Paul Harvey

[Scott Fybush]

Dan.Strassberg wrote:

> But while nobody can deny that radio was still very much in its
> infancy in 1920, I think you should agree that it had been born more
> than a decade earlier.

You'll get no argument whatsoever from me about the validity of what Doc 
Herrold, or Eunice Randall, for that matter, did prior to 1920.

What I've long argued that KDKA (and to a certain extent WWJ) 
accomplished in 1920 was the transformation of what had been largely an 
experimental medium into an industry. KDKA wasn't the first anything - 
but it used the Westinghouse PR machinery to catapult radio broadcasting 
into the national public consciousness in a way that San Jose Calling, 
or 9XM, or 1XE/WGI, or any of the other true pioneers weren't quite able 
to do.

To put it in more contemporary terms, a handful of computer scientists 
might have been exchanging e-mails over Arpanet or its predecessors way 
back in 1969, but I'd still say anyone born before 1990 (maybe even 
later in the nineties) was born "before the Internet."

s