➦In 1856…Nikola Tesla was born. (Died – 7 January 1943). He was an inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist who is best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system.
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| Nikola Tesla |
Indeed, Tesla is known to have worked on a radio before Marconi, an X-Ray machine before Roentgen, an induction motor around the same time Ferrari claimed his, and experimented to find “small charged particles” years before Thomson was credited with proving the existence of electrons.
Tesla is perhaps best known within engineering circles for his work on AC (alternating current) and his “War of Currents” feud with Thomas Edison (side note: Edison, an employer of Tesla’s for some time, is known in some engineering circles as the man who copied and used Tesla's ideas).
Even with such challenges and a lifetime of illnesses, Tesla accrued about 300 patents. He died penniless and in debt in his New York apartment on January 7, 1943, at the age of 86. After his death, much of Tesla’s papers and works were impounded by the United States' Alien Property Custodian office. This was despite the fact that Tesla had become a US citizen at 35 years old.
Eventually many of his personal notebooks and works were declared “top secret” by the FBI and shuttered away from public view. Reasons given for doing so were that Tesla had done significant work with various US government agencies.
Tesla's theories on the possibility of the transmission by radio waves go back as far as lectures and demonstrations in 1893 in St. Louis, Missouri, the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the National Electric Light Association. Tesla's demonstrations and principles were written about widely through various media outlets. Many devices such as the Tesla Coil were used in the further development of radio.
Tesla's radio wave experiments in 1896 were conducted in Gerlach Hotel (later renamed The Radio Wave building), where he resided.
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| Tesla died January 7, 1943 |
In 1898, Tesla demonstrated a radio-controlled boat—which he dubbed "teleautomaton"—to the public during an electrical exhibition at Madison Square Garden. The crowd that witnessed the demonstration made outrageous claims about the workings of the boat, such as magic, telepathy, and being piloted by a trained monkey hidden inside. Tesla tried to sell his idea to the U.S. military as a type of radio-controlled torpedo, but they showed little interest. Remote radio control remained a novelty until World War I and afterward, when a number of countries used it in military programs. Tesla took the opportunity to further demonstrate "Teleautomatics" in an address to a meeting of the Commercial Club in Chicago, while he was travelling to Colorado Springs, on 13 May 1899.
In 1900, Tesla was granted patents for a "system of transmitting electrical energy" and "an electrical transmitter." When Guglielmo Marconi made his famous first-ever transatlantic radio transmission in 1901, Tesla quipped that it was done with 17 Tesla patents. This was the beginning of years of patent battles over radio with Tesla's patents being upheld in 1903, followed by a reverse decision in favor of Marconi in 1904. In 1943, a Supreme Court of the United States decision restored the prior patents of Tesla, Oliver Lodge, and John Stone. The court declared that their decision had no bearing on Marconi's claim as the first to achieve radio transmission, just that since Marconi's claim to certain patents were questionable, he could not claim infringement on those same patents (there are claims the high court was trying to nullify a World War I claim against the U.S. government by the Marconi Company via simply restoring Tesla's prior patent).
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| Graham McNamee |
Radio broadcasting of sporting events was a new thing in the 1920s. The announcers were a rotating group of newspaper writers. At the time baseball was America's most popular sport, and the reporters were at the games to write stories about them for print newspapers. Their descriptions were matter-of-fact, boring at best, had a lot of dead air, and were given in the past tense after a play was completed.
In 1923, announcer McNamee was assigned to help the sportswriters with their broadcasts. One day, Grantland Rice, told McNamee to finish the game on his own, and left. McNamee was not a trained sports writer, so he immediately began to describe what he was seeing as it happened, thus originating play-by-play sports broadcasting. He wasn't a baseball expert, but had a knack for conveying what he saw in great detail, and with great enthusiasm, bringing the sights and sounds of the game into the homes of listeners.
With Phillips Carlin, whose voice was so similar that few listeners could tell them apart, he quickly became famous. McNamee had various on-air responsibilities at WEAF, including baseball color commentary culminating in the play-by-play of the 1926 World Series. Over the course of the next decade McNamee worked for WEAF, and for the national NBC network, , when WEAF became the NBC flagship station.
