Important Communication Milestones

1901- First Transatlantic radio message demonstrated by Guglielmo Marconi

1906-SOS was adopted at the Berlin Radiotelegraph Convention as the official international standard for distress calls

1906 - Canadian Reginald Fessiden produced the first voice broadcast on Christmas Eve; ships at sea heard a broadcast that included Fessenden playing the song O Holy Night on the violin and reading a passage from the Bible

1909 - An SOS signal is transmitted for the first time in an emergency when the Cunard liner SS Slavonia is wrecked off the Azores.

Late 1921 - Experimentation by AT&T led to the conception of a broadcast "network"

February 11, 1922 - AT&T announces its plans to establish nationwide broadcasting, with station WEAF in New York as the flagship station.

June 14th 1922 - President Warren G. Harding is the first US presidentheard on radio when he dedicated the Francis Scott Key Memorialover stationWEAR in Baltimore.

September 7, 1927 - Philo T. Farnsworth transmits the first all-electronic television image (see articles at SF Virtual Museum)

September 11, 1928 - Station WGY (Schenectady, NY), premieres television's first drama, The Queen's Messenger.

May 6, 1937 -First coast to coast radio broadcast is a report of the Hindenburg disaster.

June 1944 - The wire recorderis patented by Marvin Camras