Mass Comms reading quiz #5

Entertainment

Providing or being provided with amusement or enjoyment 

Cultural Transmission

The process of passing on culturally relevant knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values from person to person or group to group 

The telegraph (1844)

Morse's telegraph sent messages over wires

The 1890s

Marconi develops wireless telegraph

1905

Fessenden uses radio waves to transmit Christmas messages. Eventually obtains a US patent for the prototype for AM radio

1877 - Thomas Edison

invents the phonograph (patented as a "talking machine") which records sound on tinfoil cylinders 

1886 Alexander Graham Bell & inventor Charles Tainter

graphophone (improvement on the phonograph) which records sound on beeswax instead of tinfoil cylinders 

1888 - Emile Berliner

develops the gramophone that plays music on flat discs 

Major Labels

Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group – the 3 biggest recording-arts companies, which control much of the music industry partly through their powerful distribution channels and ability to market music to mass audiences 

Independent Labels

Small companies that produce and distribute records. Not part of the 3 major-label corporations, they include those producing only 1 or 2 albums a year as well as larger independents such as Disney 

Broadcast

originally a reference to casting seeds widely in a field that was subsequently applied to the fledgling electronic medium of radio and later TV 

Heinrich Hertz

physicist who demonstrated the existence of radio waves in 1885, setting the stage for the development of modern wireless communications. The measurement unit of electromagnetic frequencies was named after him 

Granville T. Woods

inventor of  railway telegraphy in 1887, a type of wireless communication that allowed moving trains to communicate with each other and with stations, greatly reducing the number of railway collisions 

Guglielmo Marconi

Italian inventor and creator of radio telegraphy or wireless transmission in 1899 

Lee de Forest

considered the father of radio broadcasting because of his invention that permitted reliable voice transmissions for both point-to-point communication and broadcasting 

Edwin Howard Armstrong

Columbia University engineering professor who invented FM radio transmission 

David Sarnoff

head of RCA, he promoted the development of tv as a mass media yet blocked the development of FM radio for years because RCA produced and sold AM radio receivers  

Radio Act of 1927

an act of congress that created the Federal Radio Commission, intended to regulate the largely chaotic airwaves and based on the principle that companies had a civic duty to use airwaves, a limited public good, responsibly 

Federal Radio Commission (FRC)

formed by the Radio Act of 1927, the commission, the precursor to the FCC, created a policy that favored fewer high-power radio broadcasting stations rather than more numerous low-power stations  

Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

established in 1934, the principal communications regulatory body at the federal level in the US