Radio and the Music Industry - Dissertation Example

During the mid to late 1880’s numerous inventors including Edison, Berliner, and Bell were experimenting with a new invention called the gramophone.  By 1889 Edward Easton opened the Colombia Phonograph Company.  The recording industry was in its infancy.  The first recording Easton made was John Philip Sousa directing the United States Marine Corp Band that same year.  During this time, Marconi and his company made many advances during the next several years including: erecting the first commercial radio station in 1898 on Rathlin Island off the coast of Ireland.

(“Brief History” “Pre 1900” 2004, screen 2).  In 1893 Emile Berliner made major breakthroughs with the phonograph.  His company, the U. S. Gramophone company the following year sold 1,000 of the machines, most crank type although a few were motorized.  The same year he discovered that shellac worked much better than what had been used for producing ‘records’, which until that time was a hard rubber.  In 1894 Guglielmo Marconi having heard about recent development with sound waves made the first successful radio transmission from his home, a distance of just over one mile.

  The following year he travelled to England and received a patent for his “wireless” telegraphy.  By 1896, “Eldridge Johnson improved the gramophone with a motor designed by Levi Montross and his own patent 601,198 filed Aug. 19, 1897, for a simple and inexpensive machine that became the most popular disc phonograph by 1900; he then merged his Consolidated Talking Machine Co. with Berliner's company.