Evolution Of The Radio

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One of the longest lasting sources of news and music, radio has come a long way. Starting with the first phonograph and working its way through history to what we have now, the I-pod. Along with television, radio is one of the leading forms of news, but with radio you can also have music. Due to technology, radio has improved and given rise to various portable music devices that are now available. In 1887, Heinrich Hertz was the first to detect radio waves by causing a spark to leap across a gap that generated electromagnetic waves. By 1894, Oliver Lodge of Britain had built a coherer to detect radio waves. Reginald Fessenden invented a continuous wave voice transmitter in 1905. Later in 1913, Edwin Armstrong patented the regenerative circuit that fed a radio signal through and audion tube that generated radio waves (inventors.com). Radio programming consisted of music and local talk and by 1940, started broadcasting news also. In 1934, 65 percent of all households in America owned radio sets. By 1950, 94% of all households had radio sets. Edwin Armstrong invented FM radio in 1939 which would become greater than AM radio and a major stimulus to the spread of stereo. By 1962, 87 FM radio stations existed in 24 states. Shetfield Lab made the first modern disc recording in 1968 (history.edu). Compact discs would soon take over records and cassette tapes as the leading form of music. Cd’s allowed people to play music for up to 74 minutes, Vinyl records only allowed 20 minutes per side. Compact disc players made it possible to listen to Cd’s while on the go without a giant stereo system. Digital audio players, however, have surpassed the concept of CD players. An example of a digital audio player is the I-pod. The first generation I-pod could hold the equivalent of 50 discs. With a 129k bit rate for each song, it was the clearest way to listen to music

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