Radio Electronics - Brief History

Radio electronics has been studied for a suprisingly long period of time. In the 1830 s Michael Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction and Nikola Tesla made the first public demonstration of a modern wireless system towards the end of that century. Around the same time Indian physicist, Jagdish Chandra Bose demonstrated the transmission and receipt of radio waves over a significant distance and is credited as being the first to do so. Guglielmo Marconi was the first person to receive a patent for radio in 1896. However, it was not until some ten years later that Marconi established the first commercial transatlantic radio communications service, between Ireland and Newfoundland, Canada, in 1907.

Radio electronics was, at that time, relatively unsophisticated. The earliest radio receivers, known as 'crystal sets' had few electronic components and were powered by radio signals received through its antenna.

It was around this time that Amateur radio, or 'ham radio' emerged. Enthusiastic amateurs started to use electronics components to build their own radio receivers and transmitters. To this day amateur radio enthusiasts play an importand part in the continued evolution of radio electronics in the role of experimenters, consumers and developers of technology in this field.

As technology improved in the lead up to the the second world war, and especially during that war, radio electronics became increasingly more sophisitcated.A good example of this was the application of radio elctronics in the development of radar.