Radio before Radio Araldo Telefonico and the Invention of Italian Broadcasting

摘要

This article explores the history of a new technology that appeared in Italy at the beginning of the twentieth century: Araldo Telefonico (Telephone Herald), the first institutionalized system for spreading news and entertainment over telephone wires. Araldo Telefonico was a technological result of a period when inventors, entrepreneurs, and others were trying out new applications and seeing telegraphs and telephones in new ways. As such, it provides important insights into Italian media history, and media history in general, for two reasons. First, the history of Araldo Telefonico can help scholars understand the ancestries and continuities of Italian radio: like every new medium, radio didn't suddenly appear during the 1920s. Instead,