Impact of the Radio in the 20th Century

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Images like this one are quintessential American, the view of a family or even an individual huddled around a radio listening to anything and everything. It could be a baseball game, a radio drama, a commercial or even the president of the United States for that matter. The fact is the radio has serious impact on the lives of American’s as well as other people’s lives all around the globe.

The radio in its current version as with many other technologies like it, evolved into the profile it now holds. Born out of the development of the telegraph, the radio was a kind of wireless telegraph. Its root date back to the mid-1800, when Rudolph Hertz demonstrated varying electricity can generate radio waves, around the end of the 1800’s. Besides the radio technology itself, the world patent system was being tested as well. Two inventors where fighting for the right to say they were the first to patent the radio technology. Marconi and Tesla both transmitted radio signals; Tesla eventually won the fight in court in 1943. The technology was further expanded by the introduction of the Radiotelegraph and Spark-Gap Transmitter. These technological improvements were used in ship to ship and ship to shore communications. Further development followed and changed the radio into the likeness we know and love even today. The AM radio coined by Lee Deforest, soon after this development with the release of the U.S. patents commercial broadcast by civilians started to be made. True broadcast started showing up around the globe in New York and Paris (at the Eiffel Tower) for example. The last and most significant improvement in my opinion was in the development of FM transmissions (About.com Inventors n.d.). The radio has survived in this form for alm...

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