McNamee broadcast numerous sports events, including several World Series, Rose Bowls, championship boxing matches, and Indianapolis 500s. He was broadcast the national political conventions, the presidential inaugurations, and the arrival of aviator Charles Lindbergh in New York City following his transatlantic flight to Paris, France in 1927. He opened each broadcast by saying, "Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen of the radio audience. This is Graham McNamee speaking."
He has been enshrined in the National Radio Hall of Fame, and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He died young on May 9 1942 of a brain embolism at age 53.
➦In 1900...One of the most famous trademarks in the world, “His Master’s Voice”, was registered with the U.S. Patent Office. The logo of the Victor Talking Machine Company, and later, RCA Victor, features the dog, Nipper, looking into the horn of a gramophone machine.
Sometime during the 1890s, English artist Francis Barraud painted a picture of his brother's dog, Nipper, inquisitively listening to a phonograph.
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| Francis Barraud |
When Barraud replied that it was for sale, Owen agreed to buy the painting if the phonograph could be replaced with a gramophone.
When Emile Berliner visited England in May 1900 and saw the picture, he promptly registered it as a trademark -- in the United States on May 26th and in Canada on July 16th. The Victor Talking Machine Company began to use the painting as a trademark in 1902, and the Gramophone Company in 1909.
The original painting hangs in the offices of EMI, the successor of the Gramophone Company. It is one of the most widely recognized and valuable trademarks in the world.
➦In 1920...Journalist David Brinkley born (Died at age 82 – June 11, 2003). He was a newscaster for NBC and ABC in a career lasting from 1943 to 1997.
From 1956 through 1970, he co-anchored NBC's top-rated nightly news program, The Huntley–Brinkley Report, with Chet Huntley and thereafter appeared as co-anchor or commentator on its successor, NBC Nightly News, through the 1970s. In the 1980s and 1990s, Brinkley was host of the popular Sunday This Week with David Brinkley program and a top commentator on election-night coverage for ABC News. Over the course of his career, Brinkley received ten Emmy Awards, three George Foster Peabody Awards, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Following a medical discharge from the Army, he worked for United Press International in several of its Southern bureaus. In 1943, he moved to Washington, D.C., looking for a radio job at CBS News. Instead, he took a job at NBC News, became its White House correspondent, and in time began appearing on television.
➦In 1944...a radio show of international intrigue 'The Man Called X', starring Herbert Marshall, debuted on CBS radio. It was an espionage radio drama that aired on CBS and NBC from July 10, 1944, to May 20, 1952. The radio series was later adapted for television and was broadcast on the "small screen" for one season, 1956-1957.
➦In 1950…Radio's 'Your Hit Parade' made it's debut on American TV. From 1950 to 1959, it was sponsored by American Tobacco's Lucky Strike cigarettes. During this 24-year run, the show had 19 orchestra leaders and 52 singers or groups. Many listeners and viewers casually referred to the show with the incorrect title The Hit Parade.
After 15 years as a radio favorite, "Your Hit Parade" started a nine-year run on television – the first eight years on NBC, the last year on CBS – while continuing on radio until 1955.
➦In 1954…Following his success on the air in Cleveland, DJ Alan Freed moved to 1010WINS in NYC. 1010WINS remained Top40 until April 19, 1965—long after Freed left and three months after he had died—when it became an all-news outlet. Freed was the first disc jockey and concert producer of rock and roll; he introduced the phrase "rock and roll" on mainstream radio in the early 1950s and helped bridge the gap of segregation among young teenage Americans, presenting music by black artists (rather than cover versions by white artists) on his radio program, and arranging live concerts attended by racially mixed audiences. In 1956, Freed hosted "Alan Freed's Rock 'n' Roll Dance Party" on CBS Radio from New York.
The first two Telstar satellites were experimental and nearly identical.
Telstar 1 was launched on top of a Thor-Delta rocket on July 10, 1962. It successfully relayed through space the first television pictures, telephone calls, fax images and provided the first live transatlantic television feed. Telstar 2 was launched May 7, 1963.
