How Radio Began
How Radio Began
No matter whether it was Marconi or Tesla who actually invented radio, both men saw radio as a simply point-to-point communication device, essentially a wireless , as early as 1907, American Lee De Forest saw radio for what it would eventually become, a way to broadcast news and entertainment. He proposed exactly that and began broadcasting from low-power and temporary radio stations. When World War I began, the government ordered these radio stations to cease broadcasting for national security the war ended, a Westinghouse executive in Pittsburgh asked Frank Conrad, one of their engineers, who had been doing amateur broadcasts from his garage, to move the equipment to the Westinghouse plant. There, Conrad was able to tap into more power and greatly increase the station’s range. That station became KDKA, the first radio station to get licensed by the Department of 1921 the US government created a radio monopoly from the major players in the new medium, including American Marconi, GE, AT&T and Westinghouse. The new company was called the Radio Corporation of America, and David Sarnoff, who worked for Marconi was made RCA’s commercial manager.
