Radio and TV History

  • 1880 - Electromagetic Waves

    1880 - Electromagetic Waves
    Around the 1880s the first intentional transmission of a signal by means of Electromagnetic Waves was performed by David Edward Hughes in an experiment.
  • 1890 - Wireless Telegraphy

    1890 - Wireless Telegraphy
    Guglielmo Marconi built the first complete, commercially successful wireless telegraphy system based on airborne Hertzian waves.
  • 1900 - Human Voice Wireless

    1900 - Human Voice Wireless
    Roberto Landell de Moura transmitted the human voice wirelessly to a distance of about a half a mile.
  • 1910's - First Purpose-Built Radio Factory

    1910's - First Purpose-Built Radio Factory
    Marconi opened the worlds first purpose-built radio factory at New Street Works in Chelmsford, England.
  • 1920 - The First Radio News

    1920 - The First Radio News
    On August 23, 1920, the first radio news program was broadcast by the station 8MK in Detroit, Michigan.
  • 1930 - Analog Television

    1930 - Analog Television
    Regular analog television broadcasting began in some parts of Europe and North America.
  • 1947 - Mobile Telephone Service (MTS)

    1947 - Mobile Telephone Service (MTS)
    AT&T had only about 5000 customers that placed about 30,000 calls each week after it introduced MTS to 100 towns.
  • 1950 - Sony Introduced First Transistorized Radio

    1950 - Sony Introduced First Transistorized Radio
    In 1955 a newly formed Sony company introduced its first transistorized radio. It was small enough to fit in a vest pocket and powered by a small battery.
  • 1960 - Color Television

    1960 - Color Television
    Around 1963, color television was being broadcast commercially, but though not all broadcasts or programs were in color, and the first radio communication satellite, Telstar, was launched. And in the late 1960's, the U.S. long-distance telephone network began to convert to a digital network, employing digital radios for many of its links.
  • 1970 - Bell Labs - Advanced Mobile Phone System

    1970 - Bell Labs - Advanced Mobile Phone System
    The Advanced Mobile Phone System analog mobile cell phone system, developed by Bell Labs, was introduced in the Americas in 1978, gave much more capacity.
  • 1980 - American Telephone

    1980 - American Telephone
    British Marconi company was established in 1897 and began communication between coast radio stations and ships at sea. This company, along with its subsidiaries Canadian Marconi and American Marconi, had a stranglehold on ship to shore communication. It operated much the way American Telephone and Telegraph operated until 1983, owning all of its equipment and refusing to communicate with non-Marconi equipped ships.
  • 1990 - Amateur Radio

    1990 - Amateur Radio
    In the early 1990s, amateur radio experimenters began to use personal computers with audio cards to process radio signals. In 1994, the U.S. Army and DARPA launched an aggressive, successful project to construct a software-defined radio that can be programmed to be virtually any radio by changing its software program. Digital transmissions began to be applied to broadcasting in the late 1990s.
  • 2000 - Radio Popularity

    2000 - Radio Popularity
    In 2003, revenue from online streaming music radio was US$49 million and by 2006, that figure rose to US$500 million.
  • 2010 - Webcaster Settlement Act

    2010 - Webcaster Settlement Act
    The Webcaster Settlement Act of 2009 expired in January 2016, ending a 10-year period in which smaller online radio stations, Live365 among them, could pay reduced royalties to labels. On January 31, 2016, webcasters who are governed by rules adopted by the Copyright Royalty Board were required to pay to SoundExchange an annual, nonrefundable minimum fee of $500 for each channel and station. Fees for services with greater than 100 stations or channels being $50,000 annual.