Sparks Flew: WOSU's Century on the Air

by Thomas M Rieland

Overview

Wireless Morse code began a new age of communications, magically sending invisible waves through the ether received at some distant place. Among the first universities to experiment in this unknown world was The Ohio State University, which became one of the first educational broadcast stations and a think tank for the future of public service radio—pioneering radio audience research and serving as an innovative school of the air.
Sparks Flew is a rich story of creative, tenacious men and women working in a new medium that commercial enterprises soon dominated. At any moment in time, educational broadcasting could have failed if not for a few land-grant institutions like The Ohio State University and prominent stations like WOSU that supported the medium. Sparks Flew is the untold story, a century in the making, of one institution and one educational station that represent the roots of today’s public broadcasting system.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814255285
Publisher:	Ohio State University Press
Publication date:	03/06/2023
Series:	Trillium Books
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Thomas M. Rieland is General Manager at WOSU Public Media, The Ohio State University.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1 — The First Sparks

A roaring buzz of static echoed across the cavernous laboratory with irritating frequency, accompanied by bluish sparks. Some observers later compared it to the firing of a machine gun. To Bob Marriott, the effect was thrilling.

The young Marriott would sequester himself for long periods in an electrical engineering lab at The Ohio State University, working out the flaws in his patchwork spark gap transmitter. It was built to noisily send Morse code through the air to an equally crude receiver. Marriott was all of twenty years of age, but he was enamored with the idea of improving upon the recent invention of a young Italian whose magical machine would change the world.

Just a few years earlier, a shotgun blast across a quiet Italian valley had signaled a communications revolution. Guglielmo Marconi had been experimenting for years with sending electromagnetic waves through the air as a way to communicate. His discoveries were built on the work of Scottish physicist James Maxwell, who in the 1860s had predicted the existence of unseen electromagnetic waves, and on that of German scientist Heinrich Hertz, who later engineered instruments to transmit and receive radio pulses. It was Hertz who invented the spark gap transmitter, but he would never realize the importance of his experiments to practical communications.

Marconi brought together the research of these and other scientists to formulate the ultimate experiment, based on thousands of tests using a combination of different coherers, receivers, sealed glass tubes, and metal fillings. It played out near Bologna, Italy, in the summer of 1895. As Marconi sat on the window ledge of his lab in the attic of his parents’ country villa, his older brother, Alfonso, and two workers walked from the villa across a valley carrying a wireless receiver device and an antenna. His brother also carried a shotgun.

Marconi had already proven it was possible to send coded signals using an old railroad telegraph key and transmitter to a receiver 100 meters away, the distance to the end of the villa’s gardens. Experts at the time believed waves could be sent only in a straight line without obstructions, thinking that the main obstacle to sending wireless signals to a distant object was the curvature of the earth’s surface. After his assistants walked over a hill to a distance of some 2.4 kilometers, or 1.5 miles, Marconi prepared his transmitter and pressed his telegraph key. The key interrupted the spark and sent three short blasts for the letter “S” across the valley. An instant later, Alfonso’s shotgun blast signaled success.

It would take time for Marconi to prove to the world that true long-distance wireless communication, even across the Atlantic Ocean, was possible. But that day would shatter much of what was assumed about the use of radio waves for communications. Wireless was born.

Table of Contents

Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Wireless Telegraphy (1895-1922)
1              Sparks
2              SOS Columbus
3              Voices in the Ether
Educational Radio and TV (1922-1960)
4              A Radio Explosion
5              Putting on a Show
6              Fighting for Air
7              Ohio School of the Air
8              Thriving in the ’30s
9              820 AM to 89.7 FM
10           A Classical Tradition
11           Educational TV Gets Its Channels
12           The TV Saga
Networks and New Media (1960-2018)
13           Sparks Flew
14           Time and Change
15           Transitions and Troubles
16           Despite the Odds
17           Local, Local
18           A Top Ten, 2003-18
Epilogue: WOSU and OSU
Historical Timeline
Notable Figures
Notes and Sources
Bibliography
 

Interviews

1.         Broadcast history lovers – there are few books like this ever written about early educational wireless, radio, and television. 
2.         Ohio State faculty, staff, alumni – those with a love of all things Ohio State and can take great pride in the universities pivotal role in the creation of public broadcasting.
3.         State of Ohio history readers – this is also the story of early broadcasting in the state of Ohio.
 

Editorial Reviews

Sparks Flew is a first: a detailed account of the pioneering broadcasters and societal forces that have shaped the current success of WOSU Public Media at The Ohio State University. A highly informative and entertaining read.” —Fred Andrle


“Thorough, insightful, and meticulously researched, Sparks Flew: WOSU’s Century on the Air is a definitive account of an influential local broadcaster. By examining the evolution of this vibrant institution, Tom Rieland offers a unique perspective on the invaluable role that public media plays in building and connecting local communities.” —Paula Kerger, President of PBS

From the Publisher