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The 'Radio Music Box' David Sarnoff, in a memo to the Management of Marconi Wireless, 1916 1


"I have in mind a plan which would make radio a household utility in the same sense as a piano or a phonograph. The idea is to bring music into the house by wireless...For example, a radio telephone transmitter having a range of say 25 to 30 miles can be installed at a fixed point, where instrumental or vocal music or both are produced. The receiver can be designed in the form of a simple 'radio music box' and arranged for several different wavelengths."

"The same principle can be extended to numerous other fields - as, for example receiving lectures at home, which can be made perfectly audible; also events of national importance can be simultaneously announced and received. Baseball scores can be transmitted in the air by the use of one set installed at the Polo Grounds...this proposition would be especially interesting to farmers in outlying districts removed from cities. By the purchase of a 'radio music box' they could enjoy concerts, lectures, music recitals, etc., which may be going on in the nearest city withing their radius."


Source: Geeves, Philip, The Dawn of Australia's Radio Broadcasting


1 Sun, 2 Feb 1997 "...By the way, most scholars today question the veracity (and the accuracy) of Sarnoff's alleged 1916 memo predicting a radio music box - none of us dispute that he wrote it, but recent research suggests he wrote it years later and back-dated it. Donna Halper

1Sun, 15 Nov 1998. more about the 1916 memo


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