Radio & Television Time Line

By domoraskat

  • Heinrich Rudolf Hertz

    Heinrich Rudolf Hertz
    In 1888 Heinrich Rudolf Hertz was able to conclusively prove transmitted airborne electromagnetic waves in an experiment confirming Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism.

  • Guglielmo Marconi

    Guglielmo Marconi
    Over several years starting in 1894 the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi built the first complete, commercially successful wireless telegraphy system based on airborne Hertzian waves (radio transmission).

  • Brazillian priest transmitted the human voice wirelessly

    Brazillian priest transmitted the human voice wirelessly
    In 1900, Brazilian priest Roberto Landell de Moura transmitted the human voice wirelessly for a distance of approximately a half mile.

  • First Radio Broadcast

    First Radio Broadcast
    On Christmas Eve 1906, Reginald Fessenden used a synchronous rotary-spark transmitter for the first radio program broadcast, from Ocean Bluff-Brant Rock, Massachusetts.

  • World's first radio factory

    World's first radio factory
    In June 1912 Marconi opened the world's first purpose-built radio factory at New Street Works in Chelmsford, England.

  • First radio news program

    First radio news program
    The first radio news program was broadcast August 31, 1920 by station 8MK in Detroit, Michigan, which survives today as all-news format station WWJ under ownership of the CBS network.

  • single sideband and frequency modulation were invented

    single sideband and frequency modulation were invented
    In the early 1930s, single sideband and frequency modulation were invented by amateur radio operators. By the end of the decade, they were established commercial modes.

  • Commercialized Mobile Telephone Service

    Commercialized Mobile Telephone Service
    In 1947 AT&T commercialized the Mobile Telephone Service.

  • Introduced a Pocket Transistor Radio

    Introduced a Pocket Transistor Radio
    In 1954, the Regency company introduced a pocket transistor radio, the TR-1, powered by a "standard 22.5 V Battery."

  • Color television was broadcasted

    Color television was broadcasted
    By 1963, color television was being broadcast commercially (though not all broadcasts or programs were in color), and the first (radio) communication satellite, Telstar, was launched. In the late 1960s, the U.S. long-distance telephone network began to convert to a digital network, employing digital radios for many of its links.

  • LORAN

    LORAN
    In the 1970s, LORAN became the premier radio navigation system.

  • U.S. Navy Experimented with Satellite Navigation

    U.S. Navy Experimented with Satellite Navigation
    Soon, the U.S. Navy experimented with satellite navigation, culminating in the launch of the Global Positioning System (GPS) constellation in 1987.

  • DARPA and U.S. Army created a radio product

    DARPA and U.S. Army created a radio product
    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.