The Genesis of Radio
A Broadcast from WRC, November 20, 1924
C. Francis Jenkins
The history of radio is unique—at first only a scientific curiosity, and for years thereafter a boy’s plaything; when, all at once, without warning, the public takes it up with a suddenness no one foresaw, and for which no one was prepared.
An invention which behaves so peculiarly excites one’s curiosity to a study of its strange attraction; and of the beginnings of the scientific principles involved, now so knowingly discussed by mere youngsters.
Why, boys in the whole range of their ’teens discourse with fluency and understanding such mysteries as inductance, impedence and capacities; reactance, reluctance and rotors; harmonics, aerials, and mush; choppers, chokes and cheese; heterodyne, neutrodyne, and iodine; and we oldsters don’t know whether they are talking of medicine, music or food.
The only thing that saves us from everlasting embarrassment is that we have the gumption to keep our mouths shut.
So, determined to be ready for these “kids” the next time they come into my august presence, I start in to “bone up” on some of these funny words, and for a start I turn to a musty volume printed by Congress in 1879.
It appears that on January 16 of that year the business of Congress was stopped, and, in solemn procession, led by the Sergeant-at-Arms, the Chaplain, and the Vice-President, the Senate proceeded to the House chamber, where the Speaker handed his official gavel to the Vice-President, who said: “The Senators and Members of the Congress of The United States are here assembled to take part in services to be observed in memory of the late Joseph Henry.”