Radio owes its development to two other inventions, the telegraphand the telephone, all three technologies are

closely related. Radio technology began as "wireless telegraphy". Radio can refer to either the electronic appliance that we listen with or the content listened to. However, it all started with the discovery of "radio waves" - electromagnetic waves that have the capacity to transmit music, speech, pictures and other data invisibly through the air. Many devices work by using electromagnetic waves including: radio, microwaves, cordless phones, remote controlled toys, television broadcasts, and more. The Roots of Radio During the 1860s, Scottish physicist, James Clerk Maxwell predicted the existence of radio waves; and in 1886, German physicist, Heinrich Rudolph Hertzdemonstrated that rapid variations of electric current could be projected into space in the form of radio waves similar to those of light and heat. In 1866, Mahlon Loomis, an American dentist, successfully demonstrated "wireless telegraphy." Loomis was able to make a meter connected to one kite cause another one to move, marking the first known instance of wireless aerial communication. Guglielmo Marconi Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian inventor, proved the feasibility of radio communication. He sent and received his first radio signal in Italy in 1895. By 1899 he flashed the first wireless signal across the English Channel and two years later received the letter "S", telegraphed from England to Newfoundland. This was the first successful transatlantic radiotelegraph message in 1902. Nikola Tesla In addition to Marconi, two of his contemporaries Nikola Tesla and Nathan Stufflefield took out patents for wireless radio transmitters. Nikola Tesla is now credited with being the first person to patent radio technology; the Supreme Court overturned Marconi's patent in 1943 in favor of Tesla. Growth of Radio - Radiotelegraph and Spark-Gap Transmitters Radio-telegraphy is the sending by radio waves the same dot-dash message (morse code) used in a telegraph. Transmitters at that time were called spark-gap machines. It was developed mainly for ship-to-shore and ship-to-ship communication. This was a way of communicating between two points, however, it was not public radio broadcasting as we know it today. Wireless signals proved effective in communication for rescue work when a sea disaster occurred. A number of ocean liners installed wireless equipment. In 1899 the United States Army established wireless communications with a lightship off Fire Island, New York. Two years later the Navy adopted a wireless system. Up to then, the Navy had been using visual signaling and homing pigeons for communication. In 1901, radiotelegraph service was instituted between five Hawaiian Islands. By 1903, a Marconi station located in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, carried an exchange or greetings between President Theodore Roosevelt and King Edward VII. In 1905 the naval battle of Port Arthur in the RussoJapanese war was reported by wireless, and in 1906 the U.S. Weather Bureau experimented with radiotelegraphy to speed notice of weather conditions.

In 1909, Robert E. Peary, arctic explorer, radiotelegraphed: "I found the Pole". In 1910 Marconi opened regular American-European radiotelegraph service, which several months later, enabled an escaped British murderer to be apprehended on the high seas. In 1912, the first transpacific radiotelegraph service linked San Francisco with Hawaii. Improvements to Radio Transmitters Overseas radiotelegraph service developed slowly, primarily because the initial radiotelegraph transmitter discharged electricity within the circuit and between the electrodes was unstable causing a high amount of interference. The Alexanderson high-frequency alternator and theDe Forest tube resolved many of these early technical problems. Lee DeForest - AM Radio Lee Deforest invented space telegraphy, the triode amplifier and the Audion. In the early 1900s, the great requirement for further development of radio was an efficient and delicate detector of electromagnetic radiation. Lee De Forest provided that detector. It made it possible to amplify the radio frequency signal picked up by the antenna before application to the receiver detector; thus, much weaker signals could be utilized than had previously been possible. De Forest was also the person who first used the word "radio". The result of Lee DeForest's work was the invention of amplitude-modulated or AM radio that allowed for a multitude of radio stations. The earlier spark-gap transmitters did not allow for this. When the United States entered the first world war in 1917, all radio development was controlled by the U.S. Navy to prevent its possible use by enemy spies. The U.S. government took over control of all patents related to radio technology.

In 1919, after the government released its control of all patents, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was established with the purpose of distributing control of the radio patents that had been restricted during the war.

Radio Speaks The first time the human voice was transmitted by radio is debateable. Claims to that distinction range from the phase, "Hello Rainey" spoken by Natan B. Stubblefield to a test partner near Murray, Kentucky, in 1892, to an experimental program of talk and music by Reginald A. Fessenden, in 1906, which was heard by radio-equipped ships within several hundred miles.

