 0:06:39.360 --> 0:06:42.400 trying to contact each other using this old radio technology, 0:06:42.600 --> 0:06:44.840 and they would have so much static they would have 0:06:44.920 --> 0:06:47.919 to constantly give each other feedback and feed forward to 0:06:48.040 --> 0:06:50.880 make sure the message was understood. It makes perfect sense, 0:06:50.920 --> 0:06:54.839 I mean, especially when you see the brilliance of Fessenden. 0:06:55.640 --> 0:06:58.120 He thought, well, they I can. I can create these 0:06:58.160 --> 0:07:00.960 sparks of electricity, create these elector of magnetic fields, and 0:07:01.000 --> 0:07:04.480 thus creating radio waves, but it isn't giving me the 0:07:04.480 --> 0:07:08.640 fidelity I need in order to communicate properly. He then thought, 0:07:08.720 --> 0:07:12.040 what if I used a continuous wave. So I create 0:07:12.360 --> 0:07:16.840 a sign wave and oscillating wave with the same amplitude, 0:07:16.920 --> 0:07:20.640 same frequency, So it's just steady. Now, that's not carrying 0:07:20.680 --> 0:07:24.360 any information by itself. It's if you could if you 0:07:24.360 --> 0:07:26.520 could hear it, it would just be a steady tone. 0:07:27.080 --> 0:07:30.280 But it's actually talking about using frequencies above the limit 0:07:30.320 --> 0:07:33.760 of human hearing. So let's say you create this wave 0:07:34.400 --> 0:07:39.680 and then you were too introduce a second wave, one 0:07:39.800 --> 0:07:42.960 that was created by your voice, so you'd speak into 0:07:42.960 --> 0:07:46.080 a microphone, it gets converted into electric waves. You add 0:07:46.120 --> 0:07:49.520 that on top of the uh, the existing wave you've 0:07:49.520 --> 0:07:53.720 already created, and you allow it to change the amplitude 0:07:54.520 --> 0:07:57.640 of that wave as the two waves are overlaid on 0:07:57.680 --> 0:08:00.640 top of one another. Sure, it's genius, it is genius. 0:08:00.680 --> 0:08:05.280 It's absolutely genius. Uh. So this was a M radio. 0:08:05.400 --> 0:08:08.680 This was the idea that what that became a M 0:08:08.760 --> 0:08:12.200 radio because it does modulate the amplitude of that wave. 0:08:12.440 --> 0:08:16.080 So the amplitude, by the way, is the the peak 0:08:16.120 --> 0:08:19.440 to peak uh difference, Right, It's not. It's not how 0:08:19.440 --> 0:08:23.200 many oscillations. This is just the the amplitude of the 0:08:23.240 --> 0:08:28.080 wave itself, how tall the peaks are, how low the 0:08:28.560 --> 0:08:30.800 troughs are, if you were looking at the wave across 0:08:31.600 --> 0:08:35.720 a line the way at Assuming that this innovation of 0:08:35.840 --> 0:08:40.800 his significantly reduced the noise and static it did, it did. 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:44.120 It did still have issues and that you could have 0:08:44.240 --> 0:08:48.000 interference with other waves that were created at that same frequency. 0:08:48.360 --> 0:08:52.320 It also meant that you could get interference with other 0:08:52.360 --> 0:08:57.280 electromagnetic phenomenon like like a lightning strike. So also if 0:08:57.320 --> 0:09:00.000 you pass below like if you go under a bridge, 0:09:00.080 --> 0:09:03.000 you would hear, you know, the disruption of the signal. 0:09:03.400 --> 0:09:07.560 So it wasn't perfect, but it was an incredible step forward. 0:09:08.400 --> 0:09:14.000 And this was a revolutionary I mean he tested it successfully. 