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1880's
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz was able to confirm Maxwell's theory for electromagnetic waves being able to propagate through free space. Which came to be another name for Hertzian Waves. -
1890's
Guglielmo Marconi, and Italian inventor, created the first widely successful airborne radio transmission. Marconi also improved the radius of radio transmission by attaching a longer antenna. He would later win the British patent in 1896 and won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1909. He would also develop the world's first radio station and learned to make money off of commercializing radio. -
1900's
The Westinghouse Corporation further advanced the radio by adding on the vacuum tube detector to further advance the radius of the transmission. In 1906, Reginald Fessenden used a rotary-spark transmitter (the transmission used is what is now considered AM radio) on Christmas Eve in Ocean Bluff-Brant Rock, Mass. -
1910's
In 1912, with all of his success, Marconi decided to open the world's first radio production factory called New Street Works in Chelmford, England. In 1917, Edwin Howard Armstrong, a former U.S. Army Signal Corps in WWI, invented the super-heterodyne circuit. The circuit improves the quality of the signal by reducing the static and increases the amplification. -
1920's
Radio was now starting to pop up more commonly as stations began to open and operate. It was used to broadcast the daily news (8MK in Detroit in 1920), sports, and entertainment (2ADD and Sociedad Radio Argentina) -
1930's
In 1933, Edwin Armstrong changed the industry of radio by creating frequency modulation (FM). With FM, we are able to broadcast at a much wider radius than AM as well as much clearer sound. Single side-band was also invented for the use of long distance telephone lines, and was widely used by amateur radio operators. As radio was accelerating, television was just starting as analog television appeared in pats of Europe and North America. -
1940s-1950s
After World War II, the television started to become more and more common as the American population were now able to buy the products. Even in the country side away from urban areas were able to watch on their television. The first nationwide broadcast were Harry Truman's State of the Union Address in 1947 and the World Series. Television exploded in the 1950s, as a result of stations now producing prime time television shows as well as sporting events. -
1960s-1970s
Midway into the 20th century, television grew into a multi-million dollar industry. The technology also improved as color televisions became more relevant to the American public. Despite the success of television, radio still hung in there. Providing many stations that offer multiple kinds of genres from rock, big band, and jazz. -
1980s-1990s
Television renewed by providing cable. Cable made television bigger than ever by hosting hundreds of television networks with most serving each a unique genre. Networks that were made for kids, sports, movies, music, and mature audiences. In the late 1990s the internet boom affected bot radio and television. Radio renewed by having online music store come up and provide millions of songs with paying little money for them. Because of this, record store became irrelevant and went out of business. -
Present
Television today has come a long way, for the technology has improved on it. HD televisions made it capable to see the shows bigger and clearer. Cable now has grown into a billion dollar corporation providing over a thousand channels. Movie providers such as Netflix and Hulu emerged. The radio has fully integrated with the internet by having people select which ever songs to play in any order, such as Pandora.
