Radio and TV History

By elisehochbaum

  • Wireless Telegraphy achieved

    Wireless Telegraphy achieved
    Heinrich Rudolf Hertz was able to prove transmitted airborne electromagnetic waves (wireless telegraphy) in an experiment confirming Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism, creating the radio

  • First Radio Model Made

    First Radio Model Made
    Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi built the first complete, commercially successful wireless telegraphy system based on airborne Hertzian waves (radio transmission).

  • Marconi Improvements

    Marconi Improvements
    Marconi made adjustments to the system and made it capable of transmitting signals up to 2 miles (3.2 km) and over hills. Marconi’s apparatus is also credited for saving the 700 people that survived the tragic Titanic disaster.

  • First Radio Broadcast

    First Radio Broadcast
    Reginald Fessenden played O Holy Night on the violin and reading a passage from the Bible. This was, for all intents and purposes, the first transmission of what is now known as amplitude modulation or AM radio. Reginald was the first voice of radio.

  • First Radio Factory

    First Radio Factory
    Marconi opened the world's first purpose-built radio factory at New Street Works in Chelmsford, England.

  • Sports Broadcast

    Sports Broadcast
    2ADD aired the first broadcast of a sporting event.

  • First Radio News Broadcast

    First Radio News Broadcast
    The first radio news program was broadcast by station 8MK in Detroit, Michigan, which survives today as all-news format station WWJ under ownership of the CBS network.

  • Wireless Broadcasting

    Wireless Broadcasting
    Regular wireless broadcasts for entertainment began in the UK from the Marconi Research Centre 2MT

  • Commercials

    Commercials
    By the end of the decade, they were established commercial modes. Radio was used to transmit pictures visible as television as early as the 1920s. Commercial television transmissions started in North America and Europe in the 1940s.

  • First Pocket Radio

    First Pocket Radio
    The Regency company introduced a pocket transistor radio, the TR-1