CHAPTER ONE: A BEGINNING

THE EARLIEST YEARS

The invention of radio cannot be credited to a single person; rather, it was the work of many: Ampere's studies of electricity and magnetism in the 1820's; Morse's idea for the telegraph; Bell's invention of the telephone; Edison's reproduction of sound with talking machines and his discovery that an electric current could travel between a heated filament and a cold metal plate in a vacuum; and Heinrich Hertz' proving that electromagnetic waves could be sent through the air.

By 1900, Marconi had perfected a wireless transmitter— first, as a young man, using it to send messages across his family's estate in Italy; then later, as he improved the device, he spanned a two-mile distance, then three-and-a-half miles over water, and then across the English Channel. He had formed a company in England, had demonstrated wireless for the United States Army and Navy, formed American Marconi, and in 1901 spanned the Atlantic from Cornwall, England, to Newfoundland with the simple letter "S"— three dots— in Morse code. His patent for wireless telegraphy, applied for in 1896, would remain as the basic radio patent for seventeen years.

There were other developments: Nathan B. Stubblefield would lay claim to having made the first voice transmissions from his home near Murray, Kentucky, in 1892. Reginald Fessenden, who had worked for Edison and the Westinghouse company, was hired by the Weather Bureau of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to test the possibility of sending weather information by wireless.

Fessenden would propose transmitting on a "continuous wave," an idea that went contrary to Marconi's accepted system of sending a series of interrupted bursts. Fessenden's theory would become the foundation of modern radio. His later experiments for the Weather Bureau and on his own at Brant Rock, Mass., would bring forth a new detector for receiving and further the perfection of voice broadcasting.

Dr. Lee DeForest would study Hertzian waves while at Yale and then, after gaining merit for his work in radio-telegraphy, would devise the "Audion," a vacuum tube that brought increased effectiveness as an amplifier and detector for transmitting voice. From here would grow both the broadcast and electronics industries.

Before 1910, DeForest would further demonstrate radio from the Eiffel Tower and would broadcast Enrico Caruso from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York with "Cavalleria Rusticana" and "I Pagliacci."

There were other milestones reached by countless others in the field of radio in the years ahead, and one of them — less noted, but nonetheless historic— would take place at San Jose, California, in January of 1909.

THE FIRST TO ARISE

From the ranks of these countless experimenters across the world stepped Charles David Herrold (1875-1948), a self-educated, self-styled "professor"— a genius of sorts— who manifested his interest in radio by opening a College of Engineering in San Jose in January 1909. From atop the College (which was housed in the Garden City Bank building at First and San Antonio Streets), "Doc" Herrold, as he is better known, would string an antenna wire across to an adjacent structure and, on April 3, 1909, conducted his first experiments with voice transmissions.

Herrold continued with his wireless experiments, assisted by his students, and soon attained a fair-sized audience in the Santa Clara Valley, many of whom would telephone Herrold to inquire regarding his next broadcast.

By 1912, the College of Engineering station, announcing itself as "FN" or simply "San Jose calling," can be heard on a regular, weekly schedule, as Wednesday nights find Herrold at the microphone, talking and playing phonograph records which were generously supplied in exchange for on-air mentions by a local music house. On occasion, a live singer would be brought in to appear before the mike.

An early listener to the Herrold station commented that despite the crude carbon microphone used by the station, its sound quality was quite good, although as the evening wore on it would become "mushy," according to the listener, as the microphone "burned up on him ... It would become so mushy and so bad that he'd have to shut down and be off the air."

A week later, the station would return to the air once more, backed by Herrold's sincere hopes that his poor microphone would hold out for the night. More often than not, it wouldn't.

In time, the broadcasts reach listeners in more distant area: one, a group of radio experimenters in San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel, hears and converses with the small San Jose station. Later, when their first child is born, Mrs. Herrold holds the baby up to the mike so that their friends in the Fairmont can hear its cries.

THE GREAT WAR

As the first World War loomed ahead, radio was being heralded by the U.S. armed and naval forces as the most useful fighting tool to arrive in centuries. In 1915, the opulent Panama Pacific Exposition begins in San Francisco, and highlights radio exhibits by the Federal Government and Dr. Lee DeForest. At each, listeners can hear broadcasts over headphones from the Herrold station, which is now airing programs daily for this purpose.

With the outbreak of war, President Wilson would order all radio transmitters sealed except for use by the Navy. For the duration of the fighting, broadcast experiments would practically cease in the United States; and then, with the armistice, would resume on a larger, more spectacular scale.

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