Radio Events

  • Marconi

    Marconi was an Italian Inventor. Marconi sent first radio transmission. He also recieved the first transmission.
  • Lee de Forrest and Reginald Fessenden

    Inventors Lee de Forest and Reginald Fessenden find a wireless substitute for the wired telephone. The human voice could add a nuance to communication not possible with the telegraph, but people like Marconi decry it, saying it will not be private and others will be able to hear it.
  • Lee de Forrest

    In 1907 he equips the Navy fleet with his wireless telephone and plays phonograph records to shore stations as the fleet comes into ports like San Francisco, and in NYC he broadcasts on several occasions well-known opera singers to an audience of reporters. He brings culture into homes.
  • Charles Herlald

    Herrold in 1910 is quoted in a notarized affidavit published in a national magazine, “we have given wireless phonograph concerts to amateur men in Santa Clara Valley,” one of the very first published references to what we now know as the activities of radio broadcasting to an audience of more than one. He operated wireless training schools, The Herrold College of Wireless and Engineering.
  • Herrold

    Herrold and his students broadcasted music and talked on a regular schedule to the growing San Jose audience, a college radio. He also broadcasts every day to receiving stations at the Pan Pacific International Exhibition
  • WW1

    All amateur wireless stations are ordered to shut down so that the Government can use the radio for defense purposes. The war is important to radio technically as the vacuum tube, invented earlier by de Forest is improved for war communication, and all other radio patents are pooled for defense reasons.
  • Lee de Forrest

    After the wartime ban on wireless ends in 1918 he sets up a station in High Bridge NY, and broadcasts music, and other stuff to NYC, using his vacuum tube as a transmitter. The Federal Radio Inspector shuts him down saying “there is no place on the ether for entertainment.” Most still believed that radio should be for two-way communication, and there was general agreement that the Navy would be in charge of all radio.
  • Elvis Presley

    Elvis Presley paid $3.98 to the Sun Record Company to make a double-sided demo acetate as a birthday present for his mother. Almost exactly one year later, Presley was in Sun Studios again, making a handful of undistinguished demos with guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black.
  • Beatles

    73 million viewers tuned in to watch The Beatles perform for the first time on The Ed Sullivan Show. The following week, a sizeable portion of America's school kids began growing moptops and imploring their parents to buy them guitars. The British Invasion was underway and rock and roll would never be the same.
  • Nirvona

    Nirvana's Nevermind replaced Michael Jackson's Dangerous at the top spot on the Billboard album charts. A lowly Seattle grunge band de-throned the King of Pop, and in one fell swoop alternative music had become mainstream.