At the beginning of the 20th century, news and communication could travel around the world instantly by telegraph, and that was a marvel.

But there were limitations. Telegraphs could only send text, and the messages could only go where the cables went, and laying the cables was an expensive investment.

The invention of radio heralded a radical change.

First telegrams and later sound could be sent to any radio receiver wirelessly.

Radio would trigger a revolution, first in safety and navigation, then in news

and information, and finally in entertainment, the first tentative step toward what we now call

mass media. Welcome to the history of the 20th century. Episode 52

T-U-O-B-G-N

We've already talked quite a bit about telegraphy

here at the history of the 20th century,

beginning all the way back in episode one. Telegraphy was invented in the 19th century, and most people in the developed world

took it for granted by the beginning of the 20th century that you could send news and information

around the world in an instant. Telephones were in use by this time too, but they had a range

limit. You could call across town on a telephone, but long-distance telephone calls were not yet a thing.

Long distances belong to the telegraph. The first practical telegraph was patented in Britain, but here in the United States, we prefer to give credit to Samuel Finley-Bries-Morse, an American portrait painter.

One day in 1825, Morse was in Washington, D.C., working on a portrait of the Marquis de Lafayette, when he received news by letter

that his wife was ill. The next day, he received another letter informing him that she had died,

so he headed back to his home in New Haven, Connecticut. By the time he arrived, his wife was

already buried.

Distraught by the fact that he had missed what could have been his last opportunity to see and speak with his wife because of the slowness of postal communication, Morris began studying the

problem of how to send a message using electricity, potentially a much faster mode of communication.

He patented a telegraph in 1837, unaware that the British inventors, Cook and Wheatston, had patented a similar invention the same year. Their version

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