#3- Radio Daze

In the roaring 20's, radio became an important technological change, not only for the United States, but also the world. This new technology, along with other factors, helped shaped the radio industry during the 1920's.

This force always plays an important part with any new invention. Generally speaking, the inventor usually spends many years developing the invention in question. After a final product is created, the inventor has two options: either pitch his new creation to possible investors and get it sold to them or create their own business that utilize the new technology and interests other companies to also use their technology. For the case of radio, the second path was chosen, but with a modification that pushed out Marconi of the American market.

Guglielmo Marconi, before he created his radio empire, invented the "wireless telegraph" that utilized "radio waves to carry messages in Morse code." (1) Weilding his new invention, he created stations in Italy and Britian under the company Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company. When Marconi made its mark in the U.S., this sparked fear of internation control of an important technology that the Navy had began to extensively use. Due to this fear, a negotiation was made to force Marconi "to sell its American assets to General Eletric (GE). In turn, it set up a new company with American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) and Westinghouse, called Radio Corperation of America (RCA)." RCA then created its radio broadcasting company, the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), which split into NBC and the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) and made a competitor with the Colombia Broadcasting System (CBS). (1)

The creation of these three companies, more commonly known as the "Big Three", created an oligopoly that not only controlled radio in its early days, but also when it became a national standard to own a radio. But these companies would not be in existence without the creation of RCA. RCA wouldn't be created if GE didn't obtain the patents from Marconi. And GE would have never gotten the patents if Marconi didn't expand to the U.S., much less have a company at all, without the invention of the the "wireless telegraph." So as I have illustrated, the would be radio industry without the technological change that spawned it.

1. Staubhaar et all, Media Now.