Radio broadcast

By: Edward R. Murrow

Date: September 18, 21, and 22, 1940

 

Source: Murrow, Edward R. "London Blitz: September 1940." Radio transcript. Reprinted in Hynes, Samuel et al., eds. Reporting World War II: Part One, American Journalism, 1938–1944. New York: Library of America, 1995.

Invented in 1929, television was first introduced to the public at a World's Fair in 1939.

About the Author: Born Egbert Roscoe Murrow (1908–1965) in rural North Carolina, Edward R. Murrow became a true pioneer in broadcast journalism. He worked first in radio, gaining worldwide acclaim for his dramatic broadcasts during the London Blitz, then moved to the emerging medium of television after World War II (1939–1945). Murrow died of lung cancer on April 27, 1965, at the age of 57. Numerous awards are now named for the famed journalist, who remains the most revered broadcaster in the history of news reporting.

Although the basic components of television were developed as early as the 1870s, the technology was not sophisticated enough to broadcast an image until the 1920s. Even then television was too crude for widespread use. There were eighteen experimental television stations in the United States in 1931, but opposition to the new medium by radio broadcasters and a lack of funding during the Depression left these promising starts wanting. Nonetheless, technical innovations by inventors such as Vladimir Zworykin and Philo Farnsworth refined and improved television, and RCA was ready to introduce widespread commercial manufacture of television sets by 1938. RCA's competitors opposed the deployment of a national broadcast system based on RCA technology and moved to block the licensing of commercial broadcasting by the FCC. In 1940 a government panel concluded that RCA was attempting to establish industry broadcasting...