Douglas
A few plausible ideas of how the early history of broadcasting might have turned out differently:
1) the inventors
Douglas emphasizes the importance of three factors to the success of wireless’s early development: a strong business model and financial backing, media savvy, and scientific/technical expertise. She describes Marconi as embodying the first two, and compensating for his lack of the latter by borrowing and adapting the work of others and through tenacious experimentation. His international business goal for wireless was to develop a monopoly on wireless telegraphy apparatus and service to numerous countries, but his foreignness, lack of scientific knowledge, and insistence on non-intercommunication between his apparatus and other wireless ones ultimately outweighed his money, charm, and corporate drive.
Fessenden, on the other hand, was never described as a shrewd business or media man, but had extensive training and knowledge of electrical engineering and focused his work on wireless telephony and transmission of the human voice. Pupil of Edison, he was a pioneer of continuous wave transmission with his use of the alternator, but his work with NESCO faltered through a combination of bad luck and bad business and never figured out how to turn much of a profit.
Douglas describes DeForest as having the best feel for the public potential of wireless of all the early inventors, crediting him for developing the idea of broadcasting for public entertainment. But DeForest never made the press believe him or even really like him, and despite the importance of his audion, was a somewhat unsavory character who allowed himself to be a puppet to shady Wall Street stock scammers.
And finally, John Stone Stone, well-respected electrical engineer developer of the automatic telephone switchboard, was a man of science who never focused his attention on the business side of things but was central to the development of tuning.
Douglas repeatedly argues that Marconi was the early inventor who was by far best at striking the critical balance between business, press, and technology, but he was not entirely successful. Yet his pursuit of international monopoly power hurt his courtship with the American press and public. Without attempting to rewrite history, things might have turned out differently had the other inventors, all of whom surpassed Marconi in scientific and technical ability, had recognized the importance of a coherent business model and the cultivation of a positive relationship with the American media.
2) the Titanic
If the captain of the Titanic had acted more responsibly and turned off the ship’s engines in the midst of the iceberg field, as did the captain of the Halifax, Congress might have been able to hold off regulating wireless usage and amateur operators and their organizations might have continued to gain political strength, might not have been relegated to an undesirable chunk of the spectrum, and may have in some way effected the ways in which spectrum use was and is allocated.
3) World War I
If WWI hadn’t happened, the government wouldn’t have been able to call for a moratorium on patents for the privately owned wireless components which they then used to develop more coherent and efficient wireless systems for use during the war, nor would they have developed RCA after the war and thus effectively created a state-sanctioned communications monopoly which determined the course of broadcasting in the decades after the end of this book.