Of course, as with a rating book, almost anyone
can find a place where they rank higher than someone else in something.
Such is the case with the inventors of Radio and the first Radio stations.
Was the inventor of Radio the person who discovered that electromagnetic
waves could be sent through the air, or the person
who actually sent them? Was it the person who
sent signals the farthest, or who sent the first with voice? Was
the first station the first one to be licensed, or was it the first licensed
experimental station? The answers aren't easy.
Wireless itself is relatively broad. Within the wireless category are many subcategories and industries of which Radio broadcasting is just one, as is wireless telegraph, wireless ship-to-shore communication, and so on.
To go back to the development of wireless we must
first track events leading up to the discovery of electricity. Though some
documentation goes further back, electricity as a science began in 1600
when Dr. William Gilbert, who was Queen Elizabeth's personal physician,
invented the electroscope which detected electromagnetic energy in the
body. He coined the word electricity. From that point forward many people
had their hand in the development of electricity. Sir Thomas Browne,
Benjamin Franklin, Alessandro Volta and Georg Simon Ohm among others. For
brevitys sake, we'll look at wireless after electricity was invented.
In 1865 a Washington, D.C. dentist, Dr. Mahlon
Loomis, explored wireless. He developed a method of transmitting and receiving
messages using the Earth's atmosphere as a conductor. Loomis sent up kites
18 miles apart from two West Virginia mountaintops. The kites were covered
with a copper screen and were (1)connected to the ground with copper wires.
The wire from each kite string was connected to one side of a galvanometer;
the other side was held by Loomis, who was ready to make a connection to
a coil buried in the Earth. The receiving station connection, between the
meter and the coil buried in the Earth, was always closed,
and whenever the circuit was closed at the transmitting end, the galvanometer
at the receiving station actually dipped. Congress then awarded Loomis
a $50,000 research grant.
In 1879 David Edward Hughes discovered that when a stick of wood covered with powdered copper was placed in an electrical circuit, the copper would adhere when a spark was made. In 1885 Sir William H. Peerce and A.W. Heaviside sent signals to one another at a distance of 1,000 yards with two parallel telegraph lines and an unwired telephone receiver in the middle. This was the discovery of induction, or crosstalk.
The real experiments leading to Radios discovery started with Heinrich Hertz in 1887. Some call him the father of Radio because his experiments created interest by Marconi. Radio waves were commonly called Hertzian Waves in the early days. Hertz studied Maxwell's theories and in attempting to develop further data, actually set up the first spark transmitter and receiver. The transmitter consisted of a Leyden jar and a coil of wire, the ends of which were left open so that a small gap was formed. For the receiver he used a similar coil at the opposite end of the room. When the jar was charged, sparks flew across the gap and were received on the other end. Hertz then measured the velocity of the waves and found they were the same as light, 186,000 miles per second.
In 1892 a French inventor, Edouard Branly, created
a tube containing loose zinc and silver filings, with contact plugs on
each end. The shavings would stick together after the first spark was received;
a method of separating them for the next signal was necessary. Popov, a
Russian, came up with the idea of using a vibrator and the hammer of an
electric bell to strike the tube and cause the filings to separate.
Tesla had come up with something different and superior to that of Hertz's original ideas. He developed a series of high frequency alternators producing frequencies up to 33,000 cycles per second (33,000 Hz). This, of course, was the forerunner to high frequency alternators used for continuous wave Radio communication. Tesla went on to build the Tesla coil, an air-core transformer with primary and secondary coils tuned to resonate a step-up transformer which converts low-voltage high current to high-voltage low current at high frequencies. It is used today in all Radios and televisions.
In 1892, a Kentucky farmer and inventor, Nathan
Stubblefield, publicly demonstrated wireless. Not only did he broadcast
signals, but he also was able to broadcast voice and music. He demonstrated
wireless again in 1898 to a documented (by The St. Louis Dispatch) distance
of 500 yards. He demonstrated a ship-to-shore broadcast on the Potomac
River in Washington, D.C., on March 20, 1902, and received patent number
887,357 for wireless telephone on May 12, 1908. Stubblefield was
so afraid that someone would steal his invention, he sheltered it from
everyone. He had been offered $500,000 for his invention but turned it
down because he felt it was worth more. Stubblefield envisioned the
device in motorcars (as shown on his patent). Following another demonstration
in Washington his "secret box" with his apparatus inside was stolen (documented
February 13, 1912) and he believed his invention was copied. Nathan B.
