Communication without wires

Radio has a wide range of applications nowadays, for broadcast radio and TV as well as communications.

In 1864 James Maxwell predicted that radio transmission was possible, and his theories were supported by Hertz' experiments in 1888.

Charles Stevenson, from the family of innovative Northern lighthouse-builders (but more famous for their "black sheep" member, Robert, who dropped out of lighthouse-building to write books), developed radio communication in the early 1890's to keep in contact with off-shore lighthouses, and experimented with sound and radio to fix positions, but that's another story...

Guglielmo Marconi was able to transmit a signal over a distance of 2km in 1894 (when he was 19 years old), and two years later patented radio transmission in Britain, having been unable to get backing in his native Italy. This was, of course, digital radio: simple clicks were about all that could be transmitted.

Reginald Fessenden developed analogue transmission, and by 1906 he was able to broadcast music by radio.

Radio communication made headline news when Crippen was arrested. He had made his escape to Canada in 1909 by transatlantic liner, but a radio message to the ship meant that he was not able to evade arrest.

The transistor (invented in 1948) made it possible to build smaller, cheaper and lighter radios, and vastly increased the number of radio sets in use.

Paradoxically, radio's heyday was before the widespread introduction of the transistor. With no real competition from TV, the wireless was an imposing centrepiece to many households. The impact of television and the poorer sound and lack of gravitas from portable transistor radios rapidly eroded the pre-eminence of broadcast radio, but as a communication method radio has gone from strength to strength.

Technological developments have widened the range of frequencies that can be used, and from the very low frequencies used to reach submarines in deep oceans to the high-frequency, low-power links used by bluetooth to connect devices, the spectrum is ever more busy with radio signals.

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