Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Polette and
Speaker 1: I'm an editor at how stuff works dot com. Sitting
Speaker 1: across me, as usual, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. I
Speaker 1: remember all my life raining down as cold as ice. Oh,
Speaker 1: Mandy uh and am radio Classic. Yeah, we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: today about who invented the radio? And you would think
Speaker 1: that this would have a very easy answer and that
Speaker 1: we could give it and then you could be on
Speaker 1: your Mary Little way. Not so fast. Yes, As a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, I was. I was reading a book
Speaker 1: not too long ago that made me think about topics
Speaker 1: like this. But and Jonathan and I've talked about this
Speaker 1: with regard to TV, because there were two people who
Speaker 1: were working on how to create an electrical television like
Speaker 1: rather than than a mechanical because mechanical TVs have been
Speaker 1: around for a while, but no one had come up
Speaker 1: with uh, an easily manufactured electric version. Right. But in
Speaker 1: that case, we were really talking about primarily two people,
Speaker 1: and we're sort of talking about two people here, give
Speaker 1: or take another twelve or fifteen. Right, Yeah, there's two
Speaker 1: people that ultimately the question tends to boil down to.
Speaker 1: But that's even that is too simplistic a a look
Speaker 1: at radio. So to really get a get a handle
Speaker 1: on how complex this topic is, you actually have to
Speaker 1: go back more than five decades before radio came into being,
Speaker 1: that's true. And and again, like a lot of scientific discovery,
Speaker 1: each new iteration is an improvement on another technology or
Speaker 1: uses a technology that has recently been discovered in a
Speaker 1: new way. So we're really this is another one of
Speaker 1: those standing on the shoulders of giants situation, very very apt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this this is all taking place, well, the earliest parts
Speaker 1: are taking place in the early nineteenth century, but most
Speaker 1: of it's taking place within a two decade period at
Speaker 1: the end of the nineteenth century. Some of it's spilling
Speaker 1: over into the early twentieth century. And you're talking about
Speaker 1: an era in which you have an enormous intellectual revolution. Right,
Speaker 1: You've got people who are wicked smart. Right, these are
Speaker 1: guys and gals as well. I mean, we're in an
Speaker 1: age where there were science was reigning supreme Science scientists
Speaker 1: were the rock stars of this era. They really kind
Speaker 1: of were. Yeah, I mean, you had scientists who could
Speaker 1: command the attention of thousands at at a speech. It
Speaker 1: was really hard to imagine now because you know, you
Speaker 1: don't really think of like the guy from the LHC
Speaker 1: getting up and people doing the wave. But back then,
Speaker 1: the guys were the people who were shaping the earth.
Speaker 1: So it's really a fascinating time, and there were so
Speaker 1: many developments and so many people were working on this
Speaker 1: sort of technology at the same time. There's no surprise
Speaker 1: that there's controversy because you've got a lot of people
Speaker 1: all trying to figure out how to have a useful
Speaker 1: application of a newly discovered law or or or feature
Speaker 1: of the universe. Right, So clearly you're gonna have some overlap.
Speaker 1: So let's start from before we're even talking about radio,
Speaker 1: all right, So we're gonna talk about in eighteen thirty seven,
Speaker 1: there's a guy named Samuel Morse, and Samuel Morris, of course,
Speaker 1: is famous for inventing the telegraph as well as Morse Code,
Speaker 1: which was the series of bleeps and buzzes that that
Speaker 1: would allow you to transmit information to communicate over wires
Speaker 1: over a long distance. Right. That the telegraph really changed
Speaker 1: the way the world communicated um significantly. Right. It's one
Speaker 1: of those those technologies that we like to say makes
Speaker 1: the world smaller, because it significantly reduced the amount of
Speaker 1: time that that news traveled the world. We heard about
Speaker 1: things far more quickly than we used to in the past.
Speaker 1: People were able to communicate with one another across great distances,
Speaker 1: of which you had to have a cable in order
Speaker 1: to make that happen. Yeah, and that was the that
Speaker 1: was the big barrier, right. I mean, the cable was
Speaker 1: definitely a lot more efficient than say the pony express
Speaker 1: or carrying a message across the ocean on a on
Speaker 1: a ship, but you still had to have a cable.
Speaker 1: You had to have a physical connection between two stations
Speaker 1: in order to transmit information, and unfortunately that would mean
Speaker 1: that certain remote areas could not easily get a station. Uh.
