TABLE OF CONTENTS The First Radio Message Crosses the Atlantic 4 Radio Telegraphy Saves Lives 6 Radio Spreads Sporting Events News 8 Commercial Radio Begins Regular Programming 10 Advertising Changes How Radio Is Funded 12 FDR Uses Radio to Calm a Nation 14 Radio Brings Disaster into Our Living Rooms 16 The War of the Worlds Panics America 18 Edward R Murrow Brings World War II Home 20 Rock and Roll Finds a Home on the Radio 22 FM Radio Plays Album Rock 24 Satellites Make Radio Available Anywhere 26 Fact Sheet 28 Glossary 30 For More Information 31 Index 32 About the Author 32
1 THE FIRST RADIO MESSAGE CROSSES THE ATLANTIC On December 12 1901 three short clicks traveled across the Atlantic Ocean on radio waves The clicks represented dots in Morse Code They spelled the letter S They were being sent from a 200-foot 61 m tall transmitter The transmitter was in a place called Poldhu Cornwall on the English coast The message on the English coast The message was received more than was received more than 2,000 miles 3,218 km away by a 400-foot 122 m tall antenna in St John’s Newfoundland Canada This S was the first transatlantic radio message The man responsible for this message was Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi Guglielmo Marconi with his radio equipment 4
9,104 Length in miles of telegraph cable that connected San Francisco California to Manila the Philippines via Midway Island and Guam in 1903 A message was sent from a transmitter on the coast of England and received in Canada The clicks in the message represented the letter S in Morse Code The man responsible was Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi The signal from Poldhu was received at Signal Hill St John’s Newfoundland Five years earlier a 22-year-old Marconi had demonstrated and patented his wireless receiver in England He had read about experiments with radio waves He saw the possibilities for using them to carry messages Radio waves are a form of electromagnetic radiation This radiation is a kind of energy that travels in waves through space These waves can be smaller than an atom or bigger than the earth Radio waves have the longest wavelengths In 1897 Marconi started the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company Two years later he sent his first message It traveled from shore to a ship 20 miles 32 km away Over the next 15 years his company built permanent wireless stations around the world They were used mainly to communicate with ships at sea Marconi won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1909 for wireless telegraphy 5
