Today in 1924, John Joseph Carty, Chief Engineer of AT&T, spoke on the first nationwide radio hookup in the United States. According to this National Academy of Sciences 1936 memoir “Carty connected seven large broadcasting stations by a telephone circuit extending from San Francisco to Havana, a distance of more than five thousand miles. This constituted a forerunner of chain broadcasting as we know it today, and newspapers at the time estimated that no less than fifty million radio listeners heard the program, which comprised portions originating at several points along the route. Carty himself remarked:
‘We are only just beginning to appreciate how fundamental are electrical communications in the organization of society. We are as yet unable to appreciate how vital they are to the ultimate welfare of mankind. I believe that some day we will build up a great world telephone system,—which will join all the people of the earth into one brotherhood.'”