Speaker 1: It also meant that you had a physical object that
Speaker 1: could withstand only so much punishment before it failed. So
Speaker 1: you had a cable that could be broken or there
Speaker 1: could be some sort of interference there. That that meant
Speaker 1: that it was While it was a huge leap in
Speaker 1: communication from what came previously. There had to be a
Speaker 1: better way. Once it became apparent to companies that the
Speaker 1: telegraph could make them lots and lots of money, people
Speaker 1: wanted to find better ways to use the telegraph and
Speaker 1: better telegraph technology, right because you gotta remember that first
Speaker 1: telegraph wire, all it could do is transmit these these
Speaker 1: sounds like you couldn't there was no way to convert
Speaker 1: human voice into uh electricity and transmitted across a wire.
Speaker 1: Yet no one had figured that part out back in
Speaker 1: seven And also you could only transmit information one way
Speaker 1: at a time. You couldn't have two way communications simultaneously.
Speaker 1: That and and that's one of the things that a
Speaker 1: lot of inventors were out to to do in the
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century. They were earnestly looking for ways
Speaker 1: to improve to to make uh, make it possible to
Speaker 1: send telegraph messages in two ways, to improve the quality
Speaker 1: of the technology, um without necessarily just laying a pair
Speaker 1: of cables and having one b one way and the
Speaker 1: other being the other way. And you can do that,
Speaker 1: but you've just doubled your costs exactly. The creating the
Speaker 1: infrastructure for this system is is costly, as we all
Speaker 1: know for talking about things like, uh, you know, replacing
Speaker 1: twisted wire telephone lines with fiber optics, or even replacing
Speaker 1: two G cellular technology with three G or four G technology.
Speaker 1: That's right, even then, you're talking about major changes to infrastructure.
Speaker 1: It's not as simple as oh, well, we just need
Speaker 1: to throw in a software patch and everything will be cool.
Speaker 1: It's not as simple as that. And some of you
Speaker 1: may remember um us talking in the past about the
Speaker 1: Internet cables that run across the ocean. Every once in
Speaker 1: a while, something will clip one of them and will
Speaker 1: knock out communication temporarily as traffic gets rerouted through the
Speaker 1: other lines. But you know, it's having those giant wires
Speaker 1: um running across the ocean is sort of impractical. It's
Speaker 1: not only costly, it's it's impractical. So I mean, it works,
Speaker 1: but you know, you have to worry about maintenance and
Speaker 1: and the possibility that something will cut one of the
Speaker 1: cables or that it will just age and snap. So um.
Speaker 1: So people were looking into this, but investors were willing
Speaker 1: to back that because they saw the possibility that they
Speaker 1: might make lots and lots of money if they're uh,
Speaker 1: if the inventors were able to capitalize on that. But
Speaker 1: some of them inadvertently started discovering other technologies and a
Speaker 1: lot of those advancements came out. It turned out to
Speaker 1: be laying the groundwork for radio. Yeah, And some of
Speaker 1: some scientists were working independently of the whole communications UH
Speaker 1: aspect entirely, and they were just interested in learning more
Speaker 1: about the way our universe works. One of those guys
Speaker 1: was a mathematician named James Clerk Maxwell, and thirty thirty
Speaker 1: years after the invent invention of the telegraph, so in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty seven, he started to think about light in
Speaker 1: a way that no one else had thought of up
Speaker 1: to that point. And he was thinking of light as
Speaker 1: an electro magnetic phenomenon. Okay, so he's looking at light
Speaker 1: and electric waves and magnetic waves, and he he thinks
Speaker 1: these things are connected. These are not discrete UH phenomena.
Speaker 1: These are all somehow part of a spectrum of phenomena.
Speaker 1: So this was revolutionary. Now, unfortunately Maxwell was unable to
Speaker 1: prove his theory during his lifetime. Now we know today
Speaker 1: that this is true, that that the light that we
Speaker 1: see that's part of the electromagnetic spectrum. We only can
Speaker 1: we can only perceive a very narrow band of that
Speaker 1: electromagnetic spectrum with our eyes. Now, other parts of the
Speaker 1: electromagnetic spectrum can affect us sometimes in really nasty ways,
Speaker 1: but but we can only see a pretty narrow band
Speaker 1: of it. So Maxwell was really ahead of his time,
Speaker 1: and his his theories were part of what laid the
Speaker 1: scientific groundwork for radio. So you had the technological groundwork
Speaker 1: and you had the scientific groundwork, and these things are
Speaker 1: converging at a really rapid rate. And we see that
Speaker 1: come to a head in the eighties. Really. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: somebody you might have heard of, um, Heinrich Hurts. Um.
Speaker 1: He was the first person to measure act to actually
Speaker 1: measure the speed of radio waves. Um. And he basically
Speaker 1: he at the time he was a professor at a
Speaker 1: German high school. Um. And what he was doing he
Speaker 1: used a couple of parabolic mirrors and a spark gap. Um.
