Resumen de At the Speed of Sound: Techno-Aesthetic Paradigms in U.S.�French International Broadcasting, 1925�1942
Decades before satellite television and the internet, broadcasters enlisted shortwave radio to furnish live intercontinental programming between the United States and Europe. Unlike long-distance, point-to-point radio and conventional long- and medium-wave amplitude modulation (AM) broadcasting, shortwave broadcasts furnished ambient sound, voices, and music to mass audiences at a remove of thousands of miles. Moving instantaneously across oceans, continents, and national borders, shortwave embodied the leading edge of trans- and international communication and had dramatic influences. Shortwave broadcasters scooped the international press corps at Munich in 1938, and the technology developed into a key tool during and after World War II. Less frequently noted, however, is that by 1938, transatlantic broadcasts had occurred regularly for the better part of a decade. In 1931, the French Ministry of Posts, Telegraphs, and Telephones (PTT) and the U.S. National Broadcasting Company (NBC) began regular shortwave-broadcast exchanges. Whether heard directly on shortwave receivers or via instantaneous relay to AM sets, �transatlantics� heralded bright possibilities for live global communication. Among other things, transatlantics exemplified the ambition of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), NBC�s parent company, to create a �community of sound and vision � to be distributed upon a national and even upon a worldwide basis, through broadcasting.�
