WEBVTT - TechStuff Classic: The Golden Age of Radio 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from My Heart Radio. 0:00:12.000 --> 0:00:15.720 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:16.120 --> 0:00:20.720 Jonathan Strickland, executive producer or I heart radio and I 0:00:20.840 --> 0:00:25.120 love all things tech. Today we're going to listen to 0:00:25.239 --> 0:00:31.080 a classic episode the Golden Age of radio. This episode 0:00:31.080 --> 0:00:35.800 originally published March eleven, two thousand fifteen. I will now 0:00:35.840 --> 0:00:38.519 stop talking like that, because I know it's obnoxious. I 0:00:38.600 --> 0:00:42.280 couldn't resist it. Probably should have. I apologize, but no, 0:00:42.400 --> 0:00:44.520 We're gonna listen to this classic episode of the Golden 0:00:44.520 --> 0:00:46.839 Age of radio. I hope you enjoy. Radio is one 0:00:46.880 --> 0:00:50.920 of those things that I have loved all my life. Um, 0:00:51.000 --> 0:00:54.360 well before I started working for a company that owns 0:00:54.640 --> 0:00:57.840 hundreds of radio stations. Uh, and I have been a 0:00:57.880 --> 0:01:03.520 part of radio drama groups that didn't produce classic radio drama, 0:01:03.560 --> 0:01:07.600 but rather wrote new radio dramas in the style of 0:01:07.640 --> 0:01:10.840 the classic radio plays. So I have a real fondness 0:01:11.120 --> 0:01:15.000 for Golden age radio. Anyway, let's take a listen to 0:01:15.080 --> 0:01:18.280 this episode, which originally published on March eleventh, two thousand 0:01:18.240 --> 0:01:21.240 and fifteen. Today, Christian and I are going to talk 0:01:21.240 --> 0:01:24.920 about a subject that was suggested by a listener, and 0:01:24.959 --> 0:01:27.679 first of all, I must apologize to said listener because 0:01:27.920 --> 0:01:31.680 despite my heroic efforts of researching where this suggestion came from, 0:01:32.120 --> 0:01:34.360 couldn't find it. So I'm guessing this was actually an 0:01:34.360 --> 0:01:38.039 older one. But said the forward thinking, bad prediction story 0:01:38.040 --> 0:01:40.600 about Hugo Gernsback got me thinking about how crazy it 0:01:40.680 --> 0:01:42.480 must have been to have lived through the debut of 0:01:42.520 --> 0:01:46.520 public radio, all the excitement and so little understanding, fireside chats, 0:01:46.560 --> 0:01:50.320 fearmongering about radio death rays. A history episode about the 0:01:50.320 --> 0:01:53.720 promises in popular notions surrounding radio could be fun and 0:01:53.880 --> 0:01:56.760 uh so we wanted to talk about the dawn of 0:01:56.840 --> 0:02:00.440 broadcast radio. Before we get into that, I should mentioned 0:02:00.920 --> 0:02:04.040 that way back in April two thousand eleven, Chris Palette 0:02:04.160 --> 0:02:07.360 and I sat down and recorded an episode titled Who 0:02:07.440 --> 0:02:11.760 Invented the Radio, which was mostly about the inventors who 0:02:11.919 --> 0:02:15.480 discovered radio waves and found ways to generate radio waves, 0:02:15.840 --> 0:02:20.240 obviously including the two big names Tesla and Marconi. Anyone 0:02:20.240 --> 0:02:23.320 who knows anything about the patent wars knows about there 0:02:23.440 --> 0:02:26.200 was a big kerfuffle between the two of those guys. 0:02:26.680 --> 0:02:30.600 Uh little peek behind the curtain. That is the first time, 0:02:30.840 --> 0:02:33.760 and I think the only time I have recorded an 0:02:33.919 --> 0:02:38.480 entire episode and immediately said we can't use that, Let's 0:02:38.520 --> 0:02:41.600 do it again, recorded it all over. Because the ghost 0:02:41.639 --> 0:02:44.280 of Marconi was haunting you. There was that, and we 0:02:44.320 --> 0:02:46.720 had in the old studio, we had a portrait of 0:02:46.800 --> 0:02:50.320 Nicola Tesla on the wall, and we felt judged. But 0:02:50.919 --> 0:02:53.839 mainly Chris and I both felt that we gave such 0:02:53.840 --> 0:02:58.679 a disjointed story that we were jumping around so much 0:02:58.760 --> 0:03:01.720 that made no sense as we after talking it through 0:03:01.800 --> 0:03:05.920 once we went back rerecorded, so that first episode that 0:03:05.960 --> 0:03:08.880 we recorded it's lost to time. We don't have it anymore. 