Speaker 1: You may have seen spark gap in those old timey
Speaker 1: monster movies. The two pieces of metal that are are
Speaker 1: sort of together at one end and they diverge slightly
Speaker 1: and there the spark travels up from the short distance
Speaker 1: the long distance and it looks kind of spooky. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a it's stock for your average crazy
Speaker 1: scientists laboratory. So so they have three doesn't surprise me,
Speaker 1: so don't put your hand in there. So uh so
Speaker 1: Mr Hurts basically proved what, uh, what Maxwell was suggesting.
Speaker 1: He was able to transmit a spark um from one
Speaker 1: antenna with a spark gap in a ring um to another.
Speaker 1: And uh, basically this was kind of fascinating because at
Speaker 1: the time there was nothing, I mean, there was no
Speaker 1: obvious connection. So you would look at it and go,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, that spark has traveled. Right. You had
Speaker 1: you had one thing generating a spark right, and then
Speaker 1: you had an antenna on the other side of the
Speaker 1: room that could pick up uh. You know, you got
Speaker 1: a difference in voltage there, and the there was no
Speaker 1: visible means of transmission. How did the energy from this
Speaker 1: one thing on one side of the room transmit to
Speaker 1: the other side, right? They Not only did he show
Speaker 1: that that Maxwell's right, uh, and he was able to
Speaker 1: measure the speed um of the of the waves and
Speaker 1: and show that the waves traveled in straight lines and
Speaker 1: they could be reflected and and the reflection is important
Speaker 1: because we use the Earth's atmosphere to reflect radio signals. Now, um,
Speaker 1: but you know at the time this was absolutely groundbreak exactly.
Speaker 1: And he discovered that that speed that Chris was talking about,
Speaker 1: in case you're curious, was a hundred eighty six thousands, uh,
Speaker 1: hundred six thousand miles per second. If that sounds familiar
Speaker 1: to you, it may be because that is the speed
Speaker 1: of light. And that's kind of where we're talking about
Speaker 1: how Hurts helped prove Maxwell's theories because here was this
Speaker 1: other form of energy that was not visible light, but
Speaker 1: it traveled at the same speed as visible light travel.
Speaker 1: So that suggests that the two are in some way related.
Speaker 1: That that's true. Um. The thing is, though we're not
Speaker 1: talking long distance with these translations. We're talking about within
Speaker 1: a room. But people began to experiment with this, one
Speaker 1: of whom was Oliver Lodge, a British scientist. UM. He
Speaker 1: was able to get reception at about seventy yards with
Speaker 1: his most sensitive equipment. UM. Others were able to get
Speaker 1: them get radio waves a little farther, a little shorter. Uh.
Speaker 1: Some people were absolutely stunned that radio waves could travel
Speaker 1: through buildings. Just was another one of those things that
Speaker 1: we sort of take for granted today because we're used
Speaker 1: to it. But uh, you couldn't see it. So it
Speaker 1: was sort of, uh, sort of weird. And this was
Speaker 1: counterintuitive to that whole electromagnetic theory, right because light we know,
Speaker 1: if you have an opaque structure that's gonna block light,
Speaker 1: you don't see light shining through the walls. If you did,
Speaker 1: you'd go crazy. Uh you never sleep. Well, it depends
Speaker 1: on how poorous the walls are. I guess it does
Speaker 1: you know. I've lived in some places let me tell
Speaker 1: you anyway, But in a solid opaque structure, it's gonna
Speaker 1: block light. So the theory would be, well, if if
Speaker 1: light and this other form of electro mantic magnetic energy
Speaker 1: are are related, then clearly this opaque thing is gonna
Speaker 1: block that too. Not so much. Nope, And it was
Speaker 1: very confusing early on. It's true, Um, and I was
Speaker 1: trying to figure out who who we should talk about? Well,
Speaker 1: there there are a lot of There are a lot
Speaker 1: of players in here. There's there's pop Off, who he
Speaker 1: had laboratory demonstrations of radio that he that he did
Speaker 1: back in so large his work was in right, So
Speaker 1: just a year later you've got pop Off doing experiments
Speaker 1: and in the in the lab and in eight and
Speaker 1: he's also um working with various uh methods to transmit
Speaker 1: radio waves. And you have to again, you've gotta have
Speaker 1: a transmitter and a receiver, and those are your basic
Speaker 1: elements of a radio, and early radios were either one
Speaker 1: or the other. It was a while before people could
Speaker 1: develop a radio that could both transmit and receive, like
Speaker 1: to allow for two way communication. He has a transceiver.
