World Radio

This recording of Lord Reith (first head of the BBC) sounds, apart from the crackles and pompous voice, remarkably modern, as he samples the performances at the London theatres live via an "electrophone" - we can't even do that with cellphones today, and this was 1894!

It took another two years for that most flamboyant of Italians to do it all wirelessly... but I wonder whatever happened to the Electrophone Company?

Prehistory of Radio (from the BBC)

1864: Scottish mathematician James Clerk Maxwell publishes a remarkable paper describing the means by which a wave consisting of electric and magnetic fields could propagate (or travel) from one place to another.
1882: French futurologist Albert Rolida predicts sound broadcasting and argues there'll only be one piano in Paris by 1952 ... in a radio studio.
1886: Alexander Graham Bell effectively invents speech broadcasting, demonstrating his new telephone by transmitting excerpts from Hamlet down a line.
1888: Heinrich Hertz confirms Maxwell's theory.
1894: The Electrophone company transmits programmes commercially over the phone. Queen Victoria has several receivers installed at Windsor.

1896: The first British "wireless" patent is given to 22-year-old Italian, Guglielmo Marconi.
December 12, 1901: Marconi demonstrates transatlantic communication by receiving a
signal in St. John's Newfoundland from Cornwall, England
1909: Marconi awarded Nobel Prize in physics: "Have I done the world good, or added a menace?" he asked.

// posted by DXer @ 8:07 PM