1940 - Communications, Media

Communications, Media

American Telephone & Telegraph Co. introduces coaxial circuits that enable a single cable to carry 480 phone conversations at what later will be calculated at 7,680,000 bits per second, up from 30,000 in 1915.

The letter V begins appearing on walls in German-occupied Belgium. Two Belgians working for the BBC in London have instigated the campaign, knowing that for Flemish-speaking Belgians the V stands for vrijheid (freedom), and for French-speaking Belgians the V stands for victoire (victory). The letter is soon scrawled on walls all over Europe, even where the words for freedom and victory do not begin with V. Using a tympani mallet to strike an African membrane drum whose sound is damped with a handkerchief, English percussionist James Blades, 39, records the da-da-da-dum start of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (dot-dot-dot-dash in Morse code) and the BBC transmits a recording of the notes 150 times per day to encourage the French Résistance.

Radio pioneer Edouard Branly dies at Paris March 24 at age 93; radio pioneer Sir Oliver J. Lodge near Salisbury, Wiltshire, August 22 at age 89 (he was knighted in 1902).

The Canadian liner Duchess of Richmond berths at Halifax, Nova Scotia, September 6 carrying a small party of British officers and scientists who include John Cockcroft; they have with them a radar magnetron transmitter that they take immediately to Washington, D.C. (see Watson-Watt, 1935). It uses wavelengths of only 10 centimeters and can be fitted onto fighter planes, enabling pilots to find their targets even at night. Alfred Lee Loomis invites the British mission to dinner at Washington's Wardman Park Hotel September 11 and tells them about work he and Arthur Compton have been doing at Tuxedo Park, N.Y., on radio microwave receiving and transmitting tubes, but although they have achieved results superior to those of the British they have, like the British, been stymied by the lack of a high-powered oscillator. The Britons show the Americans their cavity magnetron and agree to work with Loomis and Compton at Tuxedo Park. Physicists who include Isaac I. Rabi, now 42, and San Francisco-born Berkeley physicist Luis W. (Walter) Alvarez, 29, are recruited to develop devices based on the invention that is helping to win the Battle of Britain against the Lüftwaffe (an atomic and molecular beam magnetic resonance method developed by Rabi 3 years ago is used for observing spectra in the radio-frequency range). A secret radiation laboratory is established at MIT in November under the direction of Lee DuBridge to pursue experiments in radar, which will eventually be used for air traffic control, weather forecasting, and magnetic resonance imaging for medical diagnoses (see 1942).

German radio engineers H. J. von Braunmuhl and W. Weber improve magnetic plastic tape recording by applying a high-frequency bias to the oxide-coated tape of the 1935 AEG Magnetophone (see Camras, 1944; Mullin, 1945; telephone answering machine, 1945; music, 1946; Sony, 1950).

Zenith Radio's Eugene McDonald starts an FM radio station that will survive to become the world's oldest (see 1923; Armstrong, 1933). Zenith will produce the lion's share of U.S. FM radio sets (see medicine [hearing aid], 1943).

Radio Corp. of America (RCA) demonstrates a 441-line television system at the New York World's Fair.

Hungarian-born engineer Peter C. (Carl) Goldmark, 34, of CBS pioneers color television, but his system requires special receivers. It will give way in the 1950s to an RCA system whose signals will be compatible with conventional black and white TV signals (see 1939; long-playing records, 1948).

Philco Corp. (formerly Philadelphia Storage Battery Co.) telecasts the University of Pennsylvania-versus-University of Maryland football game October 4 (see automobile radio antenna, 1934). The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted it a license for an experimental, all-electronic TV station in 1931, by 1937 it was using an experimental 441-line system that employed a bulky receiver with a 12-inch screen, but there are only about 700 TV sets in the Philadelphia area, and although Philco will operate station WPTZ-TV from 1941 to 1953, the outbreak of war puts a damper on any development of television.

Brazil's president Getulio Vargas seizes the 65-year-old newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo from its Swiss-born publisher Julio de Mesquita Filho; it will not be returned to its owners until 1945.

Publisher John S. Knight acquires the 109-year-old Detroit Free Press but allows it to retain its editorial independence.

