In the year 1800, Alessandro Volta created the battery, which provided scientists with a more reliable source of energy for electricity than previously used. In 1809, an experiment led to the electrochemical telegraph. As a result, messages could be sent electronically up to a few kilometers away. Telegraphs were initially used for sending Morse code between ships and land. The telegraph allowed for the first time in history mass communication; mass amounts of people getting the same news at the same time. (History of the Electric Battery)
Then, in Russia in 1832, an electromagnetic telegraph was invented by Baron Schilling and code for this was invented the following year by two men in Germany. By the 1840’s the telegraph made communication over long distances possible. (Connected Earth)
The telegraph has played a major role in history. During the Civil War, the telegraph proved to be a vast and indispensible way for the military to communicate. “For the first time, distantly located officers and even President Lincoln himself could receive timely reports from the battlefield and use them to plot strategy.” (American Experience)
In 1894, two professors at Oxford University carried out a demonstration of wireless telegraphy. A radio signal was sent from a neighboring building to the lecture room in which they were giving the demonstration. From there, the first radio station was created on the Isle of Wight in 1897 and the first “wireless” factory was created in England in 1898. (Association for Science Education) During World War I, radio was used to pass on orders and communications between armies and navies on both sides of the war. President Woodrow Wilson gave for instance a speech called the “Fourteen Points” to Germany via radio during the war. The first radio news program was broadcast in 1920 and widespread broadcasting became common in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s. Now, the only thing missing was visual images along with the sound. (The Civil War Military Telegraph Service)
In 1925 a Scottish inventor demonstrated the transmission of moving silhouette images and of moving monochromatic (only one color or wavelength) images. It is generally agreed that this is the first demonstration of television. The first practical use of a television was in Germany and regular broadcasts began in 1929. The Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936 were broadcast to television stations in Berlin and Leipzig where people could view them live. Mexican inventor Guillermo González Camarena began experimenting with television in 1931 and his experiments led to a patent of color television in 1940, along with the remote control. (Bellis)
Television was first introduced to the public at the 1939 Worlds Fair but wasn’t manufactured on a large scale until after World War II. Regular commercial television was not introduced to the United States until 1948. (Bellis) Because of television, mass amounts of people, for the first time ever, could watch live events unfold in the comfort of their home. For the first time, people could see men landing on the moon, presidents being shot, the Berlin Wall coming down, wars being fought and any current event that was being broadcast. The fact that masses of people could watch the exact same event at the exact same time, worldwide, was a totally new thing.
What started out as a small battery led to a phenomenon we now know as mass communication.
Citations
"American Experience | The Time of the Lincolns | A Rising Nation." PBS. Web. 19 Sept. 2010.
The Association for Science Education. Electricity Timeline. Web. 17 Sept. 2010.
Bellis, Mary. "The Invention of Television." Timeline. Inventors. Web. 17 Sept. 2010.
"The Civil War Military Telegraph Service." Web log post. The American Civil War Home Page. 15 Feb. 2002. Web. 17 Sept. 2010.
"Connected Earth: The First Electric Telegraphs." Connected Earth: Home. Web. 18 Sept. 2010.
"History of the Electric Battery." Inventors. Web. 19 Sept. 2010.
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