1910-1-13 First Radio Broadcast

.13th January 1910: World's first public radio broadcast - HiPo > .

(Broadcast from the Met Opera in New York)

Inventor Lee de Forest earned a Doctorate from Yale’s Sloane Physics Laboratory in 1899, and soon moved to New York City where he worked on improvements to existing radio technology that was being developed by Hertz and Marconi in Europe. It was while in New York that de Forest developed a three-element vacuum tube known as an Audion which, despite finding little immediate success, established the possibility of amplifying radio signals.

De Forest formed the de Forest Radio Telephone Company in 1907, and in an advertisement the same year he claimed that it would soon be possible to broadcast radio signals throughout the city for the public to hear. Three years later he was to prove his prediction correct when he made the first live broadcast from New York's Metropolitan Opera House.

Having installed a 500-watt wireless transmitter backstage, de Forest ran his antenna to the roof where a long fishing pole acted has the mast. Since so few private individuals owned radio sets, de Forest set up public receivers across the city. The signal reportedly reached as far as Newark and New Jersey. Even a ship moored in New York harbor is said to have tuned in.

The broadcast included performances of Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci featuring acclaimed Italian tenor Enrico Caruso. However, contemporary accounts reveal that the principal performers were barely audible due to the low sensitivity of the microphones, while static and other interference clouded the signal. Nevertheless, de Forest had shown that public radio broadcasts were possible, and this stimulating attempts to broadcast music over the airwaves.