On this date in 1924, John Joseph Carty, vice-president and chief of research at Bell Telephone, delivered the first coast-to-coast radio broadcast – a speech at the Bond Men’s Club at the Congress Hotel in Chicago – which was heard by 50,000,000 people across the country. Exactly four years later, in 1928, the first continent-to-continent television image was received in Hartsdale, NY, by Robert M. Hart. It was a picture of one Mia Howe, sent across the Atlantic by short wave from Parley, England by John Logie Baird, owner of the Baird Television Development Company in London.

In 1893 the inventor Nikolai Tesla demonstrated a wireless radio in St. Louis, Missouri. Despite this demonstration, it was Guglielmo Marconi who is often credited as the father and inventor of the radio. One of the reasons was that he was given the very first wireless telegraphy patent in England in 1896. However, Marconi died in 1937, Tesla in 1943; and six months after Tesla’s death the US Supreme Court ruled that all of Marconi’s radio patents were invalid, and awarded the patents for radio to Tesla. For the past 64 years, many still believe that Marconi invented radio and few know   of Tesla’s radio inventions.

The invention of the television was the work of many individuals in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Individuals and corporations competed in various parts of the world to deliver a device that superseded previous technology. Many were compelled to capitalize on the invention and make profit, while some wanted to change the world through visual and audio communication technology.