1930-1935
From CSI Wiki Farm
- 1930
- Fourth reduction in long distance rates announced by AT&T Company; estimated annual savings to users is about $5 million.
- The Bell System purchases the Teletype Corporation.
- First interstate connection for police teletypewriter systems was opened between New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
- AT&T introduces much higher quality insulated wire.
- Siemens-Halske of Germany installs an automated telephone exchange in a rural area in Bavaria. Most earlier automation efforts had been invested in inner city networks.
- Heinrich Lamm, a medical student, assembles first bundle of transparent fibers to carry an image (of an electric lamp filament) in Munich. His effort to file a patent is denied because of Hansell's British patent.
- "Exposition internationale" held in Antwerp, Belgium.
- The first practical and affordable car radio is designed and produced by the Galvin Manufacturing Corporation. The original model 5T71 radio sells for between $110 and $130, and can be installed in most popular automobiles. The brand name Motorola is created.
- 1931
- AT&T Company introduces teletypewriter exchange service, TWX. Although teletypewriters have been used on private lines since 1915, the new service establishes central switching exchanges through which any subscriber could communicate by teletypewriter with any of the other subscribers to the service.
- December, Owens-Illinois devises method to mass-produce glass fibers for Fiberglas.
- Charles E. Wynn-Williams, Cambridge in England, use tyratron tubes to design an electronic binary digital calculator. It is used in physical experiments.
- Transmitter tubes for 500 kW exist (cf 1923). One such tube is installed at the radio station in Rugby, United Kingdom.
- The Trans Canada Telephone System (TCTS) consortium is formed. In 1983 the name was changed to Telecom Canada.
- "Exposition Coloniale Internationale de Paris" held in Paris.
- Gödel's incompleteness theorem.
- Imperial and International Communications takes over communications in Bahrain.
- Dixon/Point Reyes, California radio begins transpacific radio telephony service.
- 1932
- "Photo-finish" timing apparatus for sports, as developed by Bell Telephone Laboratories, is introduced at Columbia-Syracuse track meet at Baker Field, New York City.
- While looking for the source of static in overseas radio signals, Bell Labs scientist Karl Jansky becomes the first person to detect radio noise coming from the center of the Milky Way galaxy. His discovery marks the beginning of radio astronomy.
Karl Jansky - Radio Astronomy
How Karl Jansky started the radio astronomy movement.
- Bell Labs develops wide-range audio reproduction, a system that splits theater speaker systems into three bands using bass woofers, mid-range horns and tweeters. Here, the system is shown in Bell Labs' anechoic chamber, an echo-free room in Murray Hill, New Jersey.
- Harry Nyquist explains the principles for feedback amplifiers.
- Vannevar Bush completes the Differential Analyzer, an analog computer (mechanical calculator) which could solve calculus problems.
- The newly elected US government of Franklin D. Roosevelt files an antitrust case against IBM, charging it with abusing a dominant market position and engaging in anticompetitive tactics to maintain that position. IBM (having 85 % of the punch card equipment market, using 80 column cards with square holes) and Remington (having 10 % of the same market, using incompatible 90 column cards with round holes) had agreed not to to sell blank cards to each other's customers. The equipment was rented, not sold, and customers had to buy blank cards from the same manufacturer. In 1936, IBM agreed to change this. (cf 1952, 1969)
- The world's first microwave telephone link is installed by Marconi between the Vatican City and the Pope's summer residence, Castel Gandolfo.
- Formation of the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (CRBC), a precursor of CBC.
- The Australian Broadcasting Company (cf 1929) is nationalized by the Australian Broadcasting Commission Act.
- The Indian Cable & Radio Communications Company is formed to amalgamate the country's overseas wireless and cable services Seventy-five percent of the company is owned by Cable & Wireless.
- An important dystopic novel is published, Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, 1932
- March 12, Swedish match industrialist Ivar Kreuger (born 1880) found shot dead in his hotel room in Paris, presumably from suicide. After having successfully merged match industries in Sweden (cf 1917), acquired monopoly licenses in several countries, holding 60-70 percent of the world market for matches in 1930, he was turning to telecommunications as the next profitable monopoly business (probably inspired by AT&T and ITT) and he started to acquire shares in Ericsson, but his high-risk financing schemes had started to fall apart following the great crash 1929 on Wall Street.
- 1933
- Bell Labs enables the first live transmission of stereo sound – a symphony concert broadcast over telephone lines from Philadelphia, Pa. to Washington D.C.
- Edwin H. Armstrong invents FM radio.
- The "Century of Progress Exposition" is held in Chicago.
- Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act 1933.
- 1934
- The Communications Act becomes effective on July 1st. Approved by President Roosevelt, this Act brought interstate telephone business under regulation by the Federal Communications Commission instead of the Interstate Commerce Commission.
- Combined functions of RF spectrum allocation previously handled by the Federal Radio Commission and interstate regulation for common carriers. Introduced "value-of-service" pricing which required the subsidization of residential subscribers to speed the availability of nationwide telephone service.
- On December 13th, Thomas A. Watson, died at Pass-a-grille, Florida.
- Church invents lambda calculus.
- Radar is invented in the UK.
- Formation of Marconi-EMI Television Co. Ltd. by EMI and Marconi, for the interest of developing all aspect of television transmission.
- Imperial and International Communications, formed in 1929, is renamed Cable & Wireless. (cf 1929)
- July 1, the U.S. Federal Communications Act becomes effective. Approved by President Roosevelt, this act brings interstate telephone business under regulation by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) instead of the Interstate Commerce Commission.
- June 19, the 73rd U.S. Congress approves Public Law No. 416, "An Act to provide for the regulation of interstate and foreign communication by wire or radio, and for other purposes", a.k.a. the Communications Act of 1934.
- 1935
- The FBI installs teletypewriter service between its headquarters in Washington and 36 field offices.
- On April 25, the first round-the-world telephone call is made. Walter S. Gifford, president AT&T Company, talked with T.G. Miller, vice president in charge of Long Lines Dept., in another room in the same building (32 Sixth Avenue) over a 23,000 mile circuit of wire and radio channels. The instrument used was presented to the Smithsonian Institute.
- IBM introduces IBM 601, a punch card machine with an arithmetic unit that uses relays. It performs a multiplication in one second. Some 1,500 units are manufactured.
- World exposition in Brusells, Belgium.
- The operations of Halifax & Bermudas (cf 1889) is taken over by the West India and Panama company (cf 1939).
- The Associated Press of the USA installs a country-wide facsimile network based on the new principle of reflected light. Early photoelectric facsimiles (cf 1902) required a photo negative to be taken of the original before transmission.
- IBM invested in for training women in technical skills.
