Data Sheet
Operations with Amplification
Radios yesterday and today
It was only about 100 years ago in an experiment carried out at Brant Rock, Massachuses, that
the first radio transmissions were sent wirelessly.
The technical foundations had already been laid about ten years before then by the inventor
Nicola Tesla, and the Italian Guglielmo Marconi subsequently improved the technology for
transmission and reception. He was the first person to show that radio waves can cross great
distances, even across the Atlantic.
At first, though, radio messages were only sent in the form of Morse signals — in other
words, they were telegrams or distress calls. It was not until the 1920s that radio
stations started regular operation.
There were not many listeners in the beginning, and the only available reception
devices were primitive ones requiring large antennas and headphones. But once
radios were equipped with amplifier tubes (“vacuum tubes”), reception improved
and speakers were added to create something more like the radios we know today.