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Ammon News - The first public radio broadcast in history took place on January 13, 1910, when a live opera featuring some of the most renowned opera singers of the day was broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera House.

This first-ever broadcast was several hours long and consisted of Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticanaand Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, two very popular opera at the time, performed by such opera stars as Emmy Destin, Riccardo Martin and Enrico Caruso. Not many people were able to actually pick up the broadcast, which was heard only in the De Forest Radio Laboratory, on board ships in New York Harbor, and in large hotels on Times Square.

Several public receivers had also been set up in various locations around New York City so the public could listen to the music as well. The furthest the music was reported heard was on a ship about 20 kilometers away from the city.

Even though the experiment was considered largely unsuccessful due to the poor quality of all of the devices used, and the amount of static and “homeless song waves”, as the New York Times later put it, the fact remains that that was the very first public radio broadcast in human history, and one that changed the entertainment industry forever.