1946 - Communications, Media

Communications, Media

Dick Tracy in the comic strip of the same name uses a two-way wrist radio in January (see 1931). Cartoonist Chester Gould had planned to have his hero wear a wrist TV, his editors have rejected that idea as being too far-fetched, such TV will not become a reality in this century, but cell telephones that work very much like the two-way wrist radio will be commonplace by the 1990s (see 1983).

AT&T sets up the world's first commercial radio telephone service at St. Louis, but its system uses only one transmitter with six channels (more would interfere with radio frequencies) and is soon backlogged. AT&T engineers will improve the system next year by using a network of low-power transmitters, each placed in a region, or "cell." As a user travels from one region to another, it will be possible for calls to be handed off from cell to cell, allowing more people to have simultaneous access to the airwaves, but it will be decades before the cell phone begins to come into common use (see 1983).

The British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) begins a weekly Letter from America by the Manchester Guardian's urbane U.S. correspondent Alistair (originally Alfred) Cooke, 37, who went to Cambridge on a scholarship. Begun as a 13-week experiment March 24, the program will continue for 53 years.

Sony Corp. has its beginnings in the Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Co. (Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha, or Totsuko) incorporated May 7 by Japanese electrical engineer Masaru Ibuka, 38, with backing from sake brewing heir Akio Morita, 25. Ibuka has worked on infrared detection devices and a telephone scrambler for the military, taken over a gutted and boarded-up Tokyo department store, and started a factory to produce shortwave converters for radio sets that will enable listeners to receive news from abroad. Morita has read about Ibuka's device and joins him in founding the company that will be renamed Sony Corp. in 1958. Starting with 20 employees, Totsuko is soon making audio control consols, electronic megaphones, and electrically heated seat cushions (see tape recorder, 1950).

Nearly 10,000 American homes have television sets, up from 5,000 last year, and they are almost non-existent in other countries, but mass production of sets now begins in the United States and abroad (see 1948).

Television pioneer John L. Baird dies at Bexhill-on-Sea, England, June 14 at age 57. The BBC Third Programme begins in September to give British radio listeners more variety.

Xerography wins support from the Rochester, N.Y., firm Haloid Co., whose research director, John H. Dessauer, has seen an article on "electrophotography" by Chester Carlson in a July 1944 issue of Radio News (see 1938). Dessauer and his boss Joseph C. Wilson, 36, travel to Columbus, Ohio, and see experiments conducted by the Batelle Memorial Institute, Haloid invests $10,000 to acquire production rights, and within 6 years the firm will raise more than $3.5 million to develop what will be called the Xerox copier (see 1950).

Dallas Morning News publisher George Bannerman Dealey dies of a coronary occlusion at Dallas February 26 at age 86; New York Daily News founder Joseph Medill Patterson of a liver ailment at New York May 26 at age 67; journalist Ray Stannard Baker at his Amherst, Mass., home July 12 at age 76.

Die Welt (The World) begins twice-weekly publication at Hamburg April 2 under the supervision of Col. H. B. Garland, British Army. Edited by Hans Zehrer, its circulation will soon reach 500,000 (325,000 at Hamburg, 175,000 at Essen) (see Berlin, 1947).

Der Spiegel (The Mirror) begins publication November 16 at Hanover under the name Die Woche (The Week). Two young British officers have started the weekly modeled on Time and Newsweek but it will soon be edited by local journalist Rudolf Augstein, 22; he served as a telegraph operator and, later, artillery observer for the German Army before being wounded on the eastern front, was imprisoned briefly by the U.S. Army, and will put out his first issue January 4 of next year; it will have a circulation of 65,000 by 1948 and grow to have more than 5 million as it becomes a powerful voice in publishing (see 1962).

Elle begins publication at Paris under the direction of former film scriptwriter Françoise Giroud, 30, and Hélène Lazareff. Giroud served time in prison for her Resistance activities during the Nazi occupation, and her new fashion magazine will challenge Vogue and Harper's Bazaar (see L'Express, 1953).

Scientific American magazine is acquired after 101 years of publication by former LIFE magazine science editor Gerard Piel, 31, who will be joined by LIFE staffmen Dennis Flanagan, 27, and Donald H. Miller Jr. in broadening the appeal of the monthly as science grows in its impact on the lives and careers of more Americans.

Family Circle magazine begins monthly publication in September after 14 years as a weekly supermarket giveaway. The cover price is 5¢, the September issue has 96 pages, some chains drop the magazine, and others accept it as a profit-making item.