0:03:08.840 --> 0:03:10.720 I wish I could, at least hope will be more 0:03:10.800 --> 0:03:14.079 organized today. But I'll tell you just from going through 0:03:14.120 --> 0:03:18.560 all this research that this is such a vast amount 0:03:18.560 --> 0:03:21.840 of information for this period of time, and I feel 0:03:21.840 --> 0:03:24.400 like and it's and you can you can get a 0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:28.440 PhD in radio communication in the history of radio and 0:03:28.520 --> 0:03:32.720 understanding these things, and it's yeah, we will probably only 0:03:32.760 --> 0:03:36.280 scratch the surface today. I imagine, Yeah, they're there. And 0:03:36.320 --> 0:03:42.160 there's so many crazy dramatic stories of betrayal, of of 0:03:42.760 --> 0:03:46.000 con men, of big ball early media. It's like this 0:03:46.160 --> 0:03:49.840 pirate industry of people just messing with each other. It's 0:03:49.880 --> 0:03:53.000 it's fascinating. In fact, there there's probably two or three 0:03:53.080 --> 0:03:55.720 podcast worth of information that we could cover, but we're 0:03:55.720 --> 0:03:57.680 gonna try and get this in one if we can. 0:03:58.320 --> 0:04:00.920 So first thing I gotta mentioned is that radio and 0:04:00.920 --> 0:04:03.840 broadcast radio are two different things. You know, radio in 0:04:03.880 --> 0:04:06.360 the sense of what Tesla and Marconi were looking at, 0:04:06.400 --> 0:04:10.440 they were looking at ways of transmitting short signals across 0:04:10.720 --> 0:04:14.160 distances without using wires, so that was it. They were 0:04:14.200 --> 0:04:17.120 looking largely at using Morse code. So they might use 0:04:17.120 --> 0:04:22.200 a spark gap technology where they would create sparks and 0:04:22.279 --> 0:04:26.080 send messages that way. But you couldn't really do a 0:04:26.120 --> 0:04:28.839 sustained message that way without creating a lot of static 0:04:28.920 --> 0:04:32.839 and noise, and that was a real problem. So we 0:04:32.920 --> 0:04:37.159 need to look at another person for broadcast radio. That 0:04:37.200 --> 0:04:40.440 would be a Canadian by the name of Reginald Fessenden, 0:04:41.160 --> 0:04:46.120 who essentially invented am radio. That would be uh, the 0:04:46.560 --> 0:04:51.840 amplitude modulated radio. And so from your notes here your notes, 0:04:52.000 --> 0:04:57.080 it says he worked with Edison for Edison. He actually 0:04:57.080 --> 0:04:59.960 he actually worked for both Westinghouse and Edison at different 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:02.680 it's in his career. So yeah, he just like Tesla. 0:05:02.760 --> 0:05:06.040 Tesla also worked for both yea, although you know again 0:05:06.360 --> 0:05:09.640 working for like it's like me saying that, you know, 0:05:09.720 --> 0:05:13.120 I worked for the head of our parent company, and 0:05:13.240 --> 0:05:16.120 technically I do, but I don't have any contact with them. 0:05:16.200 --> 0:05:18.599 So uh. He had dropped out of school as a 0:05:18.640 --> 0:05:21.920 young man. He actually did not complete his school work, 0:05:21.960 --> 0:05:25.640 but he was keenly interested in electricity and this potential 0:05:25.680 --> 0:05:29.200 to transmit messages wirelessly, and he was using that spark 0:05:29.240 --> 0:05:31.159 gap technology. But that was the problem, was that it 0:05:31.200 --> 0:05:33.040 was creating so much static and noise that it was 0:05:33.160 --> 0:05:37.400 very difficult to get any intelligible message across. Yeah. So 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:41.000 actually I want to interject here for sure. So um, 0:05:41.080 --> 0:05:45.640 in like the model of human communication, when scholars are 0:05:45.640 --> 0:05:48.599 looking at how human beings communicate with each other, regardless 0:05:48.640 --> 0:05:55.440 of media, they actually use uh this Feestenden Marconi uh 0:05:55.680 --> 0:05:59.040 model of transmissions as like the baseline for it. And 0:05:59.080 --> 0:06:02.560 it's all about like ending and receiving with feedback and 0:06:02.640 --> 0:06:05.680 feed forward and then there's a signal to noise ratio. 