AM Broadcasting - History

History

AM was the dominant method of broadcasting during the first eighty years of the 20th century and remains widely used into the 21st.

AM radio began with the first, experimental broadcast on Christmas Eve, 1906, by Canadian experimenter Reginald Fessenden, and was used for small-scale voice and music broadcasts up until World War I. San Francisco, California, radio station KCBS claims to be the direct descendant of KQW, founded by radio experimenter Charles "Doc" Herrold, who made regular weekly broadcasts in San Jose, California, as early as June 1909. On that basis KCBS has claimed to be the world's oldest broadcast station and celebrated its 100th anniversary in the summer of 2009. The great increase in the use of AM radio came late in the following decade as radio experimentation increased worldwide following World War I. The first licensed commercial radio services began on AM in the 1920s. XWA of Montreal, Quebec (later CFCF, now CINW) claims status as the first commercial broadcaster in the world, with regular broadcasts commencing on May 20, 1920. The first licensed American radio station was started by Frank Conrad, KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Radio programming boomed during the "Golden Age of Radio" (1920s–1950s). Dramas, comedy and all other forms of entertainment were produced, as well as broadcasts of news and music.

Read more about this topic:  AM Broadcasting

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?
    Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)

    The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality.
    Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)

    Considered in its entirety, psychoanalysis won’t do. It’s an end product, moreover, like a dinosaur or a zeppelin; no better theory can ever be erected on its ruins, which will remain for ever one of the saddest and strangest of all landmarks in the history of twentieth-century thought.
    Peter B. Medawar (1915–1987)