[Formerly YB-2]

To me, the really amazing parts of this were the folks like Edison and Tesla, who, with their very rudimentary (though state-of-the-art at the time) labs, gave us the beginnings of the media we use today. The further refinements from by Bell Labs, RCA, Philips, Sony and other corporations who have/had pretty much limitless deep pockets.

Our small hobby has been very fortunate in that we've enjoyed the fruits of the efforts that have gone into much, much larger uses (tubes for radio & radar & telephony, solid-state & digital for same, followed by computers and the internet, etc.). If the technical advances we enjoy depended on our hobby's needs as a driver we might still be listening to wax cylinders or 78s.