What do you call that .. radio?

Foundations of Amateur Radio

If you use a word often enough it starts to lose its meaning. The other day, during breakfast, well, coffee, whilst playing one of our start-the-day with a smile word games, the word "RADIO" turned up. I grinned and pointed out that this was my favourite word, to which my partner mentioned that in Italian, it's referred to as "La Radio", which made us both wonder where it actually came from, did the Italian language import the word, or export it, given that Guglielmo Marconi was Italian?

A quick search advised us that it came from Latin, radius, meaning "spoke of a wheel", "beam of light" or "ray".

Fully enlightened we finished our coffee and got on with our day .. except I couldn't stop thinking about this.

Having recently spent some quality time looking into the history of the RF Circulator, I figured searching the patent records might be a solid way to get some handle on where this word "radio" came from.

Initially Google Patent search unearths the oldest as being from 1996, not very helpful. Adding 1900 as the end date filter turns up a radio cabinet patent with a filing date of 1833, except that it was published and granted in 1931, which is confirmed by the patent itself.

This level of corruption in the data affects at least a dozen patents, but I daresay that there's plenty more like that.

1857 turns up a patent with the word "broadcasting", in the context of "broadcasting guano", so, nothing much has changed in nearly 170 years, but I digress.

Adding quotes to the search term unearths a patent from 1861, apparently iron roads, locomotives, large slopes and small radio curves relates to the other meaning of the word radius, in Spanish.

1863 gives us ruffle stitching, "made upon the radio", but the patent is so corrupt that it's pretty much unreadable.

1871 unearths an electromagnetic engine, but the text has so much gibberish that I suspect that the word "radio" is a happy accident.

1873 shows us a "Wireless signalling system", bingo, the patent shows us transmitter and receiver circuits, antennas, messages and frequencies and a whole bunch of relevant radio information, except that the date on the patent itself is 1919.

And you wonder why people argue about who invented what when?

I'll spare you the gas apparatus, petrol lamps with cigar cutter, running gear for vehicles and bounce to 1897, "Method of and apparatus for converting x-rays into light for photographic purposes", the first occurrence of "radio", in the form of "radiograph", complete with pictures of the bones of a hand drawn meticulously from presumably an x-ray.

I confess I'm not convinced.

Using the United States Patent and Trademark Office search for the word radio gives you 54,688 pages with 2.7 million records, ordered in reverse chronological order with no way to skip to the last page.

The World Intellectual Property Organisation finds the same Spanish iron paths patents, but unearths "A Differential Arrangement for Radio Controlled Race Cars" from 1900, but inside we discover it's really from 1979.

Seems this level of corruption is endemic in the patent field, wonder who's benefiting from this misinformation?

Meanwhile, still looking, I discovered the Oxford English Dictionary, which claims that the earliest known use of the word "radio" is in the 1900's, but the earliest evidence is from 1907 in a writing by "L. De Forest", but you are granted the privilege of paying them to actually see that evidence .. really?

On 18 July 1907, Lee de Forest, made the first ship-to-shore transmissions by radiotelephone, which adds some credence to the claim, but I have to tell you, I'm not particularly convinced.

Taking a different approach, starting at Guglielmo Marconi, his first efforts in 1894 showed the wireless activation of a bell on the other side of the room. Six months later he managed to cross 3 kilometres realising that this could become capable of longer distances. The Italian Ministry of Post and Telegraphs didn't respond to his application for funding, so in 1896, at the age of 21, moving to Great Britain, he arrived in Dover where the customs officer opened his case to find various apparatus, which were destroyed because they could be a bomb.

Lodging a patent "Improvements in Transmitting Electrical impulses and Signals, and in Apparatus therefor", was the first patent for a communication system on radio waves. It was granted a year later.

One problem.

It doesn't have the word "radio" in it, instead it talks about "a Hertz radiator", so close.

So, we've narrowed it down to somewhere between 1896 and 1907, that's an 11 year window.

Some observations.

De Forest founded a company called "the Radio Telephone And Telegraph Company". It's unclear exactly when this happened, it collapsed in 1909 and was founded after disagreement with management of his previous company, apparently on 28 November 1906.

A quick aside, apparently in 1881, Alexander Graham Bell used the word radiophone for the first time, which he used to refer to a system that used light to transmit wirelessly, he also referred to it as a photophone.

You could argue that because light and radio are the same thing, this is the first legitimate use of the word "radio" in the context of communication, but I'm not buying it.

I'll leave you with the discovery that on 30 December 1904, the British Post Office published a "Post Office Circular" with the instructions to use the word "Radio" in the service instructions, think of it as the metadata associated with a telegram. This information has been repeated often without evidence.

If you're keen, the Postal Museum is located in Phoenix Place, London. I've contacted them to see if that particular Circular is in their possession.

Amazingly the "Post Office Circulars" have been digitised between 1666 and 1899. So close, but no cigar, that said, I looked for the elusive Volume 7 of the set to see if there were any straggling references to "radio", but couldn't confirm this.

The Postal Museum Catalogue returns plenty of early references to radio, but it's hard to tell what's real and what's written after the fact. Anyone know of any research grants that will allow me to dig into this on-site, feel free to get in touch, oh, a bed would be good too .. I think this might take a while.

At the moment, the best I have is an uncorroborated "30 December 1904" for the origin of the word "Radio", in English, in other words, it was imported into Italian. No sign of Marconi, Bell, or De Forest.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB