Canadian Inventions – World’s First Household Radio Spawned a Communications Empire

Next in our new series documenting Canadian innovation we consider the world’s first AC powered (‘batteryless’) radio, developed by Edward Rogers Sr in 1925. Although modifying existing DC radio technology to operate on household (mains) electricity may sound trivial, many of Rogers’s contemporaries believed it couldn’t be done. Combine this conventional wisdom with the primitive battery operated radio units prevalent at the time and Rogers’s accomplishments become more apparent. Rogers was a precocious radio enthusiast, setting up his first radio receiver in 1912 at the age of 11. A year later he began broadcasting short range radio from his family home. The outbreak of war in Europe and the accompanying regulation of non-military radio transmissions briefly interrupted Rogers’s activities. When amateur broadcasting resumed, he became the first Canadian to successfully transmit radio signals across the Atlantic Ocean. However, it was Rogers’s professional accomplishments that were most widely appreciated, coming at a crucial time when the novelty of home radio was wearing off. The public were becoming disillusioned with the cost and complexity of battery operated radio units, which required multiple and different batteries to function. Many of the drawbacks associated with early radio technology derived from the temperamental DC vacuum tubes used to receive and amplify radio signals. Although various systems claimed to address the limitations of DC radio, they did little to improve the performance of existing radios or appease public discontent. Meanwhile, true mains-powered radio continued to elude enthusiasts. In 1923 Rogers visited the research laboratory of Westinghouse in Pittsburgh. Impressed with the experimental AC vacuum tubes he witnessed in development, Rogers obtained a licence to the Canadian patent rights belonging to one of the Westinghouse engineers, Frederick McCullough. Despite Rogers’s enthusiasm, the experimental McCullough tube was not sufficiently reliable to be mass produced. Rogers quickly set about addressing the shortcomings of the McCullough tube. He experimented extensively with AC radio technology and in 1925 was granted three patents relating to AC vacuum tubes suitable for radio applications. Later that year, he successfully incorporated his AC vacuum tubes into the world’s first mains-powered radio. Both the radio receiver and amplifier were based on Rogers’s AC tubes, eliminating the need for supplemental battery power (allowing the radio to operate entirely from an ordinary domestic AC power supply) and, incidentally, improving sound quality significantly. Rogers ‘batteryless’ radio was a resounding commercial success. The newly incorporated Rogers Radio company was soon competing in a market dominated by large established manufactures. Rogers quickly, and shrewdly, came to an agreement with General Electric, Westinghouse, Northern Electric and Marconi that enabled the burgeoning company to collect a royalty for the use of their patented technology and avoid the threat of patent litigation. In a brilliant commercial move, in 1927 Rogers helped create the demand for his radios by forming radio station CFRB (Canada’s First Radio Batteryless), a station still in existence today. His premature death in 1939 brought to a close one chapter in communications history but his son, Ted Rogers (1933 – 2008), eventually opened new chapters, including the establishment of the media giant, Rogers Communications Inc. Summary by: Richard Murphy