0:09:15.040 --> 0:09:19.160 He did a short distance test between two towers and 0:09:19.200 --> 0:09:21.800 it worked fine. And then in nineteen o six he 0:09:21.840 --> 0:09:27.240 had his infamous Christmas concert for sailors. See this is yeah, 0:09:27.320 --> 0:09:29.080 this is where I think that that boat to boat 0:09:29.679 --> 0:09:34.600 idea comes from. Yeah, because it turns out the disaster 0:09:34.640 --> 0:09:39.560 of the Titanic would end up really making this uh 0:09:39.800 --> 0:09:42.600 clear that there needed to be some radio communication for 0:09:42.640 --> 0:09:45.200 ships at sea. But what he wanted to do was 0:09:45.240 --> 0:09:48.080 he wanted to send out a message to essentially telegraph 0:09:48.120 --> 0:09:52.800 operators aboard ships. That was his plan. So he proceeded 0:09:52.840 --> 0:09:57.760 the concert with an actual telegraph message that essentially translates 0:09:57.760 --> 0:10:01.200 into hey, pay attention. And then once he did that, 0:10:01.240 --> 0:10:03.679 he started knew it was coming though, right They were not, 0:10:03.800 --> 0:10:06.640 most of them. They just knew to pay attention because 0:10:06.640 --> 0:10:09.440 they got the message. Yeah. There they were like, well, 0:10:09.559 --> 0:10:12.079 here's the message. Whatever is going to happen, We need 0:10:12.120 --> 0:10:14.960 to really focus. And so what they were expecting to 0:10:14.960 --> 0:10:17.480 hear were just the noises they would hear for the 0:10:17.520 --> 0:10:20.480 dots and dashes of Morse code. So then he he 0:10:20.520 --> 0:10:25.080 gives a short speech, he plays a violin uh, and 0:10:25.200 --> 0:10:28.120 plays a Holy Night. There were supposed to be other 0:10:28.160 --> 0:10:30.520 people who talked into the microphone too, but most of 0:10:30.520 --> 0:10:33.199 them chickened out because they they got like terrible stage 0:10:33.200 --> 0:10:35.760 fright because they realized all of a sudden that they 0:10:35.760 --> 0:10:39.440 were speaking to like hundreds of people, right right, yeah, yeah, 0:10:39.520 --> 0:10:42.520 And so anyway, it ended up being a big hit. 0:10:42.600 --> 0:10:45.760 Sailors up and down the Atlantic coast we were able 0:10:45.800 --> 0:10:48.440 to hear him and reported back to it, so it 0:10:48.559 --> 0:10:51.760 was known to be a success. And that's how AM 0:10:51.960 --> 0:10:57.040 radio got started. Yeah yeah, I like that. Yeah, so 0:10:57.280 --> 0:10:59.679 that's a nice start to it ends up being or 0:10:59.760 --> 0:11:04.080 rather thorny industry. Yeah. So, so he he demonstrates this 0:11:04.920 --> 0:11:10.320 capability and immediately other physicists and engineers start to experiment 0:11:10.400 --> 0:11:13.280 with it because some of them had been independently working 0:11:13.280 --> 0:11:15.880 on the same kind of idea. Festendon ended up being 0:11:15.960 --> 0:11:19.800 the first to make it really work in a public demonstration. 0:11:20.160 --> 0:11:21.720 So you had a lot of other people who were 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:24.920 who either adopted his ideas or continued to develop their 0:11:24.960 --> 0:11:29.960 own ideas, and a lot of amateurs were starting to 0:11:30.200 --> 0:11:35.880 experiment with radio transmissions, including transmitting out to telegraph operators, 0:11:35.920 --> 0:11:39.760 who often were very much entertained by this because it 0:11:39.800 --> 0:11:43.200 was different from just listening to clicks on the headphones. 