Reginald A. Fessenden Canadian, Reginald A. Fessenden is best known for his invention of the modulation of radio waves and the fathometer. Fessenden worked as as a chemist for Thomas Edison during the 1880s and later for Westinghouse. Fessenden started his own company where he invented the modulation of radio waves, the "heterodyne principle" which allowed the reception and transmission on the same aerial without interference.

True Broadcasting Begins

In 1915, speech was first transmitted across the continent from New York City to San Francisco and across the Atlantic Ocean from Naval radio station NAA at Arlington, Virginia, to the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

On November 2, 1920, Westinghouse's KDKA-Pittsburgh broadcast the Harding-Cox election returns and began a daily schedule of radio programs.

The first ship-to-shore two way radio conversation occurred in 1922, between Deal Beach, New Jersey, and the S.S. America, 400 miles at sea. However, it was not until 1929 that high seas public radiotelephone service was inaugurated. At that time telephone contact could be made only with ships within 1,500 miles of shore. Today there is the ability to telephone nearly every large ship wherever it may be on the globe.

Commercial radiotelephony linking North America with Europe was opened in 1927, and with South America three years later. In 1935 the first telephone call was made around the world, using a combination of wire and radio circuits.

FM Radio Edwin Howard Armstrong invented frequency-modulated or FM radio in 1933. FM improved the audio signal of radio by controlling the noise static caused by electrical equipment and the earth's atmosphe. Until 1936, all American transatlantic telephone communication had to be routed through England. In that year, a direct radiotelephone circuit was opened to Paris. Telephone connection by radio and cable is now accessible with 187 foreign points. Radio technology has grown significantly since its early development. In 1947, Bell Labs scientists invented the transistor. In 1954, a then small Japanese company called Sony introduced the transistor radio.

FM Antenna System In 1965, the first Master FM Antenna system in the world designed to allow individual FM stations to broadcast simultaneously from one source was erected on the Empire State Building in NYC.

http://www.indianetzone.com/37/history_indian_radio.htm
Broadcasting began in India with the formation of a private radio service in Madras (presently Chennai) in 1924. In the very same year, British colonial government approved a license to a private company, the Indian Broadcasting Company, to inaugurate Radio stations in Bombay and Kolkata. The company almost went bankrupt in 1930 but the colonial government took away the two transmitters and the Department of Labour and Industries started operating them as the Indian State Broadcasting Corporation. In 1936, this very Corporation was renamed All India Radio (AIR) and was controlled by the Department of Communications. When India became independent in 1947, AIR was made a separate Department under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

Government of India controls the radio broadcastingin India that works under the Directorate General of All India Radio. It was established in 1936 and since 1957 All India Radio was renamed as Akashvani. Akashvani is a government-owned, semi -commercial operation of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. There were only six radio stations in India at the time of independence. All India Radio`s network had expanded by the mid-1990s to around 146 AM stations along with a National Channel, the Integrated North-East Service that aimed at reaching out to the tribal groups in northeast India and handles the External Services. There are five regional headquarters for All India Radio, namely in the North Zone in New Delhi; the East Zone in Kolkata; the North-East Zone in Guwahati, Assam; the West Zone in Mumbai; and the South Zone in Chennai. The government-owned network of Indian radio provides both national and local programs in Hindi, English, and sixteen regional languages. Commercial Radio services in India started in 1967 by Vividh Bharati Service with its headquarters at Mumbai. Vividh Bharati earned its revenues from extensive advertisements and had been broadcasting from thirty-one AM and FM stations during the mid-1990s. India has a wide-ranging network of medium wave and short-wave stations.

Radio Broadcasting was pioneered in India by the Madras Presidency Club Radio in 1924. The Club worked a broadcasting service for three years, but owing to financial difficulties gave it up in 1927. In the same year (1927) some enterprising businessmen in Bombay started the Indian Broadcasting Company with stations at Bombay and Calcutta. This company failed in 1930, in 1932 the Government of India took over broadcasting. A separate department known as Indian Broadcasting Service was opened. The Service was later designated 'All India Radio' (AIR) and was placed under a separate Ministry-the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. The AIR is controlled by a Director General, who is assisted by several Deputy Directors and a Chief Engineer. Broadcasting, in its significance, reach and impact, constitutes the most powerful medium of mass communication in India. Its importance, as a medium of information and education is particularly great in a vast and developing country like India where the reach of the printed word is not very wide or deep. While the total circulation of all the newspapers in India, including both English and Indian language papers, is around 8 million, there are, according to a recent

