AT&T in early broadcasting

According to Harry Newton's dictionary (H. Newton, 1991), radio is the "science of communicating over a distance by converting sounds or signals to electromagnetic waves and radiating them through the air or through space". Does that process seem familiar? A basic definition of telephone transmission could be the same except that telephone signals were originally sent over wire. The difference that the signals are audible tones (dots and dashes or intelligible voices) and the media (air or wire) through which the signals pass have determined the history of broadcast radio, its government regulations, and the companies involved with it in the US. The purpose of the paper is to provide some of that history from around the year 1900 to about 1930. This history could be examined from several viewpoints. Certainly one could look at the progress of the industry from a standpoint of scientific invention and the development of technical devices from the Hertzian waves through the Pupin coil to the Audion tube. Another view could be from a personality standpoint, from Marconi through de Forest to Sarnoff. Yet another might be a regulatory view which could start with the Kingsbury Commitment, through the Radio Act of 1927, to the creation of the FCC. Each of these strategies for presentation is appealing and any story of radio cannot be told without reference to technology, people and regulation, but the paper presents the history of radio and AT&Ts involvement through an examination of the workings of three other companies and the interaction of the federal government.