0:06:06.000 --> 0:06:08.520 That's how it's all understood whether you and I are 0:06:08.520 --> 0:06:11.520 sitting here talking in the same room, or it's mass 0:06:11.600 --> 0:06:15.560 media or it's uh like like in the early days 0:06:15.560 --> 0:06:18.040 of radio. That the way they literally thought of it 0:06:18.080 --> 0:06:20.760 was two ships that were thousands of yards away from 0:06:20.760 --> 0:06:23.400 one another trying to contact each other using this old 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:26.600 radio technology, and they would have so much static they 0:06:26.600 --> 0:06:29.159 would have to constantly give each other feedback and feed 0:06:29.200 --> 0:06:32.080 forward to make sure the message was understood. It makes 0:06:32.200 --> 0:06:36.000 perfect sense, I mean, especially when you see the brilliance 0:06:36.200 --> 0:06:39.480 of Fessenden. He thought, well, they I can. I can 0:06:39.560 --> 0:06:43.159 create these sparks of electricity, create these electromagnetic fields and 0:06:43.160 --> 0:06:46.640 thus creating radio waves, but it isn't giving me the 0:06:46.640 --> 0:06:50.800 fidelity I need in order to communicate properly. He then thought, 0:06:50.880 --> 0:06:54.200 what if I used a continuous wave, So I create 0:06:54.520 --> 0:06:59.000 a sign wave and oscillating wave with the same amplitude, 0:06:59.080 --> 0:07:02.839 same frequency, So it's just steady. Now, that's not carrying 0:07:02.839 --> 0:07:06.520 any information by itself. It's if you could if you 0:07:06.520 --> 0:07:08.680 could hear it, it would just be a steady tone. 0:07:09.240 --> 0:07:12.440 But it's actually talking about using frequencies above the limit 0:07:12.480 --> 0:07:15.920 of human hearing. So let's say you create this wave, 0:07:16.560 --> 0:07:21.840 and then you were too introduce a second wave, one 0:07:21.960 --> 0:07:25.120 that was created by your voice, so you'd speak into 0:07:25.120 --> 0:07:28.239 a microphone. It gets converted into electric waves. You add 0:07:28.280 --> 0:07:31.680 that on top of the uh, the existing wave you've 0:07:31.680 --> 0:07:35.880 already created, and you allow it to change the amplitude 0:07:36.680 --> 0:07:39.800 of that wave as the two waves are overlaid on 0:07:39.840 --> 0:07:44.640 top of one another. Sure it is genius, It's absolutely genius. Uh. 0:07:44.760 --> 0:07:48.440 So this was a M radio. This was the idea 0:07:49.040 --> 0:07:52.880 that that became a M radio because it does modulate 0:07:52.880 --> 0:07:56.080 the amplitude of that wave. So the amplitude, by the way, 0:07:56.320 --> 0:08:01.000 is the the peak to peak uh difference, Right, it's not. 0:08:01.080 --> 0:08:03.560 It's not how many oscillations. This is just the the 0:08:03.640 --> 0:08:09.240 amplitude of the wave itself, how tall the peaks are, 0:08:09.280 --> 0:08:12.240 how low the troughs are. If you were looking at 0:08:12.240 --> 0:08:16.480 the wave across a line the way at Assuming that 0:08:16.520 --> 0:08:21.800 this innovation of his significantly reduced the noise and static 0:08:22.120 --> 0:08:25.600 it did, it did. It did still have issues and 0:08:25.640 --> 0:08:28.680 that you could have interference with other waves that were 0:08:28.720 --> 0:08:32.600 created at that same frequency. It also meant that you 0:08:33.000 --> 0:08:36.720 could get interference with other electromagnetic phenomenon like like a 0:08:36.840 --> 0:08:41.000 lightning strike. So also if you pass below, like if 0:08:41.040 --> 0:08:43.280 you go under a bridge, you would hear, you know, 0:08:43.520 --> 0:08:47.320 the disruption of the signal. So it wasn't perfect, but 0:08:47.360 --> 0:08:54.679 it was an incredible step forward and this was revolutionary. 0:08:54.720 --> 0:08:58.040 I mean he tested it successfully. He did a short 0:08:58.920 --> 0:09:02.640 distance test between two towers and it worked fine. And 0:09:02.679 --> 0:09:06.679 then in n six he had his infamous Christmas concert 0:09:06.800 --> 0:09:10.040 for sailors. See this is yeah, this is where I 0:09:10.040 --> 0:09:13.800 think that that boat to boat the idea comes from, right, yeah, 0:09:13.840 --> 0:09:17.720 Because it turns out the disaster of the Titanic would 0:09:17.800 --> 0:09:23.120 end up really making this uh clear that there needed 0:09:23.160 --> 0:09:26.240 to be some radio communication for ships at sea. But 0:09:26.320 --> 0:09:28.040 what he wanted to do was he wanted to send 0:09:28.040 --> 0:09:32.680 out a message to essentially telegraph operators aboard ships. That 0:09:32.760 --> 0:09:36.320 was his plan. So he proceeded the concert with an 0:09:36.360 --> 0:09:41.520 actual telegraph message that essentially translates into hey, pay attention. 