estimate, nearly 400 million (out of a total population of 625 million) potential listeners to All India Radio. Broadcasting in India is a national service, developed and operated by the Government of India. All India Radio (also known as Akashvani) operates this service, over a network of broadcasting stations located ail over the country. As a national service, catering to the complex needs of a vast country. All India Radio seeks to represent in its national and regional programmes, the attitudes, aspirations and attainments of all Indian people and attempts to reflect, as fully and faithfully as possible, the richness of the Indian scene and the reach of the Indian mind. AIR Network: Starting with 6 broadcasting stations in 1947, the AIR today has a network of 82 broadcasting stations. The 82 radio stations, grouped into five zones, are the following: North Zone: Ajmer, Allahabad, Aligarh, Bikancr, Delhi, Gorakhpur, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Jullundur, Lucknow, Mathura, Rampur, Simla, Udaipur and Varanasi: East Zone: Agartala, Aizawl, Bhagalpur, Calcutta, Cuttack, Dibrugarh. Gauhati, Imphal, Jeypore, Kohima, Kurseong, Ranchi, Pasighat, Patna, Sambalpur, Shillong, Silchar, Siliguri, Tawang and Tezu ; West Zone : Ahmedabad, Bhopal, Bhuj, Bombay, Gwalior, Indore. Jabalpur, Nagpur, Panaji, Parbani, Pune, Raipur, Rajkot and Sangli; South Zone: Alleppey, Bangalore, Bhadravati, Calicut, Coimbatore, Cuddapah, Dharwar; Gulbarga, Hyderabad, Madras, Mysore, Pondicherry, Port Blair, Tiruchirappalli, Tirunelveli, Trichur, Trivandrum. Vijayawada and Vishakhapatnam; and Kashmir Zone: Jammu, Leh and Srinagar. In addition, there are three auxiliary studio centers at Vado- dara, Darbhanga and Shantiniketan and two Vividh Bharati/commercial centers, one at Chandigarh and the other at Kanpur. These cover all the important cultural and linguistic regions of the country. The expansion of the broadcasting facility remained limited till independence. In 1947 there were only six radio stations in the country. Today there are as many as 82 AIR stations. With two more stations that will start working soon, India's broadcasting network would cover 89 per cent of the population. Till the end of 1976 radio licenses had reached a colossal figure of nearly 1.74 crores, which fetched revenue of Rs. 23.51 crores. Today the radio network has spread to the remote corners of India. It is now possible to bring sense of unity not only political but also cultural among the diverse traditions that enrich our land. AIR's programme pattern combines three main elements: a national channel providing programmes of countrywide interest and significance, a zonal service from each of the four metropolitan centers (Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta and Madras); and regional services from individual stations each catering to the needs and interests of its respective area. The principal ingredients of AIR's programme output are Music, Spoken Word, Dramas, Features. News and Current Affairs, Commentaries and Discussion, Vividh Bharati and its Commercial Service, Farm and Home Broadcasts, Programmes for Special Audiences (like Youth,

Women, Children, Industrial Workers and Tribal Population), and Programmes for Overseas Listeners broadcast in the External Services. To enable AIR to reach all sections of the Indian people, its programmes in the Home Service are broadcast in 20 principal languages. In addition, the External Services of AIR beam their programmes to listeners all over the world in 24 languages. New Services: The News Services Division of AIR through its central and regional news bulletins and its current affairs, commentaries and discussions, provides accurate, objective, speedy and comprehensive coverage of news to listeners at home and abroad. AIR now broadcasts a total of 239 news bulletins a day, with duration of 32 hours 17 minutes. Of these, 67 are Central bulletins broadcast from Delhi in 19 languages, with a daily duration of 10 hours 3 minutes; 57 external bulletins (from Delhi) broadcast in 24 languages for a duration of 7 hours 14 minutes and 15 regional bulletins from 34 regional centers (including the Prade- shik desk in Delhi) broadcast in 22 languages and 34 tribal dialects with a total duration of 15 hours every day. The major sources of news for AIR are its correspondents at home and abroad, the news agencies and the monitoring services, AIR has a total of 206 correspondents. Of these, 111 are part-time. External Services: AIR made its first broadcast to listeners outside India on October I, 1939. Today the External Services of AIR broadcast in 25 languages for about 50 hours daily round-the-clock, reaching listeners in widely scattered areas of the world. Vividh Bharati: A self-contained service of popular entertainment, known as Vividh Bharati was started in October 1957 to meet the growing demand for popular music and light features. Commercial advertising was introduced on AIR in November, 1967, from the Bombay-Nagpur channel of Vividh-Bharati on an experimental basis. It was gradually extended to Calcutta (1968); Delhi and Madras-Tiruchirapalli (1969); Chandigarh-Jullundur- Bangalore, Dharwar, Ahmedabad-Rajkot, Kanpur-Lucknow-Allahabad (1970), Hyderabad-Vijayawada (1971) and Bhopal, Indore, Cuttack, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Patna, Ranchi and Trivandrum (1975). Advertisements are accepted in any language as tape-recorded 'spots' of 15 seconds or 30 seconds duration. Vividh Bharati, an alternative national service of All India Radio, now forms a part of the Central Sales Unit of the Commercial Broadcasting Service. It has also started originating programmes. The total duration of broadcasts of the Vividh Bharati service is now 12 hours 45 minutes, on week days and 13 hours 20 minutes on Sundays and holidays. The network covers 29 full-fledged centers and seven partial centers. Vividh Bharati is also radiated through two powerful shortwave transmitters from Delhi, Bombay and Madras.