Speaker 1: Those early experiments were really just figuring out the whole
Speaker 1: the mode of transmission and reception. And in fact, earliest
Speaker 1: radio signals were not tuned to a specific frequency like
Speaker 1: they are to day, like today you tune into a
Speaker 1: radio station, those earliest ones were kind of more like
Speaker 1: a shotgun approach. Uh. You know that you would get
Speaker 1: a range of frequencies. So uh, there wasn't a big
Speaker 1: problem early early on because you had so few people
Speaker 1: working on this. There wasn't a lot of contamination and interference.
Speaker 1: But if we were to be using those same methods today,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be able to tune into more than a
Speaker 1: couple of stations because they'd be taking up a really
Speaker 1: broad range of the spectrum. So the earlies days of radio.
Speaker 1: It was free for all. You could broadcast on whatever
Speaker 1: part of the freak the spectrum you wanted. Because there
Speaker 1: were so few people out there, there was nothing to
Speaker 1: compete with. Okay, so um, yeah, and it's uh they're
Speaker 1: One of the people that that I read about, sort
Speaker 1: of as a red herring, was a guy named William
Speaker 1: Crooks who uh some say some believe for a while
Speaker 1: that he may have had a hand in creating uh
Speaker 1: wireless telegraphy basically using radio as a telegraph um because
Speaker 1: in February he published an article in the Fortnightly Review.
Speaker 1: And in that article he used the word telegraphy. He said, sentony.
Speaker 1: That's a fancy word, and I would say probably an
Speaker 1: obsolete word for the ability to tune. He said, yeah, definitely,
Speaker 1: because I haven't heard it before I started doing any
Speaker 1: research on this. Senteny. Oh that's kind of cool word.
Speaker 1: But yeah, he said, oh, yes, there will be uh
Speaker 1: you'll be able to use this wireless telegraph and you'll
Speaker 1: be able to tune it to a specific frequency and
Speaker 1: get uh get messages. But the problem was he um,
Speaker 1: he had a lot of uh scientifically incorrect information in
Speaker 1: that article. Now, some people said, oh, well, look, he's
Speaker 1: inspired a lot of people to do this, but there
Speaker 1: aren't a lot of people who credit him with inspiring
Speaker 1: them to work on radio technology. And most of most
Speaker 1: it seems like the article sort of came to years
Speaker 1: later after radio was becoming a thing. Um. Some actually
Speaker 1: suggested that maybe he was trying to take credit for
Speaker 1: it after the fact, So he was Rhett Conning. But
Speaker 1: it seems like I would guess that there are people,
Speaker 1: there are people who are like like crooks, crooks who
Speaker 1: had an idea that's the kind of an ironic name. Um,
Speaker 1: who at least had a grip to some degree on
Speaker 1: what you could do with the technology. They had a
Speaker 1: piece of it, but not the whole picture. Yeah. Another
Speaker 1: guy who appeared to have the whole picture, but was
Speaker 1: a little too reluctant to share his technology. This guy,
Speaker 1: this guy could have been the inventor of radio. People
Speaker 1: give him credit for there, this guy because he was
Speaker 1: able to demonstrate radio very early on. Comparatively speaking, So
Speaker 1: in eight two you have an inventor by the name
Speaker 1: of Nathan Nathan stubble Field right from Murray, Kentucky. He
Speaker 1: was a farmer and inventor so clearly, if you're farming,
Speaker 1: you're gonna think I want to invent me a radio.
Speaker 1: I am, I am amazed. I mean to me, it's
Speaker 1: just it's really it shows that ingenuity is is a
Speaker 1: phenomenal thing and it it can strike anywhere. Right. So
Speaker 1: you have stubble Field, who was legitimately a really smart
Speaker 1: and clever guy. Uh. And so in eighteen ninety two
Speaker 1: he publicly demonstrates a wireless communication system and not only
Speaker 1: does it broadcast radio signals, he could actually broadcast voice
Speaker 1: and music. Now, keep in mind, the earliest radio public
Speaker 1: demonstrations were all tones. It wasn't It wasn't like you
Speaker 1: could do a symphony over the radio. It was you
Speaker 1: could you could transmit Morse code over the radio. So
Speaker 1: here you have stubble Field in eighteen ninety two demonstrating this,
Speaker 1: and uh he was able to do it again in
Speaker 1: eight which this one was actually document eight two is
Speaker 1: is undocumented, so you know it could be up for debate.
Speaker 1: But the St. Louis Dispatch documented and demonstration he did
Speaker 1: where he transmitted radio waves at a distance of around
Speaker 1: five hundred yards. Uh. This this was a big problem
Speaker 1: with a lot of the early radio broadcasters. They didn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of range to their broadcasts. Right, five
Speaker 1: yards is not that far right, So you you'd have
Speaker 1: your DJ coming on and say, I have a short
Speaker 1: distance dedicated this guy over here dedicates it to that
Speaker 1: gal over there. You could see each other. Why don't
Speaker 1: your wave? Um so the but he he demonstrates it,
Speaker 1: and he could have potentially been the father of the radio.