0:09:42.360 --> 0:09:44.240 And then once he did that, he started knew it 0:09:44.280 --> 0:09:46.560 was coming though, right they were not most of them. 0:09:47.360 --> 0:09:49.520 They just knew to pay attention because they got the message. 0:09:50.400 --> 0:09:53.360 Yeah there, they were like, well, here's the message, whatever 0:09:53.440 --> 0:09:55.800 is going to happen, We need to really focus. And 0:09:55.920 --> 0:09:57.679 so what they were expecting to hear were just the 0:09:58.360 --> 0:10:00.720 noises they would hear for the dot, some dashes of 0:10:00.760 --> 0:10:03.840 Morse code. So then he he gives a short speech. 0:10:04.840 --> 0:10:08.600 He plays a violin, uh and plays a Holy Night. 0:10:09.320 --> 0:10:11.320 There were supposed to be other people who talked into 0:10:11.360 --> 0:10:13.680 the microphone too, but most of them chickened out because 0:10:13.720 --> 0:10:17.120 they got like terrible stage fright because they realized all 0:10:17.120 --> 0:10:19.319 of a sudden that they were speaking to like hundreds 0:10:19.360 --> 0:10:23.360 of people, right right, yeah. Yeah, And so anyway, it 0:10:23.480 --> 0:10:25.680 ended up being a big hit. Sailors up and down 0:10:25.679 --> 0:10:29.160 the Atlantic coast were we're able to hear him and 0:10:29.200 --> 0:10:31.400 reported back to it, so it was known to be 0:10:31.440 --> 0:10:37.200 a success. And that's how AM radio got started. Yeah yeah, 0:10:37.240 --> 0:10:40.360 I like that. Yeah, so that's a nice start to 0:10:40.480 --> 0:10:44.960 it ends up being industry. Yeah. So so he he 0:10:45.040 --> 0:10:51.560 demonstrates this capability, and immediately other physicists and engineers start 0:10:51.640 --> 0:10:54.360 to experiment with it because some of them had been 0:10:54.400 --> 0:10:57.600 independently working on this same kind of idea. Fessenden ended 0:10:57.679 --> 0:11:00.560 up being the first to make it really work in 0:11:00.640 --> 0:11:03.240 a public demonstration. So you had a lot of other 0:11:03.240 --> 0:11:06.319 people who were who either adopted his ideas or continued 0:11:06.360 --> 0:11:11.439 to develop their own ideas, and a lot of amateurs 0:11:11.440 --> 0:11:16.840 were starting to experiment with radio transmissions, including transmitting out 0:11:16.840 --> 0:11:21.319 to telegraph operators who often were very much entertained by 0:11:21.320 --> 0:11:24.240 this because it was different from just listening to clicks 0:11:24.400 --> 0:11:26.920 on the headphones. This is the part that's the most 0:11:26.960 --> 0:11:30.120 fascinating about the evolution of radio to me is that 0:11:30.640 --> 0:11:34.640 even though the technology is ultimately made for mass communication, 0:11:34.840 --> 0:11:38.079 people originally started using it as one to one communication 0:11:38.160 --> 0:11:43.960 across long distances, replacing a telegraph. And then uh, these 0:11:44.040 --> 0:11:49.600 amateur operators, these like d I y uh people in 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:52.680 their in their garage, is just you know, tinkering around 0:11:52.720 --> 0:11:54.520 with the technology that they could get a hold of. 0:11:55.080 --> 0:11:58.240 We're able to turn it into this mass communication then yeah. 0:11:58.320 --> 0:12:00.640 And it's funny because when you look at the early ones, 0:12:00.679 --> 0:12:04.560 obviously they were using very low wattage transmitters, so that 0:12:04.600 --> 0:12:07.199 meant that they couldn't transmit very far, most of them. 0:12:07.280 --> 0:12:09.480 I mean, if you were a big name, you might 0:12:09.520 --> 0:12:11.880 be able to work with someone like General Electric to 0:12:12.000 --> 0:12:15.520 get a really big transmitter and be able to send 0:12:15.679 --> 0:12:18.640 a signal far away. Because