battery radio

From large battery-operated table models to tiny transistors - the radio has come a long way. But WHO really invented the radio? Although Gugliemo Marconi is generally thought to be the father of the wireless radio, experiments and discoveries by many other scientists and physicists contributed to its development. Alessandro Volta's 1838 invention of the battery and Andre Ampere's scientific studies about electricity and magnetism helped Samuel Morse invent the first electric telegraph machine. In 1865, Washington, D.C., dentist Dr. Mahlon Loomis began experimenting with the idea of wireless messaging. In 1887, Heinrich Hertz produced the first radio waves. In addition to Marconi, two other 19th century contemporaries - Nikola Tesla and Nathan Stufflefield - took out patents for wireless radio transmitters. In fact, as recently as 1943, the Supreme Court reviewed Tesla's unsuccessful 1915 court injunction against Marconi, and acknowledged Tesla as the inventor of the radio. Radio technology has grown significantly since its early development. In 1947, Bell Labs scientists invented the transistor. In 1954, a small Japanese company called Sony introduced the transistor radio. Today there are over 40,000 radio stations around the world and most families own at least one radio.

Links to more information about radios:
Merchandising of Radio (1925 pamphlet) American Memory Collection -- Prosperity and Thrift
Mahlon Loomis’s Journal –- Library of Congress exhibit