Speaker 1: But here's the problem. Stubble Field, it was a little paranoid.
Speaker 1: He was worried that people were going to steal his invention,
Speaker 1: so worried that he would hide it away in a
Speaker 1: shack and lock it up. And then he out an
Speaker 1: offer to sell his invention, and uh it was five
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars for his invention. Um this was around
Speaker 1: uh oh, in the late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: Five thousand dollars. That's a lot of clams. It's a
Speaker 1: lot of clams today. And it was even more clams.
Speaker 1: It was like an entire beta clams back back then.
Speaker 1: And so stubble Field turned it down. And what's interesting
Speaker 1: to me is we actually see this mirrored in the
Speaker 1: way some companies behave today. I was talking to Chris
Speaker 1: about this earlier. There's another company that recently was offered
Speaker 1: about six billion dollars to be an acquisition of of
Speaker 1: another larger company, um but they turned it down. This
Speaker 1: company turned down that six billion dollar offer and valued
Speaker 1: itself at twenty five billion dollars. But as a result
Speaker 1: of waiting around too long, one could argue the value
Speaker 1: of the company has dropped significantly since then. And Chris,
Speaker 1: what's the name of that company? Group On? Group On?
Speaker 1: So here Groupon took the internet by storm. Everyone was
Speaker 1: really impressed by group On. Everyone thought that this was
Speaker 1: really where where things were moving. Well, that's kind of
Speaker 1: the problem because things were moving in that direction, but
Speaker 1: there was no way to protect groupons business model, and
Speaker 1: so lots of other companies sprang up that uh mimic
Speaker 1: groupons business models, some of which you might even argue
Speaker 1: improve on Groupon's business model. Well, because Groupon was kind
Speaker 1: of holding back. Now its position is a little more
Speaker 1: tenuous because you have all these competitors that could steal
Speaker 1: the limelight away from group On. The same thing happened
Speaker 1: more than a hundred years ago, was stubble Field. This
Speaker 1: is a story that goes back decades and decades you know,
Speaker 1: you think we'd learn our lesson by now. You know,
Speaker 1: you strike while the iron is hot. People. So stubble Field,
Speaker 1: because he sat on his invention and because he did
Speaker 1: not act upon it. Uh, he was scooped by other inventors.
Speaker 1: And there's a pair of people who we need to
Speaker 1: talk about, one of whom was ultimately scooped by the
Speaker 1: other one, and the other one used the technology of
Speaker 1: the first. Isn't that fun? Yeah? Um? Yeah? And and
Speaker 1: as a as a tragic uh conclusion to stubble field story,
Speaker 1: he died a pauper of starvation. Wow. So he turned
Speaker 1: the money down. And I guess his farm didn't survive either,
Speaker 1: apparently because I mean starvation and a farmer. Wow. But
Speaker 1: it was Kentucky, so maybe he was just growing you know,
Speaker 1: bourbon girls on trees. Right. I don't know. I don't drink,
Speaker 1: so I have no knowledge of that. So we move
Speaker 1: on and talk about those two fellows. So here are
Speaker 1: the two people that most discussions about who invented the radio.
Speaker 1: Ultimately it boils down to these two guys, even though we've,
Speaker 1: as we've argued, there are a lot of other people
Speaker 1: you have to consider in this equation, and that is
Speaker 1: Nicola Tesla. And I'm just gonna say g Marconi because
Speaker 1: I can't stay pronounce his first name. It's Italian, and
Speaker 1: I am not. So Marconi is often given the credit
Speaker 1: for inventing the radio. In fact, he has the official credit,
Speaker 1: at least by the in the eyes of the United
Speaker 1: States government, for inventing the radio. Other other people give
Speaker 1: credit to other people. But you know that that's the
Speaker 1: way it goes with these things. Um So Marconi was
Speaker 1: legitimately working on radio. It's not like Marconi was just
Speaker 1: some guy who swept in and stole everything. He was
Speaker 1: actually working hard on trying to find a way to
Speaker 1: make long distance radio transmission a reality. He was having
Speaker 1: some trouble though. A lot of his UH his transmissions
Speaker 1: were going to a maximum distance of about one point
Speaker 1: five kilometers, and that's just not far enough for for
Speaker 1: real broadcast power. So, in fact, I think I read
Speaker 1: somewhere where one one UH critic said that his his
Speaker 1: broadcast wouldn't reach across a pond, which makes me wonder
Speaker 1: if that's where we got that. You know, when you
Speaker 1: go across the pond, But I honestly don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but it does make me wonder if that's
Speaker 1: where we got that phrase, because ultimately Marconi was able
Speaker 1: to send a signal from Europe to America. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a that would be a question for a way with words. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: is this is a phrase across the pond date back
Speaker 1: to Marconi's invention or you know, credited invention of the radio.
