December 24, 1906. It’s Christmas Eve, but inventor Reginald Fessenden is working. Tonight, instead of sending a typical radio message in morse code, he broadcasts something new: music. It's the first in a series of breakthroughs in audio reproduction—a story that takes us from World War II home radios to the acoustics lab of another pioneer: Dr. Amar Bose. How did we get from tapped dots and dashes to the high-quality speakers we use today? This episode comes from the podcast Twenty Thousand Hertz. You can listen to more episodes of Twenty Thousand Hertz at https://apple.co/3pWdq29. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.