BBC - Radio 4 - Archive Hour - 21 October 2006 Matthew Parris uncovers the remarkable story of the Electrophone, the first sound broadcasting service to operate in Britain.

Electrophone (information system) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The name Electrophone was used for a telephone-distributed audio system which operated in the United Kingdom between 1895 and 1926, relaying live theatre and music hall shows and, on Sundays, live sermons from churches via special headsets connected to conventional phone lines.

Who knew that YouTube existed more than a hundred years ago. A fascinating program on the BBC showed a world full of excitement and technical innovation that was happening a hundred years ago. The question we have to ask is what is the real speed of innovation. If it took this long to deliver true ‘content on demand’, how long will it take for ideas like the ‘paperless office’ to become a reality? It is possible that many of the technical innovations we see know won’t bear fruit for decades if not longer.

The other, related, interesting aspect of this is Kuhnian notion of ideas being lost as well as found during paradigm shifts. While the Electrophone ultimately had to be superseded by the ‘wireless’ - simply because the ‘tubes’ were too narrow then - the idea of ‘content on demand’ was lost for many decades and could only be resurrected when the technology allowed it. Traditional radio itself (and push content in general) is now under pressure from new ways of offering content.