the signals reach is largely 0:12:18.679 --> 0:12:21.400 dependent upon the power of the transmitter. Right, the further 0:12:21.440 --> 0:12:23.720 way you get, the weaker the signal is, and the 0:12:23.800 --> 0:12:26.040 less you'll be likely you are able to pick it 0:12:26.120 --> 0:12:30.199 up with a receiver. So in the early days, people 0:12:30.280 --> 0:12:34.920 were happy to experiment with this, and there was really 0:12:34.960 --> 0:12:39.199 no regulation because there there hadn't been a demonstrable need 0:12:39.360 --> 0:12:42.800 to regulate yet, because no one had the power to 0:12:42.840 --> 0:12:46.200 interfere that much with anything that was important. We have 0:12:46.240 --> 0:12:48.439 more to say about the golden age of radio after 0:12:48.520 --> 0:12:59.480 these brief messages, Festal would invent a high frequency electric 0:12:59.520 --> 0:13:02.800 generator to create radio waves in the Hurts frequency, which 0:13:02.800 --> 0:13:07.640 was really important. And in Dr Charles Aaron Culver, who 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:10.560 was newly hired as a professor of physics at Beloit 0:13:10.720 --> 0:13:17.400 College or bell Watt if you prefer Um and So college. 0:13:17.440 --> 0:13:22.679 I've never it's it's in a town called bell Watt actually, 0:13:23.480 --> 0:13:26.559 but set up a radio telegraph assembly which became the 0:13:26.600 --> 0:13:29.280 foundation for the college is radio station, though voice in 0:13:29.360 --> 0:13:32.000 music transmission wouldn't be part of it until the nineteen twenties. 0:13:32.040 --> 0:13:35.200 But this this became like again, it was someone a 0:13:35.280 --> 0:13:38.680 physics professor, in this case, a physics professor who was 0:13:38.720 --> 0:13:42.000 already interested in radio and had been working on it independently, 0:13:42.679 --> 0:13:46.120 setting up a thing that would eventually evolve into an 0:13:46.160 --> 0:13:50.360 early early radio station. Yeah, and that's kind of another 0:13:50.440 --> 0:13:53.280 interesting aspect of this too, is that these early amateur 0:13:53.600 --> 0:13:58.640 radio stations weren't just uh d I y kind of 0:13:58.640 --> 0:14:02.000 hobbyists doing it on their own. A lot of it 0:14:02.000 --> 0:14:05.360 was educational institutions, not just colleges, but also high schools 0:14:05.360 --> 0:14:07.280 that were just you know, trying to use it for 0:14:07.400 --> 0:14:11.640 educational purposes. Yeah, and that it's interesting later on what 0:14:11.800 --> 0:14:15.640 happens when amateur radio sort of gets more regulated. It 0:14:15.720 --> 0:14:18.400 really reminds me of the early days of personal computers 0:14:18.640 --> 0:14:22.760 and how how it first started off as a hobbyist thing, 0:14:23.480 --> 0:14:26.320 and then you know, you had bleeding edge adopters who 0:14:26.480 --> 0:14:29.400 might not build a computer, but they're curious about how 0:14:29.440 --> 0:14:32.640 they might use it. And then later you had people 0:14:32.800 --> 0:14:36.200 who were uh, you know more it became more and 0:14:36.240 --> 0:14:39.240 more mainstream as time went on. So we've seen other 0:14:39.320 --> 0:14:42.800 emerging technologies that have followed a similar pathway to radio. 0:14:43.440 --> 0:14:46.520 Uh not always with the dramatics. I mean, there were 0:14:46.560 --> 0:14:50.400 some deffinite dramatics and early personal computers too. But we 0:14:50.520 --> 0:14:53.360 got some crazy stories to tell. But first we have 0:14:53.400 --> 0:14:56.080 another big name in radio that we have to mention. Yeah, 0:14:56.120 --> 0:14:58.400 so in nine and ten, this guy lead to Forest 0:14:59.320 --> 0:15:04.000 really podcasted like the first sort of broad meant for 0:15:04.120 --> 0:15:09.400 mass communication. Radio broadcast uh, specifically of a guy named 0:15:09.560 --> 0:15:13.400 Enrico Caruso singing. I believe it was opera singing from 0:15:13.440 --> 0:15:17.000 what I understood, um, and that he he ushered in 0:15:17.040 --> 0:15:22.480 this area era of radio communications. And unfortunately, though even 0:15:22.480 --> 0:15:26.000 though he was broadcasting, probably on Fessenden's news system, for 0:15:26.000 --> 0:15:28.600 the most part it was static and radio interference, so 0:15:28.640 --> 0:15:32.120 the audience barely heard anything. But you know, for a 0:15:32.160 --> 0:15:36.520 decade afterwards, radio fans were both using uh, these amateur 0:15:36.640 --> 0:15:40.480 radio units to broadcast and receive. Yeah, it wasn't just 0:15:40.840 --> 0:15:44.040 them receiving. Yeah, it wasn't like they were a passive audience. 