Speaker 1: But Marconi used a lot of technology developed by someone else,
Speaker 1: developed by Nicola Tesla, so much so that Nicola Tesla
Speaker 1: probably not entirely jokingly said that Marconi was using he
Speaker 1: wished Marconi, well, the man's using seventeen of my patents. Well,
Speaker 1: and that may be true. True, I didn't, I didn't
Speaker 1: look into it that far. But the thing, and that
Speaker 1: was the case for a lot of things UM. In
Speaker 1: the in the creation of alternating current Westinghouse UM, George
Speaker 1: Westinghouse was using a lot of Tesla's patents to UM
Speaker 1: and then using the technology that Tesla patented. Assuming you
Speaker 1: know that that Tesla is getting credit for it, then
Speaker 1: Tesla would earn some you know, with a license properly
Speaker 1: licensed patent, the Tesla should be earning some residuals on
Speaker 1: Marconi's invention. Yeah, here's the problem, Marconi. There's a problem
Speaker 1: Marconi didn't admit readily that he was using any of
Speaker 1: Tesla's stuff. Like, what what Tesla had been to do
Speaker 1: is he was able through the actually really Tesla coils
Speaker 1: is what we're getting down to, he was able to
Speaker 1: invent away of of creating really powerful bursts of energy
Speaker 1: of electricity. Right, you remember the the hurts and using
Speaker 1: the transmitting the electrical energy from one place to another. Right,
Speaker 1: So the Tesla coil is far more powerful. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's a it's a refined, powerful invention that's based upon
Speaker 1: that principle. And through using this as part of a
Speaker 1: radio transmission system, Marconi was able to transmit signals much
Speaker 1: further than he could on his old system. But uh,
Speaker 1: according to some of the reports I've read, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of I mean, there are Testlas supporters out
Speaker 1: there who who rape Marconi over the coals, and then
Speaker 1: there are other people who either dismissed Tesla's involvement or
Speaker 1: they downplay it. Um, there's some people who are true
Speaker 1: Marconi supporters. The whole thing is really muddy, right, But
Speaker 1: from what I gather, Marconi tried to argue he patented
Speaker 1: the radio in the UK, Tesla did it in the
Speaker 1: United States. Now, Marconi argued that you know, hey, I
Speaker 1: was able to make this thing work and no one
Speaker 1: else was, so I I deserved the patent for this
Speaker 1: this technology um and even argued so far as to say, hey,
Speaker 1: what Tesla coil and which case A judge was saying, Oh,
Speaker 1: come on, that's a that's a common word here, because,
Speaker 1: like we said, these guys were rock stars. It's not
Speaker 1: like this stuff was obscure. This stuff was front page news.
Speaker 1: So people knew these terms. They didn't necessarily understand them all,
Speaker 1: but they knew what they knew of them, and so
Speaker 1: for someone to feign ignorance seemed disingenuous at best. So
Speaker 1: Marconi is arguing that he should be the one, uh
Speaker 1: that people back, and Tesla isn't arguing as much because
Speaker 1: Tesla didn't feel that he needed to argue. He felt
Speaker 1: he was in the right. He didn't why should I
Speaker 1: come forward and and fight tooth and nail with this
Speaker 1: guy when it's so obvious that I'm the person that
Speaker 1: credit should go to. That was kind of Testla's viewpoint,
Speaker 1: as far as we can tell. You gotta also remember
Speaker 1: Tesla became increasingly mentally unstable towards the end of his life.
Speaker 1: He became more and more paranoid, possibly with good reason,
Speaker 1: because of the way he had been treated in his
Speaker 1: past um and so it's hard to kind of definitively
Speaker 1: say what the man was thinking. Also, he had had
Speaker 1: this rivalry with Edison, right that dated back, Yes, it
Speaker 1: dated back to the World's Fair where it was between
Speaker 1: Edison and Tesla. Who's going whose system is going to
Speaker 1: power the World's Fair in Chicago. Is it gonna be
Speaker 1: Edison's direct current power or is it gonna be Testla's
Speaker 1: alternating current? Ultimately it went to Tesla. Edison not a
Speaker 1: man who drops a grudge easily, as it turns out.
Speaker 1: And so Edison's looking around and he's saying, you know,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be a big thing. This is gonna
Speaker 1: make bookoos of cash. I gotta get in on this.
