Timothy Klein (at teece@silverklein.net) wanted to provide a technical correction to this point

    I began to read your thesis, and the following line in the Introduction section needs a bit of help:

"The technological invention of radio was linked to a number of scientific experiments and research in the field of electricity and electromagnetics, which eventually led to the ability to transmit sound waves through the air."

    As a student of Physics, I couldn't' leave that one alone. Radio is not the transmission of "sound waves through the air." Nobody needed to invent that, animals have been doing it for countless millennia. Today, human beings use that technology to talk to one another, using our vibrating vocal cords to create the sound waves, and our ears to hear them. We generally refer to it as speech.

    However, that has absolutely nothing to do with radio. Can you talk to somebody 100 miles away? No. Then how can can one get radio to go that far? Because it is not sound. Radio is a form of electromagnetic radiation. It is very similar to visible light (actually, it is the same thing -- it just has a different frequency than visible light.  Radio is *much* lower frequency than light. Our eyes are not sensitive to radiation that is at that low of a frequency.) It can travel through a vacuum, and in no way relies upon the air as a medium.

    The sound that we hear on our radio is encoded into the electromagnetic wave at the radio station, broadcast, and then decoded and turned back into sound we can hear by our radio receiver. This signal can travel at the speed of light (about 186,000 miles/hour), which is a large part of what makes it so useful.

    Anyway, just a small point, but I couldn't resist. Please note that I am not trying to be mean, just giving a small criticism. It seems to be a common misconception (radio and TV are often referred to as being on the airwaves, but that is really not true).

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