0:15:44.080 --> 0:15:48.000 They were creating as well. And again, depending upon the 0:15:48.000 --> 0:15:51.240 power of their radio transmitters, it maybe that they were 0:15:51.240 --> 0:15:54.840 only transmitting to people in their general neighborhood or even 0:15:54.960 --> 0:15:58.680 small time, but you wouldn't be able to necessarily pick 0:15:58.720 --> 0:16:00.640 up that signal for much. Further, also depends on the 0:16:00.720 --> 0:16:02.920 quality of the receiver as well. Like you could build 0:16:03.280 --> 0:16:07.120 a very simple a radio receiver that doesn't even require 0:16:07.120 --> 0:16:10.160 a battery and as a crystal, a very long antenna 0:16:10.200 --> 0:16:14.040 and some headphones, and uh, you can pick up radio 0:16:14.080 --> 0:16:17.240 signals if you're close enough to a transmitter. Uh. And 0:16:17.280 --> 0:16:19.000 in fact, that's a fun project to do. You can 0:16:19.000 --> 0:16:21.640 look up how to do that online. So also in 0:16:21.760 --> 0:16:24.600 nineteen ten, the same time Leada Forrest was was experimenting 0:16:24.600 --> 0:16:27.320 with us, you had a guy named Charles David Harold 0:16:27.520 --> 0:16:30.520 who opened a school that he called the Herald College 0:16:30.520 --> 0:16:34.040 of Engineering and Wireless, and he was experimenting with wireless 0:16:34.120 --> 0:16:37.120 voice transmissions as early as nineteen o nine and providing 0:16:37.120 --> 0:16:40.280 a thrill to telegraph operators who suddenly were able to 0:16:40.320 --> 0:16:42.560 hear voices over the telegraph lines. Now this is out 0:16:42.600 --> 0:16:47.480 in California, so he's surprising people out there who normally 0:16:47.640 --> 0:16:50.200 they weren't expecting it at all, but they loved it 0:16:50.600 --> 0:16:53.480 because you would imagine this job is a little probably 0:16:53.560 --> 0:16:57.680 very tedious. Yeah. So he actually started setting up a 0:16:57.880 --> 0:17:02.880 regular broadcast time, like the first radio programming in a way. 0:17:03.080 --> 0:17:06.119 And by nineteen ten he had created this, uh, this 0:17:06.160 --> 0:17:09.360 program that would include reading out news to telegraph operators. 0:17:09.880 --> 0:17:13.560 And his wife Sybil got involved and she started playing 0:17:13.600 --> 0:17:15.879 records that the description I said was the kind of 0:17:15.920 --> 0:17:22.040 records young people like to listen to back in Yeah, 0:17:22.080 --> 0:17:25.400 so playing records, So playing music for these telegraph operators 0:17:25.720 --> 0:17:31.080 and holding the first radio contests, and here's all the 0:17:31.200 --> 0:17:35.120 radio contest work. Back then. She would instruct people listening 0:17:35.160 --> 0:17:38.280 to come by their house sign a guest book with 0:17:38.320 --> 0:17:40.080 their name and where they were from, and then they 0:17:40.160 --> 0:17:44.160 might win a little prize Number seven. No, wasn't calling 0:17:44.240 --> 0:17:47.360 number seven. Uh. And here's the coolest part. I think 0:17:47.440 --> 0:17:51.680 this little amateur station eventually over time in ninety one 0:17:51.680 --> 0:17:56.800 would become k q W, and in nineteen it would 0:17:56.800 --> 0:18:02.720 evolve into k CBS, then the CBS. Yeah. I thought 0:18:02.720 --> 0:18:05.320 that was really interesting, especially like we'll talk later about, 0:18:05.720 --> 0:18:08.679 CBS is sort of importance in the big game of 0:18:08.800 --> 0:18:12.080 radio development. Yeah. So nineteen ten is also when the 0:18:12.200 --> 0:18:15.399 US passed the Wireless Ship Act, which required all ships 0:18:15.400 --> 0:18:17.600 of the US traveling more than two miles off the 0:18:17.600 --> 0:18:20.480 coast and carrying more than fifty passengers to have a 0:18:20.520 --> 0:18:25.320 wireless radio equipment on board with a with an operator, 0:18:25.800 --> 0:18:27.480 and the transmission range had to be at least a 0:18:27.520 --> 0:18:31.000 hundred miles. And that meant that it created a lot 0:18:31.200 --> 0:18:36.000 more radio transmissions broadcast without any regulation. This is where 0:18:36.040 --> 0:18:38.760 the United States government starts to say, this is going 0:18:38.760 --> 0:18:41.560 to become a problem because now we we already have 0:18:41.600 --> 0:18:44.119 a lot of radio traffic going on just through amateurs 0:18:44.560 --> 0:18:48.320 as well as ship to land land to ship communication. Uh, 0:18:48.359 --> 0:18:50.359 it's starting to get a little crowded and we're starting 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:52.199 to get interference. We need to figure out how to 0:18:52.240 --> 0:18:55.200 handle this. So in nineteen twelve, they passed the Radio 0:18:55.240 --> 0:18:57.359 Act of nineteen twelve, which is good because if they 0:18:57.359 --> 0:18:59.119 had passed the Radio Act of nineteen twelve and like 0:18:59.160 --> 0:19:02.000 nineteen eleven, every one would have been confused. Uh, and 0:19:02.160 --> 0:19:04.639 marked the first time the US government required radio stations 0:19:04.680 --> 0:19:07.919 to be licensed. So the licensing was really just to 0:19:07.960 --> 0:19:11.879 create order in chaos, and it was really kind of like, 0:19:12.240 --> 0:19:15.919 you know, we want to make sure that we're keeping 0:19:15.920 --> 0:19:19.240 certain frequencies free so that we can have these these 0:19:19.320 --> 0:19:24.560 very important transmissions go uninterrupted because am transmissions, if you 0:19:24.680 --> 0:19:27.400 transmit two things on the same frequency, you get lots 0:19:27.400 --> 0:19:31.160 of interference and just different from there was a military 0:19:31.200 --> 0:19:34.399 component to this as well, because World War One was 0:19:34.440 --> 0:19:39.360 on the horizon, was happening, and they the government banned 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:44.240 amateur radio broadcasting during the war for you know, the 0:19:44.280 --> 0:19:47.080 reason that they were trying to transmit signals to one 0:19:47.080 --> 0:19:50.760 another of important nature. If somebody was talking in their 0:19:50.800 --> 0:19:56.880 garage about, uh, you know, their favorite records something or you. Yeah, 0:19:57.000 --> 0:19:59.080 the ones that the young people listened to, they would 0:19:59.119 --> 0:20:01.560 overlap and they didn't get these important messages, so they 0:20:01.600 --> 0:20:04.639 shut it all down. And also just radio detection to 0:20:05.000 --> 0:20:09.840 the the remote possibility that they might detect radio transmissions 0:20:09.880 --> 0:20:16.440 from either allies or enemies. It would mean that yeah, yeah, 0:20:16.520 --> 0:20:19.159 this is this is before the whole Bletchley Park on 0:20:19.280 --> 0:20:21.879 Enigma thing, which is I've talked about that in the 0:20:21.880 --> 0:20:26.960 previous episode of tech Stuff. But fascinating story fourteen Edwin Armstrong, 0:20:27.000 --> 0:20:30.320 who's going to be important throughout this conversation, and his 0:20:30.359 --> 0:20:34.159 story is amazing and tragic. Uh. He patents a radio 0:20:34.200 --> 0:20:38.000 receiver circuit that increases the selectivity which allows you to 0:20:38.000 --> 0:20:42.240 tune into specific frequencies and the sensitivity of radio receivers. 0:20:42.280 --> 0:20:44.680 That means it was able to pick up weaker radio 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:48.639 signals than previous receivers. So selectivity obviously very important. You 0:20:48.640 --> 0:20:50.719 want to be able to say, I'm looking at this 0:20:50.760 --> 0:20:54.760 particular band of frequencies and I don't want anything outside 0:20:54.800 --> 0:20:57.960 of that um and we would see that get better 0:20:57.960 --> 0:21:02.080 and better. In en he would invent the super heterodyne 0:21:02.359 --> 0:21:07.600 radio receiver or superhead. So this principle is actually really fascinating, 0:21:08.080 --> 0:21:10.560 and I gotta admit to you, Christian, I had to 0:21:11.400 --> 0:21:13.600 really sit down and read this a few times to 0:21:13.680 --> 0:21:16.200 