By Tim Lambert
The radio was a great invention. It allowed people to communicate over long distances, including ship crews. It also allowed entertainment. It is debatable who invented radio. As with many inventions, there were several men working on the same idea around the same time. However, on 2 June 1896, Marconi became the first to patent the radio.
On 17 March 1899, the first radio distress signal was sent from East Goodwin Lightship when a ship ran aground on the Goodwin Sands, off the coast of Kent, England.
On 12 December 1901, Marconi sent a radio signal across the Atlantic.
The first murderer to be caught by radio was Dr Crippen in 1910. He tried to flee by ship in disguise to Canada. However, the captain grew suspicious and sent a radio message to London. Detectives caught a faster ship and arrested Crippen when he arrived in Canada. In the 1920s, police cars were equipped with radios.
Regular public broadcasting began in the 1920s. In the USA, the first commercial radio station was KDKA, which began broadcasting from Pittsburgh in 1920. It was quickly followed by commercial radio stations in other US cities. The BBC was formed on 18 October 1922.
The Radio Times was first published on 28 September 1923. When the BBC began broadcasting radio, the newspapers wouldn’t publish the times of radio programmes as they feared people would listen to the radio instead of reading newspapers. So the BBC had to start its own magazine.
In 1927, for the first time, the BBC broadcast live commentary of a football match on the radio. It was between Arsenal and Sheffield. The match ended in a 1-1 draw.
Radio first became common in the 1930s. By 1933, about half the households in Britain had a ‘wireless’ and by 1939 most of them did.
In the USA, the first commercially successful car radio went on sale in 1930. The Lone Ranger first appeared in a radio program broadcast from a Detroit station in 1933. From 1933 to 1944, US President F D Roosevelt gave a series of talks on the radio. They were called fireside chats. Also popular were drama serials; they became known as soap operas as they were often sponsored by soap companies. In 1933, Edwin Armstrong invented FM radio. FM broadcasting began in 1939.
In 1935, Hitler banned jazz music from German radio. He said it was un-German. But some ‘Swing Kids’ still listened to jazz.
In 1935, Robert Watson-Watt patented radar. Radio waves bounced off objects so they could be used to detect approaching aircraft. The invention of radar was just in time for the Second World War. On 10 January 1946, the US Army Signal Corps bounced radar signals off the Moon.
Meanwhile, in 1933 Karl Jansky announced that he had discovered radio signals coming from stars. In 1937 Grote Reber made the world’s first radio telescope.
Television became common in the 1950s. However, listening to the radio was still popular. The radio programme Listen With Mother was first broadcast in 1950. The British radio play The Archers was first broadcast in 1951. The radio comedy show, The Goons, was also first broadcast in 1951.
The first transistor radio went on sale in 1954. These new radios used transistors instead of valves, which meant they could be much smaller.
Radio One began on 30 September 1967. The first song was Flowers in the Rain by the Move. Commercial radio broadcasting began in Britain in 1973. The first commercial radio station was the London Broadcast Company. It was soon followed by Capital Radio.
In 1974, the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico sent a radio message into space.
