Andre-Marie Ampere (1775 – 1836), discovered the fundamental laws of electricity:
“How great is God, and our science is just a trifle!”
GOD’S PLAN
Christian Radio History wasn’t born of religious programming. Christian radio was part of God’s creative plan. He put into place the necessary elements and forces that we use to transmit messages over great distances, eventually fulfilling the prophecy that knowledge would move to and fro about the earth. His timing is in direct correlation with the development of technology, and only He determines when those new facets of technology are discovered and put into place.
INVISIBLE FORCES
“Smith” Radio Commentator (1922) ‘Radio has caught and brought to the ears of us earth dwellers the noises that roar in the space between the worlds.”
Legend has it that when scientist and Christian apologist Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) witnessed an apple fall from a nearby tree, he had been searching for further evidence of God. God rewarded his pursuit fruitfully, you might say, by displaying His awesome power of gravity. It eventually proved what only crazies of the age had been proclaiming thus far … that there were indeed “invisible forces” in the air.
In the same manner, Christian physicist James Clerk Maxwell began studying God and light, which led him to formulate the Electromagnetic Theory of Light. That, in turn, helped him to prove that radio waves can exist. Around 1885, the Lutheran-born German scientist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857-1894) actually detected and produced those radio waves. Hertz didn’t believe that his work would ever have any “practical application”. Of course he was wrong, and we use his name today to describe frequencies of electromagnetic waves – including sound waves.
British physicist and mathematician Oliver Lodge was also curious about harnessing invisible forces. In 1888, he conducted experiments that revealed electromagnetic waves could indeed travel along wires, which confirmed Maxwell’s findings. He went on to extensively to the development of the radiograph receiver.
By 1890, Édouard Branley, a devout Catholic, had always felt that he was in a profound union with God, especially while at work in his laboratory at the Catholic Institute. It was there, in his communion with God, that he discovered how to convert incoming signals to direct electromagnetic current … a crucial ingredient for true radio reception.
When Kentucky Christian-raised farmer, fruit grower, electrician and inventor Nathan Stubblefield (1860 –1928) conducted his “battery operated wireless telephone” transmissions, people took notice. His invention became the first to be used on a “mobile” platform. You might say, he invented the wireless phone. In 1908 he received a U.S. patent but was not successful in commercializing his invention, and he claimed it was stolen from him. Stubblefield did open the floodgates however. It is because of his work that people became thoroughly convinced that transmitting a wireless signal was possible.
REACHING GOD WITH PRAYER
“The more I work with the powers of Nature, the more I feel God’s benevolence to man; the closer I am to the great truth that everything is dependent on the Eternal Creator and Sustainer; the more I feel that the so-called science, I am occupied with, is nothing but an expression of the Supreme Will, which aims at bringing people closer to each other in order to help them better understand and improve themselves.” (Marconi, as cited by Maria Cristina Marconi).
Around the same time, a member of the Anglican Church named Guglielmo Marconi stared into the horizon and pondered about how the human mind could bridge any distance, even reaching God in prayer. He was constantly writing about his amazement of God’s creation, and how it was intertwined with science. You might say, Marconi was the first to envision religious broadcasting. With that goal in mind, he began to experiment. Incorporating ideas from Hertz and Branley, he was able to transmit a radio signal across the Atlantic in the form of Morse code. He was also the first to record reception of a Morse code signal. Although the technology existed to transmit human voice, the amount of power needed just wasn’t available yet.
THE RACE FOR RADIO
Encouraged by his success with Morse code, Marconi went back to the drawing board. After much hard work, he was awarded a patent for radio for his improvements in transmitting electrical impulses, signals, and the device by which they were sent. Then, acting quickly, he established the first patented radio “factory” on the Isle of Wight, England. But, he wasn’t the only one to jump the starting gate.
In Australia, an Anglican believer named William Bragg was conducting transmissions as early as 1897. And in Colorado Springs, an exceedingly brilliant scientist and inventor named Nicola Tesla had discovered a way to transmit electrical power wirelessly, and was preparing to build a transmitting tower at Wardenclyffe on Long Island.
The race for radio was on.
“The gift of mental power comes from God, Divine Being, and if we concentrate our minds on that truth, we become in tune with this great power. My Mother had taught me to seek all truth in the Bible.” – Nicola Tesla
(Prior paragraph introduced Tesla, so this is redundant.) One day Tesla detected a series of repeating signals that he thought were from outer space. Experts say he picked up Marconi’s signals all the way from England, but Tesla attributed them to possible communication from another planet.
AND THE WINNER IS …
Tesla did build his Long Island transmitting tower, but ran out of funds. He eventually went bankrupt and couldn’t continue his research. The jury is out on whether Tesla actually beat Marconi, and a patent battle ensued which lasted for years. After Tesla’s death in 1943 the US Supreme Court ruled that Marconi’s radio patents were invalid and awarded the patents for radio to Tesla.
A VOICE IS HEARD
Robert Millikan (1868 – 1953), great American physicist, Nobel Prize 1923:
“I can assert most definitely that the denial of faith lacks any scientific basis. In my view, there will never be a true contradiction between faith and science.”
On December 23rd, 1900, Canadian born inventor Reginald Aubrey Fessenden sent his voice over a 3+ mile distance. School textbooks are clear that he was the first to send audio through the air via electromagnetic waves. This was not, however, a public broadcast.
Textbooks report that On Christmas Eve, 1906, Fessenden became the first person to make a public radio broadcast. But the textbooks may be wrong. While he did make the broadcast, he never intended it to be public. It was supposed to be an invitation-only demonstration. The legend states that ships at sea picked up Fessenden’s signal (on 5 kHz AM) as he played O Holy Night on the violin and read a passage from Luke Chapter 2. Public or not, the heavens did indeed declare the glory of God on that night.
His transmission proved that it was possible to fulfill the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20) … to share the gospel to the ends of the earth. Unfortunately, historians haven’t been able to find the official ship’s log or any written record. So, although Fessenden’s Christmas Eve message is widely believed to be the first radio transmission of this nature, the written record credits New Yorker Lee De Forest (and other lesser-known men) with this honor.
Around the same time in Australia, Ernest Fisk of Amalgamated Wireless conducted an isolated experiment in which, some claim, the first music was transmitted.
In part two, we’ll delve into the fascinating stories behind Christian Broadcasting networks.
REFERENCES
encyclopedia.com
oldradio.com
Kimberly A Dusendorf
Gary R Drum
famous scientists.org
radioworld.com
wikipedia.org
aleteia.org
history.com
bbc.com