0:11:43.360 --> 0:11:46.080 This is the part that's the most fascinating about the 0:11:46.160 --> 0:11:49.040 evolution of radio to me is that even though the 0:11:49.080 --> 0:11:53.800 technology is ultimately made for mass communication, people originally started 0:11:53.920 --> 0:11:57.920 using it as one to one communication across long distances, 0:11:57.960 --> 0:12:03.960 replacing a telegraph. And then, uh, these amateur operators, these 0:12:04.040 --> 0:12:08.520 like d I y uh people in their in their garage, 0:12:08.600 --> 0:12:11.440 is just you know, tinkering around with the technology that 0:12:11.440 --> 0:12:13.880 they could get a hold of. We're able to turn 0:12:13.960 --> 0:12:16.679 it into this mass communication then yeah. And it's funny 0:12:16.720 --> 0:12:19.080 because when you look at the early ones, obviously they 0:12:19.080 --> 0:12:22.720 were using very low wattage transmitters, so that meant that 0:12:22.720 --> 0:12:25.400 they couldn't transmit very far, most of them. I mean, 0:12:25.720 --> 0:12:27.680 if you were a big name, you might be able 0:12:27.720 --> 0:12:30.240 to work with someone like General Electric to get a 0:12:30.320 --> 0:12:33.600 really big transmitter and be able to to send a 0:12:33.640 --> 0:12:36.840 signal far away. Because the signals reach is largely dependent 0:12:36.920 --> 0:12:39.439 upon the power of the transmitter. Right, the further way 0:12:39.480 --> 0:12:41.880 you get, the weaker the signal is and the less 0:12:41.920 --> 0:12:44.080 you'll be likely you are able to pick it up 0:12:44.120 --> 0:12:48.320 with a receiver. So in the early days people were 0:12:48.760 --> 0:12:52.880 happy to experiment with this, and there was really no 0:12:52.960 --> 0:12:57.280 regulation because there there hadn't been a demonstrable need to 0:12:57.360 --> 0:13:01.239 regulate yet, because no one had the power to interfere 0:13:01.320 --> 0:13:06.360 that much with anything that was important. Nineteen o seven, 0:13:06.360 --> 0:13:09.400 Festan would invent a high frequency electric generator to create 0:13:09.480 --> 0:13:12.680 radio waves in the one hurts frequency, which was really important. 0:13:12.920 --> 0:13:16.679 And in nineteen o eight Dr Charles Aaron Culver, who 0:13:16.760 --> 0:13:19.640 was newly hired as a professor of physics at Beloit 0:13:19.760 --> 0:13:28.600 College or bell Watt if you prefer um, and it's 0:13:28.960 --> 0:13:32.920 it's in a town called bell Watt actually, but set 0:13:32.960 --> 0:13:36.240 up a radio telegraph assembly which became the foundation for 0:13:36.280 --> 0:13:39.199 the college is radio station, though voice in music transmission 0:13:39.200 --> 0:13:41.160 wouldn't be part of it until the nineteen twenties. But 0:13:41.200 --> 0:13:46.120 this this became like again, it was someone a physics professor, 0:13:46.160 --> 0:13:48.600 in this case, a physics professor who was already interested 0:13:48.640 --> 0:13:52.120 in radio and had been working on it independently, setting 0:13:52.200 --> 0:13:55.600 up a thing that would eventually evolve into an early 0:13:56.200 --> 0:13:59.840 early radio station. Yeah, and that's kind of Another interesting 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:02.960 aspect of this too is that these early amateur radio 0:14:03.000 --> 0:14:08.319 stations weren't just uh d I y kind of hobbyists 0:14:09.200 --> 0:14:11.160 doing it on their own. A lot of it was 0:14:11.280 --> 0:14:14.480 educational institutions, not just colleges but also high schools that 0:14:14.520 --> 0:14:18.360 were just you know, trying to use it for educational purposes. Yeah, 0:14:18.400 --> 0:14:22.720 and that it's interesting later on what happens when amateur 0:14:22.840 --> 0:14:25.520 radio sort of gets more regulated. It really reminds me 0:14:25.560 --> 0:14:28.640 of the early days of personal computers and how how 0:14:29.160 --> 0:14:32.920 it first started off as a hobbyist thing, and then 0:14:33.160 --> 0:14:35.840 you know, you had bleeding edge adopters who might not 0:14:36.280 --> 0:14:38.800 build a computer, but they're curious about how they might 0:14:38.920 --> 0:14:43.720 use it. And then later you had people who were uh, 0:14:43.760 --> 0:14:46.280 you know more it became more and more mainstream as 0:14:46.320 --> 0:14:49.680 time went on. So we've seen other emerging technologies that 0:14:49.720 --> 0:14:53.600 have followed a similar pathway to radio. Uh not always 0:14:53.680 --> 0:14:56.600 with the dramatics. I mean, there were some definite dramatics 0:14:56.600 --> 0:15:00.520 and early personal computers too. But we got some crazy 0:15:00.600 --> 0:15:03.480 stories to tell. But first, we have another big name 0:15:03.520 --> 0:15:05.360 in radio that we have to mention. Yeah, so in 0:15:05.440 --> 0:15:09.760 nineteen ten, this guy lead to Forest really broadcasted like 0:15:09.880 --> 0:15:16.600 the first sort of broad meant for mass communication radio broadcast, uh, 0:15:16.640 --> 0:15:21.320 specifically of a guy named Enrico Caruso singing. I believe 0:15:21.320 --> 0:15:24.640 it was opera singing from what I understood, um, and 0:15:24.880 --> 0:15:28.640 he he ushered in this area era of radio communications. 0:15:29.320 --> 0:15:33.120 And unfortunately, though even though he was broadcasting probably on 0:15:33.160 --> 0:15:36.480 Fessenden's news system, for the most part it was static 0:15:36.560 --> 0:15:39.800 and radio interference, so the audience barely heard anything. But 0:15:40.720 --> 0:15:43.280 you know, for a decade afterwards, radio fans were both 0:15:43.400 --> 0:15:48.760 using uh, these amateur radio units to broadcast and receive. Yeah, 0:15:48.760 --> 0:15:51.840 it wasn't just them receiving. Yeah, it wasn't like they 0:15:51.880 --> 0:15:55.440 were a passive audience. They were creating as well. And again, 0:15:56.360 --> 0:15:59.640 depending upon the power of their radio transmitters, it may 0:15:59.680 --> 0:16:01.800 be the they were only transmitting to people in their 0:16:01.840 --> 0:16:06.480 general neighborhood or even small town, but you wouldn't be 0:16:06.520 --> 0:16:08.920 able to necessarily pick up that signal for much further, 0:16:08.960 --> 0:16:11.120 it also depends on the quality of the receiver as well. 0:16:11.160 --> 0:16:15.200 Like you could build a very simple a radio receiver 0:16:15.320 --> 0:16:18.000 that doesn't even require a battery and as a crystal, 0:16:18.080 --> 0:16:22.120 a very long antenna and some headphones, and uh, you 0:16:22.120 --> 0:16:24.680 can pick up radio signals if you're close enough to 0:16:24.800 --> 0:16:27.560 a transmitter. Uh. And in fact, that's a fun project 0:16:27.560 --> 0:16:29.440 to do. You can look up how to do that online. 0:16:30.000 --> 0:16:32.560 So also in nineteen ten, the same time Leada Forest 0:16:32.640 --> 0:16:34.760 was was experimenting with us, you had a guy named 0:16:34.840 --> 0:16:38.480 Charles David Harold who opened a school that he called 0:16:38.600 --> 0:16:41.800 the Herald College of Engineering and Wireless and he was 0:16:41.840 --> 0:16:44.800 experimenting with wireless voice transmissions as early as nineteen o 0:16:44.960 --> 0:16:48.760 nine and providing a thrill to telegraph operators who suddenly 0:16:48.760 --> 0:16:51.200 were able to hear voices over the telegraph lines. Now 0:16:51.240 --> 0:16:55.320 this is out in California, so he's surprising people out 0:16:55.360 --> 0:16:58.520 there who normally they weren't expecting it at all, but 0:16:58.560 --> 0:17:01.400 they loved it because you would have imagine this job 0:17:01.520 --> 0:17:05.439 is a little probably very tedious. Yeah. So he actually 0:17:05.480 --> 0:17:09.679 started setting up a regular broadcast time like the first 0:17:09.840 --> 0:17:13.199 radio programming in a way, and by nineteen ten he 0:17:13.240 --> 0:17:16.480 had created this, uh, this program that would include reading 0:17:16.480 --> 0:17:20.560 out news to telegraph operators. And his wife Sybil got 0:17:20.600 --> 0:17:24.119 involved and she started playing records that the description I 0:17:24.160 --> 0:17:26.359 said was the kind of records young people like to 0:17:26.400 --> 0:17:32.520 listen to. Back in Yeah, so playing records, So playing 0:17:32.560 --> 0:17:38.600 music for these telegraph operators and holding the first radio contests. 0:17:39.560 --> 0:17:42.399 And here's how the radio contest work back then. She 0:17:42.520 --> 0:17:46.480 would instruct people listening to come by their house, sign 0:17:46.560 --> 0:17:48.760 a guest book with their name and where they were from, 0:17:48.800 --> 0:17:52.119 and then they might win a little prize. Was number seven. No, 0:17:52.520 --> 0:17:56.040 it wasn't calling number seven. Uh. And here's the coolest part. 0:17:56.080 --> 0:17:59.720 I think this little amateur station eventually over time and 0:18:00.280 --> 0:18:05.560 twenty one would become kq W, and in ninete it 0:18:05.600 --> 0:18:11.240 would evolve into k CBS as then the CBS. Yeah. 0:18:11.400 --> 0:18:13.760 I thought that was really interesting, especially like we'll talk 0:18:13.840 --> 0:18:17.280 later about, CBS is sort of importance in a big 0:18:17.320 --> 0:18:20.960 game of radio development. Yeah. So nineteen ten is also 0:18:20.960 --> 0:18:23.800 when the US passed the Wireless Ship Act, which required 0:18:23.840 --> 0:18:26.400 all ships of the US traveling more than two miles 0:18:26.400 --> 0:18:29.159 off the coast and carrying more than fifty passengers to 0:18:29.280 --> 0:18:32.840 have a wireless radio equipment on board with a with 0:18:32.920 --> 0:18:36.239 an operator, and the transmission range had to be at 0:18:36.280 --> 0:18:39.480 least a hundred miles. And that meant that it created 0:18:39.640 --> 0:18:44.560 a lot more radio transmissions broadcast without any regulation. This 0:18:44.640 --> 0:18:47.480 is where the United States government starts to say, this 0:18:47.560 --> 0:18:50.159 is going to become a problem because now we we 0:18:50.200 --> 0:18:52.280 already have a lot of radio traffic going on just 0:18:52.359 --> 0:18:55.800 through amateurs as well as ship to land land to 0:18:55.840 --> 0:18:58.880 ship communication. Uh. It's starting to get a little crowded 0:18:58.920 --> 0:19:00.560 and we're starting to get interfere rants. We need to 0:19:00.560 --> 0:19:03.240 figure out how to handle this. So in nineteen twelve, 0:19:03.280 --> 0:19:05.760 they passed the Radio Act of nineteen twelve, which is 0:19:05.760 --> 0:19:07.359 good because if they had passed the Radio Act of 0:19:07.440 --> 0:19:10.920 nineteen twelve and nineteen eleven, everyone would have been confused. Uh. 0:19:10.960 --> 0:19:13.320 And marked the first time the US government required radio 0:19:13.320 --> 0:19:16.840 stations to be licensed. So the licensing was really just 0:19:16.880 --> 0:19:20.320 to create order in chaos. Uh. And it was really 0:19:20.400 --> 0:19:23.879 kind of like, you know, we want to make sure 0:19:24.000 --> 0:19:27.200 that we're keeping certain frequencies free so that we can 0:19:27.400 --> 0:19:33.320 have these these very important transmissions go uninterrupted because am transmissions, 0:19:33.320 --> 0:19:35.840 if you transmit two things on the same frequency, you 0:19:35.880 --> 0:19:39.199 get lots of interference and just different from There was 0:19:39.600 --> 0:19:42.840 a military component to this as well, because World War 0:19:42.920 --> 0:19:47.320 One was on the horizon, was happening, and they the 0:19:47.440 --> 0:19:53.159 government banned amateur radio broadcasting during the war for you know, 0:19:53.200 --> 0:19:55.960 the reason that they were trying to transmit signals to 0:19:56.000 --> 0:19:59.560 one another of important nature. If somebody was talking in 0:19:59.600 --> 0:20:03.280 their girl raj about um uh, you know their favorite 0:20:03.280 --> 0:20:06.440 records the young people listen to. Yeah, the ones that 0:20:06.480 --> 0:20:08.879 the young people listen to, they would overlap and they 0:20:08.880 --> 0:20:11.400 wouldn't get these important messages, so they shut it all down. 0:20:11.600 --> 0:20:16.240 And also just radio detection to the the remote possibility 0:20:16.280 --> 0:20:21.000 that they might detect radio transmissions from either allies or enemies. 0:20:21.720 --> 0:20:26.239 It would mean that yeah, yeah, this is this is 0:20:26.600 --> 0:20:29.600 before the whole Bletchley Park on Dygma thing, which is 0:20:30.080 --> 0:20:32.080 I've talked about that in the previous episode of tech Stuff. 0:20:32.080 --> 0:20:36.600 But fascinating story. So Uren Edwin Armstrong, who's going to 0:20:36.640 --> 0:20:40.720 be important throughout this conversation, and his story is amazing 0:20:40.760 --> 0:20:44.560 and tragic. Uh. He patents a radio receiver circuit that 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:48.040 increases the selectivity which allows you to tune into specific 0:20:48.040 --> 0:20:52.040 frequencies and the sensitivity of radio receivers. That means it 0:20:52.080 --> 0:20:55.840 was able to pick up weaker radio signals than previous receivers. 0:20:55.880 --> 0:20:58.359 So selectivity obviously very important. You want to be able 0:20:58.440 --> 0:21:01.840 to say I'm looking at this picular band of frequencies 0:21:02.200 --> 0:21:05.600 and I don't want anything outside of that. Um, and 0:21:05.720 --> 0:21:08.240 we would see that get better and better in he 0:21:08.280 --> 0:21:14.840 would invent the super heterodyne radio receiver or superhead. So 0:21:14.920 --> 0:21:17.800 this principle is actually really fascinating, and I gotta admit 0:21:17.800 --> 0:21:21.359 to you, a Christian, I had to really sit down 0:21:21.400 --> 0:21:23.320 and read this a few times to kind of get 0:21:23.359 --> 0:21:26.600 what was going on. Yeah, because I mean this is radio, 0:21:27.040 --> 0:21:32.159 electromagnetic and radio broadcast. I have a basic understanding of it, 0:21:32.200 --> 0:21:34.640 but it does go well beyond what I studied in school. 