Early Mexican Broadcasting

Abstract

R ADIO CAME TO Mexico only three decades ago. In view of the importance it has since come to have, it is of interest to sketch the beginnings of a mass medium particularly vital to this republic-a country with various illiterate, roadless, or otherwise isolated rural communities. Many men in many countries fathered radio: Marconi in Italy and England, Maxwell in England, Hertz in Germany, and Edison and De Forest in the United States, among others. Marconi's 1913 experiments helped establish on the world scene the practice of propelling the human voice through space without wires.' By 1917, amateur radiotelegraphy and radiotelephony were firmly established in the United States, but their status was that of a hobby rather than that of a profession or of an industry. And among the most enthusiastic of the pioneer amateur wireless operators were a few Mexicans then studying in the United States. One of these Mexican radio pioneers was Constantino de Tarnava Jr., a high-school student at St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas, during 1913-1917, and an electrical engineering major at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana during 1918-1923.2 In 1951 Tarnava recalled: