The decision was not about Marconi's original radio patents and the court declared that their decision had no bearing on Marconi's claim as the first to achieve radio communication, just that since Marconi's claim to certain patents were questionable, he could not claim infringement on those same patents (there are claims the decision may have let the U.S. government avoid paying damages that the Marconi Company was claiming for use of its patents during World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
via simply restoring the non-Marconi prior patent).
* After World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
: The FM radio broadcast was introduced in Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
.
* 1948: A new wavelength plan was set up for
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
at a meeting in
Copenhagen
Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...
. Because of the recent war, Germany (which was not even invited) was only given a few medium-wave frequencies, which are not very good for broadcasting. For this reason Germany began broadcasting on USW, "ultra short wave" (nowadays called VHF). After some
amplitude modulation
Amplitude modulation (AM) is a modulation technique used in electronic communication, most commonly for transmitting messages with a radio wave. In amplitude modulation, the amplitude (signal strength) of the wave is varied in proportion to ...
experience with VHF, it was realized that FM radio was a much better alternative for VHF radio than AM.
Later 20th-century developments
* 1954: Regency introduced a pocket
transistor
upright=1.4, gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink).
A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch e ...
radio, the
TR-1, powered by a "standard 22.5V Battery".
* 1960:
Sony
, commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...
introduced their first transistorized radio, small enough to fit in a vest pocket, and able to be powered by a small battery. It was durable, because there were no tubes to burn out. Over the next twenty years, transistors displaced tubes almost completely except for very high power or very high frequency uses.
* Early 1960s:
VOR
VOR or vor may refer to:
Organizations
* Vale of Rheidol Railway in Wales
* Voice of Russia, a radio broadcaster
* Volvo Ocean Race, a yacht race
Science, technology and medicine
* VHF omnidirectional range, a radio navigation aid used in a ...
systems finally became widespread; before that,
aircraft
An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines ...
used commercial AM radio stations for navigation. (AM stations are still marked on U.S.
aviation
Aviation includes the activities surrounding mechanical flight and the aircraft industry. ''Aircraft'' includes fixed-wing and rotary-wing types, morphable wings, wing-less lifting bodies, as well as lighter-than-air craft such as hot air ...
charts).
* 1963: Color television was commercially transmitted, and the first (radio)
communication satellite
A communications satellite is an artificial satellite that relays and amplifies radio telecommunication signals via a transponder; it creates a communication channel between a source transmitter and a receiver at different locations on Earth. C ...
, TELSTAR, was launched.
* In the late 1960s, the U.S. long-distance telephone network began to convert to a digital network, employing
digital radio
Digital radio is the use of digital technology to transmit or receive across the radio spectrum. Digital transmission by radio waves includes digital broadcasting, and especially digital audio radio services.
Types
In digital broadcasting syst ...
s for many of its links.
* 1970s:
LORAN
LORAN, short for long range navigation, was a hyperbolic radio navigation system developed in the United States during World War II. It was similar to the UK's Gee system but operated at lower frequencies in order to provide an improved range u ...
became the premier radio navigation system. Soon, the U.S. Navy experimented with
satellite navigation
A satellite navigation or satnav system is a system that uses satellites to provide autonomous geo-spatial positioning. It allows satellite navigation devices to determine their location (longitude, latitude, and altitude/elevation) to high pr ...
.
* 1987: The
GPS
The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a Radionavigation-satellite service, satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of t ...
constellation of satellites was launched.
* Early 1990s:
Amateur radio
Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, is the use of the radio frequency spectrum for purposes of non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, private recreation, radiosport, contesting, and emergency communic ...
experimenters began to use personal computers with audio cards to process radio signals.
* 1994: The U.S. Army and
DARPA
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military.
Originally known as the Adv ...
launched an aggressive successful project to construct a
software radio
Software-defined radio (SDR) is a radio communication system where components that have been traditionally implemented in analog hardware (e.g. mixers, filters, amplifiers, modulators/ demodulators, detectors, etc.) are instead implemented by m ...
that could become a different radio on the fly by changing software.
* Late 1990s: The
digital
Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits.
Technology and computing Hardware
*Digital electronics, electronic circuits which operate using digital signals
**Digital camera, which captures and stores digital i ...
transmissions began to be applied to broadcasting.
Telex on radio
Telegraphy
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...
did not go away on radio. Instead, the degree of automation increased. On land-lines in the 1930s,
Teletypewriter
A teleprinter (teletypewriter, teletype or TTY) is an electromechanical device that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels, in both point-to-point (telecommunications), point-to-point and point- ...
s automated encoding, and were adapted to pulse-code dialing to automate routing, a service called
telex
The telex network is a station-to-station switched network of teleprinters similar to a Public switched telephone network, telephone network, using telegraph-grade connecting circuits for two-way text-based messages. Telex was a major method of ...
. For thirty years, telex was the absolute cheapest form of long-distance communication, because up to 25 telex channels could occupy the same bandwidth as one voice channel. For business and government, it was an advantage that telex directly produced written documents.
Telex systems were adapted to short-wave radio by sending tones over
single sideband
In radio communications, single-sideband modulation (SSB) or single-sideband suppressed-carrier modulation (SSB-SC) is a type of modulation used to transmit information, such as an audio signal, by radio waves. A refinement of amplitude modul ...
.
CCITT
The ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) is one of the three sectors (divisions or units) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). It is responsible for coordinating standards for telecommunications and Information Commu ...
R.44 (the most advanced pure-telex standard) incorporated character-level error detection and retransmission as well as automated encoding and routing. For many years, telex-on-radio (TOR) was the only reliable way to reach some third-world countries. TOR remains reliable, though less-expensive forms of e-mail are displacing it. Many national telecom companies historically ran nearly pure telex networks for their governments, and they ran many of these links over short wave radio.
See also
*
History of radio
The early history of radio is the history of technology that produces and uses radio equipment, radio instruments that use radio waves. Within the timeline of radio, many people contributed theory and inventions in what became radio. Radio deve ...
*
Timeline of the introduction of radio in countries
A timeline is a display of a list of events in chronological order. It is typically a graphic design showing a long bar labelled with dates paralleling it, and usually contemporaneous events.
Timelines can use any suitable scale representin ...
*
History of broadcasting
It is generally recognized that the first radio transmission was made from a temporary station set up by Guglielmo Marconi in 1895 on the Isle of Wight. This followed on from pioneering work in the field by a number of people including Alessa ...
*
List of oldest radio stations
It is generally recognised that the first radio transmission was made from a temporary station set up by Guglielmo Marconi in 1895. This followed on from pioneering work in the field by a number of people including Alessandro Volta, André-Mari ...
*
*
Birth of public radio broadcasting
The birth of public radio broadcasting is credited to Lee de Forest who transmitted the world’s first public broadcast in New York City on January 13, 1910. This broadcast featured the voices of Enrico Caruso and other Metropolitan Opera st ...
*
History of broadcasting in Australia
The history of broadcasting in Australia has been shaped for over a century by the problem of communication across long distances, coupled with a strong base in a wealthy society with a deep taste for aural communications in a silent landscape. ...
*
Timeline of Australian radio
1800s
1890-1899
* Although Australia's first officially recognised experimental broadcast was made in 1905 (see below), there are reliable reports in September 1897 (just two years after Guglielmo Marconi's original radio experiments) of demon ...
*
Broadcasting in the United States
Broadcasting in the United States began with experiments with wireless transmission during the middle of the 19th century, with varying degrees of success. These transmissions were initially by radio hobbyists fascinated with the technology. Onc ...
References
Cited sources
*
*
*
External links
A Chronology of AM Radio Broadcasting 1900–1960– presented in a chronological order with short descriptions.
{{Telecommunications
Radio
Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmit ...
History of radio
Radio by year