kind of get what was going on. Yeah, because I 0:21:16.240 --> 0:21:21.199 mean this is radio, electromagnetic and radio broadcast. I have 0:21:21.520 --> 0:21:23.960 a basic understanding of it, but it does go well 0:21:23.960 --> 0:21:27.040 beyond what I studied in school. And it took a while, 0:21:27.080 --> 0:21:28.639 but now I think I've got it. Will explain it 0:21:28.680 --> 0:21:30.480 to me, because yeah, I'm more of the on the 0:21:30.520 --> 0:21:34.840 side of the like cultural examination of radio, whereas like 0:21:34.880 --> 0:21:38.240 the technology of it escapes me sometimes, So yeah, hit me. 0:21:38.320 --> 0:21:42.680 All right. Let's say, let's say I want to transmit 0:21:43.600 --> 0:21:46.040 a radio signal at a high frequency, so it's not 0:21:46.040 --> 0:21:49.760 going to interfere with anything else, but that processing high 0:21:49.840 --> 0:21:53.560 frequencies is a little tricky, so you might have a 0:21:53.640 --> 0:21:57.879 receiver that can process frequencies up to I'm just gonna 0:21:57.920 --> 0:22:01.760 take an arbitrary number, a hundred killer hurts. But I 0:22:01.800 --> 0:22:06.280 want to transmit at fifteen hundred killer hurts. If I 0:22:06.320 --> 0:22:10.359 were to introduce that frequency to an oscillator tuned to 0:22:10.480 --> 0:22:14.680 a different frequency, suddenly I would be able to receive 0:22:14.840 --> 0:22:18.320 that uh, not just at the original frequency. I transmit 0:22:18.359 --> 0:22:21.920 at but the difference between that and the oscillating one. 0:22:21.960 --> 0:22:25.160 So another easy example, let's say they have an oscillating 0:22:25.200 --> 0:22:30.160 frequency at a thousand killer hurts. Yeah, okay, that would 0:22:30.160 --> 0:22:33.280 mean that if you used a receiver tuned to five 0:22:33.680 --> 0:22:38.639 killer hurts, killer hurts or two thousand five killer hurts, 0:22:38.760 --> 0:22:41.960 you would pick up that signal one could process it. Okay, 0:22:42.000 --> 0:22:44.640 So and I'm imagining that this is a process that's 0:22:44.640 --> 0:22:48.720 still used today. Yeah. This is the principle of transmitting 0:22:48.840 --> 0:22:52.040 and receiving with a radio so that your radio doesn't 0:22:52.040 --> 0:22:54.560 have to have as wide a spectrum. It's called an 0:22:54.600 --> 0:22:57.639 interminute frequency. And it took me a long time to 0:22:57.640 --> 0:23:00.199 figure out what was going on, is the oscillator was 0:23:00.240 --> 0:23:02.480 throwing me off. And then I realized, oh, the oscilators 0:23:02.480 --> 0:23:05.159 tuned to a different frequency, and that's what gives you 0:23:05.200 --> 0:23:09.400 the broader range that you can pick up. It's pretty fascinating. 0:23:09.480 --> 0:23:13.520 And again Armstrong was absolutely brilliant coming up with this. Uh. 0:23:13.560 --> 0:23:16.480 And then we move up to the nineteen twenties. Yeah, 0:23:16.520 --> 0:23:19.040 and the twenties is when this educational stuff that I 0:23:19.040 --> 0:23:21.080 was talking about earlier, it really hits a boom. There 0:23:21.119 --> 0:23:24.840 was like more than two hundred educational organizations across the 0:23:24.920 --> 0:23:29.359 United States of America that we're requesting broadcasting licenses so 0:23:29.400 --> 0:23:33.320 that they could transmit, and whether they were using it 0:23:33.359 --> 0:23:36.359 as a an opportunity for their students to learn about 0:23:36.359 --> 0:23:40.640 the technology or to broadcast educational information didn't really matter. 0:23:41.000 --> 0:23:44.880 The unfortunate thing is that thirteen years later, by three 0:23:46.359 --> 0:23:50.439 or more of these educational institutions had folded and and 0:23:50.520 --> 0:23:52.639 basically it was because of and this is going to 0:23:52.680 --> 0:23:55.760 be a huge theme of this episode, because of ad 0:23:55.800 --> 0:23:59.800 based programming and stronger stations, commercial stations that were able 0:23:59.840 --> 0:24:04.639 to overlapped their signal. Yeah, you essentially had not just 0:24:04.760 --> 0:24:08.600 the fact that the companies had more technological behind them, 0:24:08.640 --> 0:24:12.639 but the government was favoring those over the educational ones. 0:24:13.280 --> 0:24:16.560