Speaker 1: Andrew Carnegie, great philanthropist, industrialist. He also says, this is
Speaker 1: where it's at, this is the next huge development in technology.
Speaker 1: I'm getting in on this. They look around. You've got Tesla,
Speaker 1: who is brilliant but is also self destructive, not necessarily intentionally,
Speaker 1: but his behavior and his obsession with transmitting power over
Speaker 1: a long distance broadcasting power building essentially what it would
Speaker 1: amount to an enormous Tesla coil and cloaking the earth
Speaker 1: and electricity sounds a little like a mad scientist, not
Speaker 1: necessarily the guy you're gonna go and dump keeps a
Speaker 1: cash on top of So then they look at Marconi.
Speaker 1: Marconi who has proven that his technology works. His technology,
Speaker 1: which admittedly rests on the shoulders of others like Tesla.
Speaker 1: He Marconi even demonstrates that he can send a signal
Speaker 1: transatlantically across the entire ocean. He transmits the letter S
Speaker 1: in Morse code, and that proves that his system works.
Speaker 1: With a proven system, with a man who does not
Speaker 1: appear to be unhinged. That's the guy that everyone gives
Speaker 1: their money to. So Marconi starts to get the political
Speaker 1: and the financial support, and Marconi ends up coming over
Speaker 1: to America and even wins a patent for a radio,
Speaker 1: the patent that was previously not the same one, but
Speaker 1: the patent that had been Tesla's became overturned in court.
Speaker 1: And this is where the huge controversy is. People say
Speaker 1: that essentially that Edison Carnegie and even Marconi, who came
Speaker 1: from a family that was really well connected and really
Speaker 1: wealthy in Europe, that they used their political and financial
Speaker 1: clout to force the Patent Office, essentially the court system
Speaker 1: of the United States, to overturn Tesla's patents so that
Speaker 1: Marconi could be the the true patent holder for the
Speaker 1: inventor of radio. Meanwhile, Tesla's screaming to the heavens and
Speaker 1: shaking his tiny fists in vain and also watching his
Speaker 1: lab burned down for the fourth or fifth time that happened.
Speaker 1: Tesla had a run of incredibly bad luck. We did
Speaker 1: do an episode on Tesla. I recommend you listen to
Speaker 1: that if you really want to hear the story of
Speaker 1: his life. Yeah, the loss of Warden Cliff, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that that was I think probably would have affected his
Speaker 1: ability to defend his So. Yeah, radio. So now you've
Speaker 1: got so if you're asking officially who invented the radio, well,
Speaker 1: if you're going by the documents in the United States government,
Speaker 1: it's Marconi, right, But if you're going to ask an inventor,
Speaker 1: then you might hear a different answer, and it may
Speaker 1: not be Tesla. The inventor may say, well, yeah, Tesla
Speaker 1: was able to create the technology that made podcast radio
Speaker 1: viable thing. But if you want to talk about who
Speaker 1: invented the radio, you gotta go back before him. So it's,
Speaker 1: like we said, a really complex topic, yes, and definitely
Speaker 1: fascinating to look at at how these great inventors were
Speaker 1: all developing an important piece of the puzzle or or
Speaker 1: improving upon the technology to increase distance and quality. Um,
Speaker 1: it's just fascinating. And then you get into other things
Speaker 1: like who you know which was the first radio station
Speaker 1: and that unfortunately is not a clear answer either either.
Speaker 1: So so wait, uh, Chris yet ask you okay, gun
Speaker 1: to the head. Yep, there is a there's a man
Speaker 1: standing up in front of you. His gun is pointed
Speaker 1: towards your noggain, and he says, who invented the radio?
Speaker 1: You have to give me one name and that's it. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: who do you say invented the radio? That's fair. I
Speaker 1: would say the same thing. But I certainly wouldn't uh
Speaker 1: put down Marconi because he did so much important work
Speaker 1: and and and one of the things that he did
Speaker 1: for radio that Tesla really wasn't doing was promoting the
Speaker 1: idea that it could be used for commercial purposes and
Speaker 1: getting investors behind it because Tesla was kind of sitting
Speaker 1: on it. Yeah, Tesla was kind of like this rock
Speaker 1: star showman. But Marconi was a rock star businessman and
Speaker 1: he was really behind radio. I don't think he he
Speaker 1: wasn't into as many different kinds of technology. I mean,
Speaker 1: Tesla was into all the sports things and and Marconi
Speaker 1: was really the radio guy. So so we've got some
Speaker 1: some sources we'd like to mention to you guys to
Speaker 1: check out if you're really interested in this, because, like
Speaker 1: I said, this is a fascinating time in history. In fact,
Speaker 1: let me let me read. I meant to do this earlier, um,
Speaker 1: but I wanted to give you what Einstein said radio was.