There has been a steady rise in the gross revenue earned by the commercial services. It went up from Rs. 2.96 crores in 1970-71 to Rs.6.25 crores in 1975-76 and Rs. 6.50 crores approximately in 1976-77. Since inception and till March 1977 AIR had earned total gross revenue of about Rs. 38.21 crores from its commercial services. National Programme: Started in July 1952, the weekly National Programme of Music provides an opportunity to listeners to hear well-known exponents of Hindustani and Karnataka music. It has helped in a better understanding of the two systems prevalent in the North and the South. At suitable intervals, programmes based on recordings of old masters are also featured in this programme. The medium of the drama is utilised for popularising the Economic Programme. A special series of short plays on various themes including the Economic Programme, Family Planning, Dowry and anti-Casteism are regularly broadcast. Nearly 4,000 plays are broadcast from the different stations of AIR annually on an average. The most significant achievement of AIR in the field of Radio drama is its National Programme of Plays. Once a month an outstanding play from one of the main Indian languages is selected and translated into all the other regional languages of the country r id broadcast simultaneously by all stations in their respective regional languages. In the interest of improvement of radio programmes, All India Radio instituted in 1975 the annual Akashvani Awards for plays, features, music, youth programmes etc. This competition was held during the year and prizes were awarded. The National Programme of Features attempts to mirror the progress made in different spheres of development in the country and to project various aspects of its social and cultural life. The .original broadcast of this feature might be in Hindi or English, but these are invariably translated into all regional languages and presented from the regional stations. The Special Programmes include programmes for women (once a week) for children (two or three times a week), for the armed forces (daily), for Industrial Workers (4 days in a week), for hill tribes in their own dialects which number around 135 for rural audiences and consist of plays, skits, agriculture and other matters (twice a week) and programmes on Family Planning in all the National languages and in important dialects, as often as possible. Programmes for the youth in Yuva Vani are broadcast from Calcutta, Delhi, Hyderabad, Jammu, Patna and Srinagar stations. This service provides a forum to the youth between the ages of l5 and 25 years, who present their viewpoint by participating in a wide range of programmes-talks, discussions interviews, plays, features and music. A youth news bulletin is also broadcast by the youth themselves.
Internet radio is one of the most popular ways to listening to music world wide, a fad surprisingly that hasn't caught on in India in spite of our technology savvy ways. With FM ruling the roost the airwaves are a constant tribute to Bollywood fare. It is this uninitiated market that internet radio hopes to capture with the launch of myopusradio.com. The radio station was launched in Bangalore on Tuesday amidst much fanfare. A division of Trump It Entertainment and Creative Services, the radio station is named as a tribute to Opus, the restaurant and bar that has been a space for music and musical activities for the last five years also owned by the same group.

Opus which started in Bangalore will shortly expand to other cities as well. Myopusradio.com will play international music, currently streamlining at 64K which is the same as the FM quality of sound on the radio. All that is required for listeners is to tune into the 24 radio station is a broadband internet connection and the latest flash player from Adobe, which can be downloaded from the Adobe site. For everyone suffering from an overdose of Bollywood and Punjabi on the FM channels, internet radio might be the only option. Myopusradio. com plays International retro, country, Rock and Roll, Jazz, Blues, Opera, Soul, Funk, Disco, Electronic Dance Music, Hip Hop, Rap, RnB, Rock, Independant music and chart busters.

Read more at:http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/India+gets+its+first+Internet+radio+station/1/18302.html