Chapter 1
Tuning in to Radio
In This Chapter
Realising how radio waves work
Using transmitters and receivers
Discovering the differences between AM and FM
The American cable TV channel Music Television, better known as MTV, launched on 1 August 1981. Appropriately, the first music video it played, at one minute past midnight, was ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ by the Buggles. The song laments how the golden age of radio would be lost to the rise of television. Ironically, most teenagers today get their music-video fix by searching YouTube instead of switching on the television in the hope of catching their favourite stars, whereas radio is still doing fine. Video didn’t kill the radio star after all.
In the 1930s and 1940s, people had only one use for radio: broadcast audio signals. Today, audio broadcast over radio is as commonplace as ever, but the list of other types of information being broadcast by radio technology has skyrocketed:
Broadcast television: Nothing more than the combination of audio and video broadcast over radio.
Mobile phones: Extends the telephone networks to ...