Speaker 1: Einstein's definition of radio is one of my favorites. Is
Speaker 1: you see why are telegram as a kind of very
Speaker 1: very long cat you pull his tail in New York
Speaker 1: and his head as mewing in Los Angeles? Do you
Speaker 1: understand this? Well, radio operates in the same way you
Speaker 1: send signals here, they received them there. The only difference
Speaker 1: is that there's no cat. I love that description, Like,
Speaker 1: oh well now it makes sense. Einstein. Thank you? Can
Speaker 1: you tell me about my relatives now, just in general,
Speaker 1: nothing special, just a theory. So let's talk about some
Speaker 1: of the sources we use, because we we came across
Speaker 1: some really really useful ones. Yeah, and it's one of
Speaker 1: the things that I found funny about that we were
Speaker 1: talking about how just a moment ago, about how convoluted
Speaker 1: this whole thing is, a lot of my sources didn't overlap.
Speaker 1: So we we sort of glued some of this together
Speaker 1: from different people because I found a couple of books
Speaker 1: um at the library and that might be at yours too.
Speaker 1: One was Sentony and Sparked The Origins of Radio by
Speaker 1: Hugh G. J Aitken A I. T. K. E. N.
Speaker 1: And the other ones Wireless from Marconius Black Box to
Speaker 1: the Audience by Sun Coook Hong, both of which were
Speaker 1: excellent and got into a whole lot more detailed we
Speaker 1: really really can't get into now. But Jonathan found a
Speaker 1: couple of excellent websites that we used to that had
Speaker 1: Stubblefield wasn't in either one of those books. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: um there's one that was done by Julian t. Ruben
Speaker 1: and actually it's Julian t Ruben dot Com. There's a
Speaker 1: whole section about radio and the inventors. There there even
Speaker 1: other people that we didn't talk about, like Loomis and
Speaker 1: Bows and Forest de Forest. Yeah, there's there's When we
Speaker 1: say that there were a lot of people working on this,
Speaker 1: that's nine exaggeration. There were way more than we were
Speaker 1: able to talk about in this episode. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about them, i'd recommend
Speaker 1: that UH. That site. Also there is an excellent article
Speaker 1: by b. Eric Rhodes that's R H O A D S.
Speaker 1: Just who invented radio and which was the first station? Uh,
Speaker 1: it's a it's also a really good read and a
Speaker 1: great overview of radio. And finally, there's a website called
Speaker 1: Amateur Radio and Electronics. UH. The u r L is
Speaker 1: v W L O W E N dot c O
Speaker 1: dot UK, so it's a it's a British site. Also
Speaker 1: has a great section on radio and how it works
Speaker 1: and UH and its history. So I recommend checking these
Speaker 1: out if you're interested in the topic. Also, we do
Speaker 1: have lots of articles on our site about radio, how
Speaker 1: radio works, how the radio spectrum works, how transistor radios work,
Speaker 1: how crystal radios work. All of that information you can
Speaker 1: find at how stuff Works dot com and if you're
Speaker 1: interested in this stuff, definitely take a look at it.
Speaker 1: There's a ton of different ways of actually building your
Speaker 1: own radio. I mean that used to be a big
Speaker 1: thing back in the fifties and sixties, but you can
Speaker 1: still do it today. And it's a neat way to
Speaker 1: kind of learn some electronics and uh and some engineering,
Speaker 1: and you get a real sense of accomplishment when you
Speaker 1: build something like that. That's true. I built a crystal
Speaker 1: a m radio when I was a kid from a
Speaker 1: from a kid which was which was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: And it's just so sad that all these people work
Speaker 1: so hard on the radio and then video killed the
Speaker 1: radio star. Yeah, that darn, darn you MTV. And now
Speaker 1: I understand the problems you can see. I remember that
Speaker 1: the second video was a pet Benatar video. That's all
Speaker 1: that's true. Okay, look it up. I just can't remember
Speaker 1: the name of the song now, but it wasn't been
Speaker 1: Atar video anyway. A little trivia for those people who
Speaker 1: lived through the launch of MTV. We're there for you.
Speaker 1: If you guys want to let us know about any
Speaker 1: topics you'd like us to cover, or you have any
Speaker 1: comments or questions. You can get in touch with us
Speaker 1: on Twitter and Facebook are handled. There is tech Stuff
Speaker 1: h s W or you can send U an email.
Speaker 1: That address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com and Chris and I will talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Is the house to up works dot com. To learn
Speaker 1: more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in
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