0:21:35.160 --> 0:21:36.880 And it took a while, but now I think I've 0:21:36.920 --> 0:21:38.680 got it. Will explain it to me, because yeah, I'm 0:21:38.720 --> 0:21:41.200 more of the on the side of the like cultural 0:21:41.240 --> 0:21:45.879 examination of radio, whereas like the technology of it escapes 0:21:45.920 --> 0:21:49.480 me sometimes, So yeah, hit me. All right. Let's say, 0:21:49.720 --> 0:21:53.719 let's say I want to transmit a radio signal at 0:21:53.720 --> 0:21:55.840 a high frequency, so it's not going to interfere with 0:21:55.840 --> 0:22:01.159 anything else, but that processing high frequencies is a little tricky, 0:22:01.240 --> 0:22:05.200 so you might have a receiver that can process frequencies 0:22:05.280 --> 0:22:08.280 up to I'm just going to take an arbitrary number 0:22:09.480 --> 0:22:13.400 killer hurts, but I want to transmit at fifteen hundred 0:22:13.720 --> 0:22:17.679 killer hurts. If I were to introduce that frequency to 0:22:17.840 --> 0:22:22.560 an oscillator tuned to a different frequency, suddenly I would 0:22:22.600 --> 0:22:25.879 be able to receive that. Uh, not just at the 0:22:25.920 --> 0:22:29.440 original frequency I transmit at, but the difference between that 0:22:29.600 --> 0:22:33.280 and the oscillating one. So another easy example, let's say 0:22:33.320 --> 0:22:38.320 they have an oscillating frequency at a thousand killer hurts. Okay, 0:22:38.880 --> 0:22:41.920 that would mean that if you used a receiver tune 0:22:41.960 --> 0:22:46.840 to five killer hurts, killer hurts or two thousand five 0:22:47.200 --> 0:22:49.680 killer hurts, you would pick up that signal and could 0:22:49.680 --> 0:22:52.919 process it. Okay. So and I'm imagining that this is 0:22:52.960 --> 0:22:55.679 a process that's still used today. Yeah. This is the 0:22:55.720 --> 0:23:00.240 principle of transmitting and receiving with a radio so that 0:23:00.280 --> 0:23:03.000 your radio doesn't have to have as wide a spectrum. 0:23:03.160 --> 0:23:06.080 It's called inter minute frequency. And it took me a 0:23:06.119 --> 0:23:08.240 long time to figure out what was going on. Is 0:23:08.240 --> 0:23:10.800 the oscillator that was throwing me off? And then I realized, oh, 0:23:10.840 --> 0:23:13.679 the oscillators tuned to a different frequency, and that's what 0:23:13.840 --> 0:23:16.320 gives you the broader range that you can pick up. 0:23:16.800 --> 0:23:20.880 It's pretty fascinating. And again Armstrong was absolutely brilliant coming 0:23:20.960 --> 0:23:23.840 up with this. Uh. And then we move up to 0:23:23.960 --> 0:23:26.760 the nineteen twenties. Yeah, and the twenties is when this 0:23:27.000 --> 0:23:29.280 educational stuff that I was talking about earlier. It really 0:23:29.320 --> 0:23:31.680 hits a boom. There was like more than two hundred 0:23:31.880 --> 0:23:36.040 educational organizations across the United States of America that, uh, 0:23:36.240 --> 0:23:40.240 we're requesting broadcasting licenses so that they could transmit. And 0:23:40.480 --> 0:23:44.119 whether they were using it as a an opportunity for 0:23:44.160 --> 0:23:47.480 their students to learn about the technology or to broadcast 0:23:47.560 --> 0:23:51.280 educational information didn't really matter. The unfortunate thing is that 0:23:51.640 --> 0:23:56.560 thirteen years later, by n three or more of these 0:23:57.040 --> 0:24:00.919 educational institutions had folded and in basically it was because 0:24:00.960 --> 0:24:02.400 of and this is going to be a huge theme 0:24:02.400 --> 0:24:07.160 of this episode, because of ad based programming and stronger stations, 0:24:07.200 --> 0:24:10.680 commercial stations that were able to overlap their signal. Yeah, 0:24:10.760 --> 0:24:14.960 you essentially had not just the fact that the companies 0:24:15.000 --> 0:24:19.480 had more technological behind them, but the government was favoring 0:24:19.560 --> 0:24:24.000