In fact begins weekly publication May 20 at New York. Former Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent George Seldes, 50 (older brother of Gilbert Seldes), quit the Trib in the late 1920s when publisher Robert R. McCormick suppressed a story he had filed from Mexico. His 31-year career in journalism has been notable for its exposés of conditions in Soviet Russia, Fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany, but Seldes has been frustrated by the publishing establishment. His 1938 book Freedom of the Press charged that advertising pressures were responsible for more censorship than government, and he calls his four-page 9" x 12" paper "The Antidote for Falsehood in the Daily Press" (he accepts no advertising and receives more stories than he can use each week from reporters on papers throughout the country who cannot get their pieces past their editors). Startup money has come from the Communist Party, and Party member Bruce Minton has joined Seldes in starting the sheet, but Minton soon finds that Seldes will not parrot the party line and quits. Daring to tell the truth in a shrill voice when the mainstream press is all too ready to bow to pressure from advertisers, In fact has an initial list of 6,000 subscribers (all CIO members) that will soon grow to include Eleanor Roosevelt, Vice President Henry A. Wallace, Sen. Harry S. Truman (D. Mo.), Sen. Sherman Minton (D. Ind.), Supreme Court justices, Secretary of the Interior Harold M. Ickes, and Newspaper Guild members (see 1950).

PM begins publication June 18 at New York. Started by Chicago department store heir Marshall Field III, 46, and others, the evening tabloid carries no advertising and will gain a following with its outspoken editorials, editorial cartoons by Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel), and its comic strip "Barney and Mr. O'Malley" by Crockett Johnson (see 1948).

Newsday begins publication September 3 at Hempstead, L.I., where copper heir Harry F. Guggenheim, now 50, and his third wife, Alicia (née Patterson), have converted a garage into a printing plant and start a daily paper with a name culled from contest submissions. Now 33, publishing heiress Patterson divorced her second husband last year to marry Guggenheim. They have found the equipment of a publication that failed last year for sale at a reasonable price, and their 40-page tabloid rolls off the press with large columns that make it unlike any other tabloid in the country (Capt. Joseph M. Patterson has advised against making it a tabloid). The Guggenheims aim to have a circulation of 15,000, will invest $750,000 in the next 6 years before Newsday begins to show a profit, build a plant on a five-acre tract in Long Island City, and make their paper politically independent, backing some Democratic candidates in a strongly Republican county; by mid-1963 Newsday will have a circulation of 375,000.

"Brenda Starr" by South Bend, Ind.-born Chicago cartoonist Dale (originally Dalia) Messick, 34, debuts June 30 in the Chicago Tribune and New York Daily News to depict the comic-strip adventures of a 23-year-old reporter for the Flash. Messick's five-foot-two heroine looks like Rita Hayworth and has an endless wardrobe (but whom feminists will applaud as a role model); Brenda will meet Basil St. John in 1945 and marry him in 1975 without either having aged a day.

"Captain Marvel" makes his debut in biweekly Whiz comic books produced by Fawcett Comics from offices on the 22nd floor of the Paramount Building in Times Square. Rivaling "Superman" in Action Comics, the hero from "Fawcett City, S.D." will make Whiz Comics more popular than Action Comics, with sales of 1.5 million copies per issue. Publishers of Action Comics will sue Fawcett next year, the case will be settled out of court, and Captain Marvel will be terminated in 1953 (although he will occasionally be revived by DC Comics).

Cartoonist Ham Fisher has his comic-strip character "Joe Palooka" turn down a lucrative boxing offer at Havana in November and enlist in the U.S. Army (see 1930). The military gives Fisher access to various facilities for his research, his strip will enjoy wide readership among readers of Yank and Stars and Stripes (and among civilian newspaper readers in 20 countries), Joseph Goebbels will condemn the strip as vicious propaganda, the strip will remain popular after the war, and within 10 years Fisher will be making $250,000 per year from his strips and comic books.

Publisher Wilford H. "Captain Billy" Fawcett dies at Greenwich, Conn., February 7 at age 53; Chicago Defender founder Robert S. Abbott at Chicago February 29 at age 71; British newspaper magnate Harold S. Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere, at Hamilton, Bermuda, November 26 at age 72.