Chapter 8 Chester Rice and the Loudspeaker

c08uf001.psd

In the early days of radio, it was hard to hear the music because the radio waves produced tiny electrical signals. The only practical way to hear these small sounds was to use headphones; basically, you needed to keep the sound-producing diaphragm very close to your ear in order to hear anything. If more than one person wanted to hear the music broadcast, they could place a large horn over the diaphragm. But this acoustic-only horn amplified the sound only minimally.

In an earlier chapter we met Lee de Forest and explored how audio amplifiers work. With this knowledge, engineers started working ...

Get ReMaking History, Volume 3, 1st Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.