Talk:History of broadcasting

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[edit] Odd use of tenses?

This doesn't read well, in the Britain section: "Its governors are appointed by the government but they did not answer to it."

Could it be changed to (change in italics): "Its governors were appointed by the government but they did not answer to it."

or alternatively, if this is what the writer was trying to get across: "Its governors were (and still are) appointed by the government but they did not answer to it." --Justynb 21:16, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Origin of the term "broadcasting"

I'm dubious of the claim that Charles Herrod coined the term "broadcasting". Here's a quote from a webpage I found that relates to the term:

After the Navy Department, the Agriculture Department had been the government agency most involved in pioneering radio work. In particular, it wanted to speed weather and market information to isolated farmers, at that time dependent on mailed daily newspapers. (The August, 1913 Monthly Catalogue of United States Documents noted that the Weather Bureau had begun a daily radiotelegraphic "broadcast" of weather reports, which it explained as follows: "'Broadcast', as the term is used in the Radio Service, means that the message is fired out into the illimitable ether to be picked up and made use of by anybody who has the will and the apparatus to possess himself thereof".) [1]

At that time the Weather Bureau was part of the Agricultural Department, so its adoption of an agricultural term for sending out a signal to be received by many seems quite logical. I'm not disputing that Herrod was involved in early voice broadcasts, merely that he was one who originated the term. He certainly did not use it to describe his work in 1910. Instead he described his activities at that time as "wireless phone concerts" [2] Caerwine Caer’s whines 23:49, 18 March 2007 (UTC)