22 June: Radio

On this date in 1896 Marconi patented his invention of the wireless. 10 things you might not know about radio.

1. In the early days, the technology that produced radio was called wireless telegraphy, which is where we get the old fashioned word “wireless” for a radio.
2. The word “broadcast” came from an agricultural term for a wide scattering of seeds.
3. Radio waves were discovered by Heinrich Hertz in 1887.
4. The first radio transmitters were called spark gap transmitters but they couldn’t transmit sound as radios do today, only pulses. They could be used for communication however, by means of Morse Code, using different lengths of pulses as dots and dashes.
5. The Earth’s core can be used as a radio antenna, and is, in fact, to allow radio communications to reach submerged Submarines.
6. In the 1980s it was possible to download computer games from the radio. How? The game was coded into sounds which could be recorded onto a cassette tape and loaded onto a computer.
7. Radio saved the Eiffel Tower. It was meant to be torn down and scrapped after 20 years but the military saw its potential as a radio tower and started using it as such during the first world war. In 1908, a man named Lee de Forest was probably the first to use it that way. In Paris for his honeymoon in 1908, he climbed to the top of the tower and broadcast music to the suburbs of Paris. This made him, arguably, the first radio DJ. What his new wife thought of it is anyone’s guess.
8. The reception is better for some radio stations at night. This is because radio waves travel in straight lines. The curvature of the Earth means, therefore, that radio stations shouldn’t be able to transmit for more than about 40 miles. However, at night, the composition of the ionosphere changes when it is not facing the Sun, allowing radio waves to bounce off it more easily and the waves to be picked up from greater distances.
9. Between 1922 and 1971, people in the UK couldn’t listen to the radio without a licence. It cost 10 shillings (50p).
10. UVB-76 is a mysterious Russian radio signal which has been transmitting continuously since 1982. Nobody knows who sends the signal, or why. It is located near Moscow, and the transmission consists of a buzzing sound 25 times a minute. Every few years it broadcasts a string of random names and numbers.

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