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Radio development
in Russia and America

What is radio?

Radio is a way of transmitting messages via radio waves, wireless communication. It was invented at the end of the XIX century, and it is considered one of the most significant discoveries for mankind. Radio made it possible to erase barriers between people, to begin transmitting information to the other side of the planet almost at lightning speed.

1845
Michael Faraday discovered the electromagnetic field

1864
James Clerk Maxwell derived an equation according to which the velocity of propagation of electromagnetic waves is identical to the speed of light

1887
Heinrich Hertz presented the electromagnetic wave generator he created and showed how waves propagate in space. It was the prototype of a radio, but the Hertz device worked only at a distance of several meters

HOW IT ALL STARTED

In the mid-1890s, based on the methods that physicists used to study electromagnetic waves, Guglielmo Marconi created the first device for long-range radio communication. December 23, 1900, Canadian inventor
Reginald A. Fessenden became the first person to transmit an audio signal (wireless telephony) via electromagnetic waves, successfully transmitting over a distance of about a mile (1.6 kilometers), and six years later, on Christmas Eve 1906, he became the first person to carry out a public wireless broadcast. By 1910, these various wireless communication systems were being referred to as
"radio communications"

the beginning of development

In 1895, Russian physicist Alexander Stepanovich Popov designed the world's first radio receiver capable of distinguishing signals by duration. The first public demonstration of the receiver took place on May 7 (25), 1895 at a meeting of the Physics Department of the Russian Physico-Chemical Society at St. Petersburg University. A. S. Popov created the first radio communication system capable of operating in Morse code. A. S. Popov's scheme became a classic and formed the basis of the first generation radio communication equipment

America

On the roof of the college, Herold installed a parabolic antenna and, since June 1912, broadcast music that anyone with a receiving device could hear. So, in fact, the world's first radio station was born, leading regular broadcasts for an unlimited range of listeners

Russia

However, in tsarist Russia, radio was used mainly as a means of military communication. It became a mass media outlet by 1917. In 1918, the Vestnik ROSTA radio station and the Nizhny Novgorod Radio Laboratory appeared – the country's first scientific research and experimental center in the field of radio and television technology, radio broadcasting and television. In it, under the leadership of Mikhail Bonch Bruevich, a radiotelephone and the first radio tubes were created, a scheme of a typical receiving radio station and television equipment was developed

Russia

On February 27, 1919, for the first time, human speech was heard on the radio instead of Morse code. The first words were: "Hello, hello. This is the Nizhny Novgorod laboratory. One, two, three. How do you hear?".
The range of the signal was 500 kilometers from Nizhny Novgorod.
Since 1919, the first irregular radio broadcasts were conducted from the Nizhny Novgorod Radio Laboratory, and since 1920 – from experimental radio broadcasting stations in Moscow, Kazan and other cities.

America

On June 2, 1921, a boxing match was scheduled between heavyweights — the idol of Americans Jack Dempsey and Frenchman Georges Carpentier. Sarnov felt that his brainchild could prove itself, RCA worked hard by equipping a place for a commentator at a stadium in New Jersey and hanging up as many loudspeakers-"bells" as it could. As a result, more than 300,000 Americans heard the report, and although the radio transmitter broke down at the time of the knockout in the fourth round
(Dempsey won), the fate of the radio was decided. As well as the fate of radio listeners, because at that moment the country completely and unconditionally fell in love with radio and "took it into its home"

America

In the summer of 1921, one of the tiny radio stations in New York City, owned by the co-founder of RCA, AT&T, tried to advertise on the air for the first time. The advertiser, one of the shops, paid a quarter of a dollar for the ad — the price was more like the cost of a lost bet than a business, but very quickly advertising became a profitable occupation. It turned out that you can make money on this, earn money in the same way as newspapers earn, and from that very moment the number of radio stations in America grew incredibly: by the end of 1921, the very year when the country was smitten with a report about the heavyweight fight, 30 radio stations were already operating in America,
and two years later — more 500

In 1922, the construction of the tallest 160-meter tower in the USSR, later named after architect V. Shukhov, was completed in our capital on Shabolovka. In the spring, powerful radio transmitters were installed on the Shukhov Tower, and by the end of the summer they began to carry out trial broadcasts for the population of the country

The Council of People's Commissars adopted a decree "On private reception radio stations", giving citizens of the USSR the right to have their own radios. By the end of 1924. first in Moscow, and then in other cities, radio broadcasting stations began to operate regularly, and in the middle of 1925, more than 25,000 radio receivers owned by private individuals were already registered in the USSR

New technologies

The first tube receiver "Radioline" was released at the end of 1924. It was a radio installation where the tuning oscillatory circuit of the 450- 3400m range was placed in a separate box. The RF, LF tube amplifiers and the detector on the R-5 lamps were assembled in another box, to which an anode battery, a powerful incandescent battery and an electromagnetic DP loudspeaker
with a horn were connected

In 1958-1959, new fundamental changes took place in the circuits and designs of electronic equipment, including household ones. The next revolution in design was caused by the victorious march of semiconductor devices. As the mass production of transistors was mastered, semiconductors began to confidently displace radio tubes. One of the foundations of the design and production of household radio equipment was the unification of all manufactured devices. The differences were only in the external design, which significantly reduced the cost and improved the quality, as well as facilitated the repair of radio equipment. By the beginning of 1967, unified models accounted for
more than half of the products

Thus, in comparison, we can understand that radio in the two leading countries developed approximately the same way. Over time, more and more new radio stations appeared, and new and more compact radios. They were installed in houses, cottages, cars, and later radios began to possess telephones.

Radio has become something ordinary for people, it helps to brighten up the silence, or distract from the noise of the city.

Through the radio, they began to congratulate their friends and loved ones on holidays through their favorite radio stations

Radio is widely used by the military to transmit information

Sources:

https://trends.rbc.ru/trends/industry/654344819a7947786efa6faf
https://knife.media/broadcasting/
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Golden-Age-of-American-radio
https://web.archive.org/web/20210206062910/https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/История_радиовещания_в_России
https://tilda.cc/ru/