The Development Of The Radio

2023 Author : Hannah Pearcy | [email protected] . Last modified: 2023-05-24 11:12

It is still not entirely clear who exactly invented radio. It is only clear that many minds were involved in the development

The physicist Guglielmo Marconi liked to call himself the inventor of the radio. In fact, his work is based on numerous patents by the unrecognized inventor Nikola Tesla . He was already working on the idea of the radio in 1895, which he patented around 1900.

Patent dispute over radio was unsuccessful

The patents that Marconi filed at the time were rejected because they were too close to Tesla's ideas. A few years later, Marconi was suddenly granted the patents - why it is still not clear to this day. The fact that Marconi had founded the financially strong Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company could have contributed to this. When Marconi received the Nobel Prize for his supposed invention in 1906 , Tesla finally went to court , which was unsuccessful because Tesla lacked the necessary money.

Where does "radio" come from?

At the beginning, several terms described what we now commonly refer to as radio. The word “radio” as an abbreviation for radio reception or radio means only “beam” in Latin. The Reichspostverwaltung, which at the time saw itself as a language guard, rigorously rejected the buzzword at the time, but - as we know today - was unable to assert itself historically.

An invention thanks to inventions

The actual invention of the radio goes back to a number of technical achievements of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. This includes generating sound signals, modulating them onto a carrier vibration, transporting the radio wave and ultimately receiving and converting the signal back into sound. The basis for success was additional scientific knowledge from the 17th - 19th centuries.

Knowledge of materials as conductors, semiconductors and non-conductors, acoustics, electromagnetism, electrical conductivity, charge and discharge as well as the behavior of magnetic fields as well as the functioning of antennas, coils, capacitors, resistors, insulators, batteries and measuring devices as well as the calculation of physical processes.

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Radio goes mainstream

The first public radio broadcast of a Christmas concert took place on December 22, 1920. This Reichspost event in the Weimar Republic was to become the cornerstone for the development of public broadcasting in Germany. But this development has not always been positive.

The radio as a propaganda tool

In order to bring all citizens of the Third Reich to the party line, the so-called People's Receiver was designed by the Ministry of Propaganda in August 1933. At 76 Reichsmarks, the device was affordable for most strata of the population. However, under certain conditions, the radio transmissions of the Allies could also be received, which caused propaganda minister Goebbels resentment - listening to enemy stations could be punished with the death penalty.

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Expensive entertainment

After the Second World War, from 1949 onwards, with the beginning of FM radio in Germany, devices for receiving FM transmitters with frequency modulation came onto the market. Like many products in post-war Germany, these were still relatively expensive in terms of income. 1952 cost e.g. B. a VHF receiver in western Germany 380 DM (corresponds to 987 euros adjusted for inflation).

Classic tube radio vs transistor

In early analog radios, devices with electron tubes were used for reception and amplification in addition to the detector receiver. They are therefore called tube receivers.

In 1953, an American company launched the first transistor radio . This innovation was made possible by the electronic semiconductor component transistor developed in 1948. From then on, the tube became less and less popular. Because tube radios used more electricity, were more susceptible to impact, heavier and bigger . Radios were the size of a box of beer at the time. And just as difficult.

Over time, transistors, capacitors and resistors became smaller and smaller and integrated into integrated circuits, so that in the 1980s radios shrank to matchbox size and were easily installed in headphones or as an additional function in the Walkman or in cell phones.

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The end of the radio?

In Germany, analog radio should come to an end by 2010 and programs should only be transmitted in digital form. In the EU, the last analog transmitter should be switched off by 2012. Since this has apparently not happened , it is due to the lack of acceptance and the infrastructure of the digital offering. The analog broadcast of the TV offer, however, ended in Germany on April 30, 2012.

Critics see an end to “free broadcasting” in the changeover, since digital transmission would make encryption and thus subscription compulsory possible - which has already happened in part.

Thanks to the complex demodulation and decoding technology, the devices also become larger and heavier again and thus also consume more electricity.