Radio broadcast .. (1922-30)

RADIO BROADCAST VOLUME IX NUMBER 6 OCTOBER, 1926 Is There a How the Structure of Invention and Patents Has Qrown Up — The Healthy State of Confusion in the Radio Industry — The First of Three Articles Presenting a Study of the Present State and Probable Future of the Radio Industry in the United States By FRENCH STROTHER i GET a broad picture of radio as it is to-day, and of what radio may be to-morrow, is the purpose of this article and the articles to follow it in this series. First, we shall try to present the facts about radio as an evolving art; then the facts about radio patents; and finally the facts about radio as a business. In so brief a space, only the most outstanding things can be noted, but they should give the key to the relative position and importance of the rest. The present state of radio is the result of a process of evolution. Scientists, searching for pure truth, opened up new principles that could be applied to the transmission of sound. Inventors, building on their work, devised the practical apparatus for doing this. Business men, capitalizing the right to make and sell this apparatus, organized companies to exploit it. It is important, if we are to understand radio as it is to-day, that we should recognize that these three classes of men work from different motives. The scientist works solely for new knowledge, with no thought of gain. The business man works solely for gain. The inventor works from a combination of the two incentives; if he were not scientific in his bent, he would never master the laborious technical knowledge necessary before he can apply his inventive genius; and if he were not anxious for gain, he would not try to convert his scientific knowledge into practical and saleable devices for general use. As nearly all the science upon which radio is built was known fifty years ago, we shall have little concern with scientists in these articles. Taking their work for granted, as the old basis upon which the modern marvel of radio is built, we shall see that radio as we know it to-day is what it is becauseof three things: (i) the inventors,' (2) the business men, and (3) the patent laws. Nobody "invented radio." The theory of radio was known long before anybody was able to apply it to practice. Numerous inventors were trying to devise apparatus that would make the theory work. For this reason, several different practical systems of wireless telegraphy appeared at about the same time. Marconi had the good fortune to be the first, but he distanced his nearest competitors by only a short time. Indeed, it was only by accident that electrical communication by wire was perfected before electrical communication without wires, for both are implied in the electrical knowledge that preceded both, and inventors were working busily in both fields for many years before anybody in either group succeeded. ~pOR many years, Mr. French Strother was Managing Editor of World's •^ Work, and lie has long been known to readers of that magazine as a writer of unusual insight and refreshing clarity. RADIO BROADCAST counts it a great privilege indeed to present this article, which is the first of a series of three, denoted to a searching analysis of the radio industry in the United States. One hears much loose talk about monopoly in radio; some have even put their opinions more strongly than that. Mr. Strother, accordingly, set out to analyse the situation in the industry and we are certain that his three articles will not only prove interesting reading, hut will furnish material for a great deal of thought — along slightly different lines than has been the case heretofore— for the many who are associated in one way or another with this great industry. In the preparation of these articles, a great number of radio executives were freely consulted, and as freely provided information. No effort has been spared to make these articles as fair and as accurate as possible. The next one of the series will appear in an early issue. — THE EDITOR. The search for a means of wireless communication continued with redoubled zeal the moment that communication by wire was achieved. The basic science upon which wireless is founded is at least as old as Sir Isaac Newton, who wrote to his friend Bentley his scornful opinion of anybody who doubted the existence of what we call the ether. All the great students of electrical phenomena, including Ampere and Faraday, made experiments demonstrating the reality of this medium, which is capable of transmitting undulations which we have always been able to perceive as light, and which, by virtue of the development of radio, we are now able to perceive as sound. LOOKING BACK TO 1 888 MARCONI'S first experiments with wireless telegraphy were made in> 1895, but his work was based directly upoff the discoveries of Hertz, announced iff 1888, and of Branly, announced in 1890, Hertz was the first scientist to set up corftrolled electric undulations in •^^s-MM the ether, by means of a mechanical device called the Hertz radiator, and to receive these undulations, by means of another mechanical device, called the Hertz resonator. Branly of France invented the coherer, or tube containing metal filings loosely packed between metal plugs, which provided the first practicaj device for "making and breaking" the circuit, at the receiving end — necessary if telegraph messages were to be transmitted by wireless. Marconi improved upon