Watching news and events from around the world on
television; listening to a BBC broadcast or other broadcast from another country
on the radio.
By: James G. Apple,
Editor-in-Chief, International
Judicial Monitor, and President, International Judicial Academy
(In celebration of the 100th anniversary of
the founding of the American Society of International Law in 2006, the Society
published a pamphlet titled International
Law: One Hundred Ways It Shapes Our Lives. The Introduction gives
an explanation for its conception: an affirmation that “international law not
only exists, but also penetrates much more deeply and broadly into everyday
life than the people it affects may generally appreciate.” This column seeks to
elucidate and elaborate on many of the 100 ways briefly presented in the ASIL
pamphlet.)
A recent book published in the United States in 2014 about
people who invented, or contributed to invent, many of the electronic devices
that we use in our daily lives, has a seminal message. One of the main themes
of The Innovators by Walter Isaacson is that most of the electronic
devices developed in the post World War II age of electronics were, contrary to
popular opinion, not invented by a single individual working alone in a
parent’s garage or some other isolated place, but by two or more individuals
working and collaborating together, or by a series of individuals building on
the past contributions of others.
This message by the author of the book is true for
electronic communications. Electronic communications, specifically radio (also
known as wireless) and television, are not new. Wireless transmissions were
postulated by physicists from Europe and the United States in the late 19th Century, based on the scientific theories of the Scottish physicist James
Clerk-Maxwell. Contributions to the development of radio included French and
British inventors. The Italian inventor, Guglielmo Marconi, first developed a
system of long distance wireless transmission in the early 20th Century that fostered the commercial development of radio as a medium of
communication around the world.
In the development of television, one of the first
transmissions of instantaneous images, through a mechanical device, was
demonstrated in Paris in 1909. Two years earlier, a Russian inventor
demonstrated an electronic version of television. However the Scottish inventor
John Logie Baird is considered the “father” of modern television through his
development of a device that transmitted moving silhouette images using an
amplification system. He publicly demonstrated his device in 1925. The world’s
first television station was Station W2XB in Schenectady, New York founded in
1928 and operated by the General Electric Company. Color television was first
demonstrated by John Logie Baird in 1928. The first satellite television
signals were first put into operation in July, 1962. Even the idea of
television commercials, so ubiquitous today, especially in the United States,
can be dated to 1941.
All of these developments in radio and television were the
results of contributions by different inventors working in different places in
the world over a period of years. Other than the specific theorists and
inventors mentioned above, other contributors to the development of radio and
television were from Germany, Japan, France, Canada, Hungary, the United
Kingdom, and the United States.
The invention of the telegraph in the United Kingdom,