History of Media Tech: THUNDERSTRUCK

After my Co-Instructor Mark’s presentation on the history of content and subsequent discussions, my interest was piqued about a History book I had heard about by Erik Larson; THUNDERSTRUCK. Mr. Larson authored another great read on the history of my home city, Chicago, entitled DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY.

To the point, THUNDERSTRUCK details the history of “wireless” AKA radio from the discovery of “Hertzian” waves and the intrigue and high drama around Marconi’s invention of the wireless in turn of the 19th Century London. Amazing how history repeats itself. In the 1890s the scientific establishment was intrigued with discoveries about the electromagnetic spectrum but did not recognize its practical value until Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) invented the first devices usable for wireless telegraphy. Six months after his company was established in 1897 at the age of 23 Marconi’s stock was worth about $20 million in today’s dollars. Forthwith he began establishing a “standard” and imposing exclusivity conditions on his contracts including the condition that his shipboard installations were only allowed to communicate with other Marconi stations and that no other wireless vendors could be used for 14 years. Marconi demonstrated the first transatlantic communication in 1901 defying the widely held belief that “electrical” waves could only travel in straight lines. It wasn’t until 1907 that the “Wireless” was in widespread use paving the way for Radio. Similarly the Internet and was an academic and quasi military technical feat until the invention of HTML, the World Wide Web and the IPO of Netscape.

A noteworthy mention in the book was from one of Marconi’s competitors who was fast on his heels with wireless inventions but had a greater vision. In the June 1890 edition of The Century Magazine, Nikola Tesla wrote, “We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly irrespective of distance,” “Not only this, but through television and telephone we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face.” There you go, the first historical mention of Television.

An aside: Marconi’s fellow countryman Allesandro Volta (1745-1827) demonstrated the first electrochemical battery in 1800. The first rechargeable lead-acid battery came in 1859. Battery technology lags far behind electronics.

The parallels to today strike me. As Rebekha from class has pointed out to Mark and I, The world divided into competing Television standards, namely NTSC, PAL and SECAM which have created barriers to global broadcasting. Consumer DVD players are region specific so that international territorial distribution boundaries can be respected. The list of digital media standards and variants is formidable: MPEG2, MPEG4, H.264 (a variation of MPEG 4), MP3, AAC, AIFF, WMC, AVI, AVC, Quicktime, Real etc. Telecom and IP related standards are even more numerous and the distant cousins to Marconi’s wireless standards are even more prolific including a variety of competing system for broadband wireless (AKA 3G) and mobile TV. Competing Mobile TV schemes include South Korea’s DMB-T (Digital Multimedia Broadcasting – Terrestrial which can also work via DMB – S for satellite), Qualcomm’s Media Flo, and Panasonics Mobile Handheld offering. What works for 1:1 Internet connectivity is ill suited for the 1 to many nature of Television broadcasting.

The saving grace of digital files is that they are easily compressed, converted, transcoded or otherwise manipulated using software with the caveat that any conversion can result in some loss of data so that a digital “master” must be maintained. The master is immune to the analog foibles of degradation, noise and other forms of degeneration and remains pristine provided the digital recording medium remains intact, which certainly should not be taken for granted whether optical or magnetic.