At the beginning of Radio, transmission of data was something thought as impossible. Henirich Hertz did get big idea about what is today Radio. He thought there was a way to transmit data and receive electrical wave wirelessly, but he did not know how. By the time he started to think about this idea there were too little knowledge of a means to do that. Even though, Hertz thought of this as an impractical event, today the transition unit is named Hertz just for his contribution to the Radio. This idea of transmitting and receiving waves through cable remained in other people’s mind, like the mind of Nikola Tesla who discovered the Tesla coil, a means widely used in the transition of radio waves today. It was with the use of this coil that Ernst Alexander invented the first alternator to make transmission at a good speed. Some years later, Reginal Fessender used such alternator to transmit long range voice from Brand Rock, MA, in 1906, producing what later came to be known as Radio Broadcasting.
Later, came Edwin Armstrong with the invention of the first amplifier receiver of wave transmitter, as well as the means for converting, receiving and amplifying weak waves.
Guglielmo Marconi is one of the real fathers of the today’s Radio. He spent a lot of time working in his transmitter apparatus for the military, especially, the navy. His apparatus is considered to be the reason more people did not die in 1912 in the Titanic disaster.
Cable TV broadcasting started in a different way as Radio broadcasting because it was an industry that took many of the already technology set in place and used it to their advance. National TV was already in place, so the only thing needed to make cable TV broadcasting real was just a couple of intelligent minds; they did not have to develop a new technology. Cable TV broadcasting started using antennas in some place with good reception and there they went. They did this with the hope of reaching the people that did not have service in the places they lived. Here we can see that the purpose of producing cable TV was just for human help.
According to the definition of cable TV, cable should be provide to subscribers for a fee. Even from the beginning cable TV broadcast was intended to make money, even though, they wanted to help human cause, in the end, it was just to make some profit from it. This, you might think, was the same with Radio, but if you compare Radio and cable TV broadcasting, you will probably see that users did not have to pay for listening to the radio, they just had to listen to the commercial, but they did not have to pay anything. With cable, they have to see the commercials and also pay for the content. So, Radio broadcast and cable TV broadcasting do have comparisons between the two in the first stage.
After the putting together of the major pieces to transmit waves came the notion of using it to do many things. For example, in 1921, the police of Detroit make use of radio transmission to communicate to the station. From there on, people thought of aviation and ship communication to long distance range from anywhere in the planet. Workers could now get closer to each other on the field of work by using the radio to communicate one another. Firefighters can find the way to get to place faster just by following direction from the dispatcher at the station.
All of this are perfect for human use, but with this came along a log expectations that were unreal. For example, there was the thought of free university where men and women were going to be able to be taught for free via phone.
Another thing they thought was possible, the production of vegetable by electricity, they thought that farmers could were going to be able to turn winter into summer by just putting a wave transmitter in the soil that would transmit heat to the plants.
Cable TV broadcasting went through major advances and expectations too. To the point that the growth of cable TV broadcasting started only 70 provinces in the U.S. in 1950, and went to 5300 systems in 2011 serving about 60 million subscribers and their relatives. So, in this stage Radio and Cable TV follow the same pattern. The only thing that I found not to be the same was in how people could get involved in the development. During Radio development almost anybody with a cheap piece of equipment was able to transmit data from a point to another, but in this case, cable TV won the crazy race of anybody producing video to broadcast from wherever they were. It was more difficult, because from the beginning there were regulations that did not allow anybody to use the spectrum to transmit, even though, it was much larger than radio spectrum. So, in this case, this stage was modified if compared with Radio broadcast.
Cable and Radio are related in the way they transmit data. The same way Radio broadcast used to transmit data was the way TV broadcasting started. Antennas were placed in highest places to retransmit signal through the air.
All these innovation were just getting started and some people have the thought, even today, that fifteen years is the time set for proving something until it is ready for the mass to use it. This was the way many big companies saw Radio industry in the decade of the 20s and did not come into business with the industry until they saw the mass demand. They stated to enter and dominate, starting with GE, the industry by buy patents. Lee DeForest was one of those who had to sell the right of Radio to Marconi and GE because he saw how the industry was starting to be controlled by those people with more influence and money, he thought that his time ended when those big corporations started to participate in the business because he saw how fast the industry had grown after these big corporations took over of a great part of it.
The first big name to take over the Radio industry was the Navy during World War One. They controlled all the radio spectrum because they thought that by taking over the radio they were going to have more possibility of to gain the war. The Navy wanted to quietly purchase the Telegraph Company, and also most of Marconi radio stations in the United States. The Navy wanted to make the Radio a government monopoly, but Congress made then sell the rights to the original owners.
Since the Navy had to return the radio stations to Marconi’s company, this became the most dominant part of the radio, but the Navy knew that Marconi’s company was owned by the British, so because so national security, the U.S. congress made them sell the stations to an American company, that is when G.E comes into business, the Congress saw G.E as the right company to make the purchase of such stations since they produced a transmitter that dominated the world in use for radio. It was called the “New and Powerful Wireless Company” by historians, but the real name was RCA.
Another company that became a major broadcasters of the 20s was Westinghouse. Westinghouse was in the business of producing home appliances like washing machines. They used their name to make radio receivers available to the public. Westinghouse had been involved in radio research during World War One, but it was not until the end of the war that Westinghouse developed and purchased the telegraph company.
Radio broadcasting and cable TV broadcasting have the same history on how ownership developed. Greater corporations started to pressure smaller corporations until they became the others of those smaller companies.
Today there are about have a dozen people controlling most the cable TV broadcasting channels. GE has more than 20% of the channels. Then comes in TimeWarner with about 15% to 20% of channels. Next comes Disney with about 10% of channels. Then we have News Corporation with about 20% of channels. So, in this stage we see the same history being repeated again. There is no way for small companies to stay up top because big companies will do anything to absorb them. I think we are in the second stage where everybody can come and use the “spectrum” of internet. Event though, we only know a couple of big guys taking the lead, there are still many people using blogs and their own websites to have a kind so social media to communicate with others. They can use most of the APIs and develop their own to create a circle of people who they think are their friends and connect to others too. So for now, I do not see the third stage on social media, even though we only know some.