Snapshots From the First Age of Broadcasting

Abstract

This chapter unfolds how the radio and broadcasting became a fully fledged craze by 1923 — noting that this popularity was due to Edwin H. Armstrong's inventions. It describes all kinds of other shows to listen to in US cities and analyzes how it seemed that everyone had gone into broadcasting: newspapers, banks, public utilities, department stores, universities and colleges, cities and towns, pharmacies, creameries, and hospitals, among others. The chapter also discusses the money Armstrong gained from Westinghouse and his own licensing enterprise, as well as his other invention — superregeneration. While his other discoveries were the products of intense thought followed by startling revelation, superregeneration happened entirely by chance. The chapter investigates Lee de Forest's next invention, sound motion pictures, which he named “Phonofilm.” It also reviews one of David Sarnoff's triumphs in the 1920s — the creation of the National Broadcasting Company.