Telstar 1 and 2, though no longer functional, were still in orbit as of October 2013.
➦In 1989...Mel Blanc died from heart disease (Born May 30, 1908). He was a voice actor and radio personality.
He later voiced characters for Hanna-Barbera's television cartoons, including Barney Rubble on The Flintstones and Mr. Spacely on The Jetsons. Blanc was also the original voice of Woody Woodpecker for Universal Pictures and provided vocal effects for the Tom and Jerry cartoons directed by Chuck Jones for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, replacing William Hanna. During the golden age of radio, Blanc also frequently performed on the programs of famous comedians from the era, including Jack Benny, Abbott and Costello, Burns and Allen and Judy Canova.
Having earned the nickname The Man of a Thousand Voices, Blanc is regarded as one of the most influential people in the voice acting industry.
With his wife's encouragement, Blanc returned to Los Angeles and joined Warner Bros.-owned KFWB in Hollywood, in 1935. He joined The Johnny Murray Show, but the following year switched to CBS Radio and The Joe Penner Show.
Blanc was a regular on the NBC Red Network show The Jack Benny Program in various roles, including voicing Benny's Maxwell automobile (in desperate need of a tune-up), violin teacher Professor LeBlanc, Polly the Parrot, Benny's pet polar bear Carmichael, the tormented department store clerk, and the train announcer.
By 1946, Blanc appeared on over 15 radio programs in supporting roles. His success on The Jack Benny Program led to his own radio show on the CBS Radio Network, The Mel Blanc Show, which ran from September 3, 1946, to June 24, 1947. Blanc played himself as the hapless owner of a fix-it shop, as well as his young cousin Zookie.
Blanc also appeared on such other national radio programs as The Abbott and Costello Show, the Happy Postman on Burns and Allen, and as August Moon on Point Sublime. During World War II, he appeared as Private Sad Sack on various radio shows, most notably G.I. Journal. Blanc recorded a song titled "Big Bear Lake".
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| Arlo Guthrie is 76 |
- Actor William Smithers (“Dallas,” ″Peyton Place”) is 96.
- Singer Mavis Staples is 84.
- Actor Mills Watson (“B.J. and the Bear,” ″Lobo”) is 83.
- Actor Robert Pine (“CHiPS”) is 82.
- Guitarist Jerry Miller of Moby Grape is 80.
- Folk singer Arlo Guthrie is 76.
- Bassist Dave Smalley of The Raspberries is 74. Singer Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys is 69. Banjo player Bela Fleck of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones is 65. Actor Fiona
- Shaw (“True Blood,” ″Harry Potter” films) is 65.
- Drummer Shaw Wilson of BR549 is 63.
- Actor Alec Mapa (“Ugly Betty” ″Half & Half”) is 58.
- Country singer Ken Mellons is 58.
- Guitarist Peter DiStefano of Porno for Pyros is 58.
- Actor Gale Harold (“Hellcats”) is 54.
- Country singer Gary LeVox of Rascal Flatts is 53.
- Actor Sofia Vergara (“Modern Family”) is 51.
- Singer Imelda May is 49.
- Actor Adrian Grenier (“Entourage,” ″Cecil B. DeMented”) is 47.
- Actor Chiwetel Ejiofor (“12 Years a Slave”) is 46.
- Actor Gwendoline Yeo (“Desperate Housewives”) is 46.
- Actor Thomas Ian Nicholas (“American Pie”) is 43.
- Singer Jessica Simpson is 43.
- Actor Heather Hemmens (“Hellcats”) is 39.
- Rapper-singer Angel Haze is 32.
- Singer Perrie Edwards of Little Mix is 30.
- In 1979..Arthur Fiedler, American orchestra leader (Boston Pops), dies at 84
- In 2019..Jim Bouton, Baseball pitcher, 1962-70 and 1978 (New York Yankees and 3 other teams; All-Star, 1969), author ("Ball Four"), and broadcaster, dies of cerebral amyloid angiopathy at 80
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