Grade 8 | Lesson 6

Fine Arts

Lesson Overview

The History of Home Entertainment

• Into the 20th Century

The History of Home Entertainment

Into the 20th Century
Guglielmo Marconi changed the world and it's never been the same since.
Just before the turn of the century, Marconi discovered that radio waves could be created and transmitted. Not only that, he did it. But who cared? Early radio was a toy for experimenters. Only ships at sea had a real use for it, but to the rest of the world, it was just junk to clutter up an experimenter's basement. Who cared what anybody had to jabber about by sending a lot of dots and dashes?

Research It!
What was Nikola Tesla's involvement in the development of radio? Is there a question as to who "discovered" this technology first?

In the United States Army, a man named George Armstrong took Marconi's bulky invention and combined it with other inventions made by Edison and a man named DeForest, and made a small radio that could transmit voice for hundreds of miles. But still very few people were interested. The army didn't even bother to get a patent on Major Armstrong's incredible radio. They weren't interested in communications that anybody could listen to. No secrecy was possible.

But just as the United States was entering its Great Depression, a young Russian found his way to New York, and he had a few different ideas about radio. His name was David Sarnoff, and this was his idea: If everyone can tune in to what is on the radio, why not put things on the radio that everyone wants to hear? Now that may seem like a very silly thing to say today, but in the early 1900s, it was a unique and incredible idea.

Sarnoff built a "radio station" and broadcast news, music, and other things that people might like to hear. A new industry was born, and Americans rushed to radio stores with their savings to buy one of those newfangled radios. Commercial radio had been born.

Sarnoff called his new little radio company RCA, The Radio Corporation of America. It grew to become a giant corporation which is now owned by General Electric. People thought that radio would be the end of the phonograph and record sales, but they were wrong. Because many people could now hear songs on the radio, they wanted to buy the records all the more. The phonograph record was redesigned from its cone shape into a flat, round disk. They made it just the right size to fit into all those sheet music racks that were found in every American general store. Yearly piano sales dropped by over fifty percent.

Research It!
What other instances can you think of where one technology either renders an older technology obsolete or makes the general public think it will?