Early broadcasting

Here we look at the history of early broadcasting around the world:

Beginning in 1904, the U.S. Navy had broadcast daily time signals and weather reports, but these employed spark transmitters, transmitting in Morse code.

The broadcasting of music and talk via radio started experimentally around 1905-1906, and commercially around 1920 to 1923.

Until the early-1930s, it was generally accepted that Lee de Forest, who conducted a series of test broadcasts beginning in 1907, and who was widely quoted promoting the potential of organized radio broadcasting, was the first person to transmit music and entertainment by radio.

In 1932 Reginald Fessenden reported that, in late 1906, he also made the first radio broadcast of entertainment and music, although a lack of verifiable details has led to some doubts about this claim - see First entertainment radio broadcast.

The birth of public radio broadcasting is credited to Lee de Forest who transmitted the world’s first public broadcast in New York City on January 13, 1910.

The first experimental music broadcasts, from Guglielmo Marconi factory in Chelmsford (Chelmsford, England), began in 1920.

2MT was the first British radio station to make regular entertainment broadcasts, and the world's first regular wireless broadcast for entertainment.

Transmissions began on 14 February 1922 from an ex-Army hut next to the Marconi laboratories at Writtle, near Chelmsford in Essex. Initially the station only had 200 watts and transmitted on 700m (428 kHz) on Tuesdays from 2000 to 2030 - wikipedia