radio history
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This ‘Telewriter’ Transmitted Handwriting Across Long Distances in the 1930s
Need to send a message to a friend 80 km away? Today, you’ve got plenty of options — whether it’s SMS, email, tweet, Facebook message, Zoom video chat, or the old-fashioned telephone. But back in the 1930s, the choices were much more limited. You could use the phone or write a letter or send a…
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This Was The Radio-Equipped Policeman Of The Future In 1934
If you’ve seen any old gangster movies, you’re probably familiar with the phrase: “Calling all cars, calling all cars!” It became a cliche for when police headquarters sent out an alert via radio. But radio hasn’t been around forever. And at the dawn of radio technology, there were some pretty goofy-looking devices anticipated for the…
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This Engineer Turned Radiowaves Into Fashion During The 1930s
For today’s edition of There’s Nothing New Under The Sun™, we have a radio engineer who experimented with creating high-tech fashion that would be right at home amongst the 21st century’s glitch art and Wi-Fi visualisations. Except that these patterns were made in 1938.
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The 1930s Refrigerator-Radio Combo That Never Quite Took Off
By the late 1930s the vast majority of American households had a radio. So how were radio manufacturers supposed to expand their market? By insisting that the ideal American home has a radio in every room. Sometimes that meant putting radios in the latest appliances — like right inside every American’s favourite new gadget, the…