Stubblefield died of starvation and a pauper in Murray, Kentucky, after
going into seclusion because of his failed attempts for acceptance.
In 1904 J. Ambrose Fleming developed his two-element (diode) valve (The Fleming Valve) while working for Marconi. Though significant, the invention was short-lived due to De Forest's invention of a three-element (triode) valve, which later became the audion tube, said to be the most significant invention in Radio. Unfortunately DeForest could not interest the public in buying stock in his company and he was forced to sell the rights to the American Telephone and Telegraph company for $500,000. The decision made by AT&T was thought to be foolish at the time, but later proved to be the investment that made the company.
On Christmas Eve in 1906 Fessenden delighted listeners
up and down the East Coast by broadcasting voice and music from his transmitter
at Brant Park, Massachusetts, using a high frequency alternator based on
Teslas designs and principles. The program consisted of music from phonograph
records, a violin solo, and a speech by the inventor. Fessendens program
did not prove to be a pioneering effort, however. For several years Radio
remained a communications medium devoted to sending and receiving messages.
It proved especially valuable to the armed forces during World War I. The
broadcasting potential was not realized until after the war, though David
Sarnoff in 1916 envisioned the possibility of a Radio receiver in every
home. (He later became head of the Radio Corporation of America and the
National Broadcasting Company.) In 1907 G.W. Pickard discovered that minerals
made an excellent detector which led to the invention of the crystal detector.
It was not only effective but inexpensive which made the availability of
wireless receivers more widespread.
In 1913 Edwin H. Armstrong (who much later invented FM Radio) created a way to increase the sensitivity of receivers. This regeneration system ended up in litigation with De Forest who claimed he was the inventor. Ultimately De Forest prevailed. De Forest also continued to perfect the audion tube he had sold to AT&T. It now had the ability to function as an oscillator (generator of high frequencies). This led to the oscillator circuit created by W.E. Hartley. The result was improved long-distance transmission of speech, the forerunner of Radio broadcasting.
The first commercial was claimed to be sent out over WEAF in New York City in 1922, however that is disputed because in KDKAs initial broadcasts announcers mentioned a record store in exchange for records to play on the air, as did KQW announcers in San Jose, California. (It's interesting to note that Westinghouse, which owned KDKA, was founded by George Westinghouse, the first owner of an electric company to employ the principles of alternating current. These principles were obtained through a relationship with Nikola Tesla who held the patent, and also had the patent on wireless transmission.)
But was KDKA the first station? Though its November 2, 1920 debut is considered the official start of Radio broadcasting, others were doing the same prior to KDKA. Earlier that same year, in Detroit, WWJ using call letters 8MK began regular broadcasts. And much earlier, in 1912, Charles David Herrold began regular, continuous broadcasts of music and information in San Jose. The amateur station was well-known around the Bay area. It eventually became KQW and then KCBS.
In 1913 the physics department at Iowa State University
began wireless demonstrations and is documented by a newspaper article
to have done one such demonstration at the Iowa State Fair in 1915. It
became station 9YI and later WOI. With groundwork dating back to 1904,
the University of Wisconsin in Madison experimented with voice and music
transmission in 1917. Their calls were 9XM, and later WHA.
But what about Nathan Stubblefield who had demonstrated wireless in 1892? If you go to the town square in Murray, Kentucky, you'll find a statue of Stubblefield inscribed with the words "Murray, Kentucky, Birthplace of Radio" Could it be that a forward-thinking albeit eccentric farmer from Kentucky outwitted the intellects of Tesla, Marconi, Edison (who once worked on wireless experiments and also won a suit against Marconi for patent infringement) and others? You will recall that after being very protective of his proprietary knowledge, Stubblefield's apparatus was stolen following a demonstration in Washington, D.C. Could it have surfaced as someone else's invention? Documents prove his early demonstrations of an actual working wireless system to have occurred one year before Tesla's lectures about Radio which were prior to his working experiments. No one will ever know for sure. The Supreme Court ruled that Tesla is the father of Radio ... and Marconi is not. The question remains whether the honor should really go to Stubblefield.
About the author...B. Eric Rhoads is the author
of the new book,
BLAST
FROM THE PAST: A PICTORIAL HISTORY OF RADIO'S FIRST 75 YEARS
(Streamline Press 1-800-226-7857).
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