Rogers

Edward (“Ted”) Rogers launched Canada into the age of electronic information and entertainment after he perfected an alternating current radio tube in 1925. That same year he began manufacturing the “Majestic” five-tube batteryless radio just in time to demonstrate his product at Toronto’s Canadian National Exhibition. Each radio sold for $260 and, despite the high cost per unit, the “plug in, tune in” was an immediate success.

His elimination of the earlier need for an array of dry- and wet-cell batteries was a major advancement in both the improvement of radio reception and in the development of the entire radio manufacturing industry.

The family had wanted “Ted” to become a business executive, but early in his life he had become enthralled by radio as he transmitted radio signals by key from his family’s garage. At 13 he won a prize for the best amateur-built radio in Ontario. When his Morse code signals were received in Scotland in 1921, he became the first Canadian amateur to send a radio message across the Atlantic.

When Edward (“Ted”) Rogers (1900-1939) perfected the alternating current (A/C) radio tube in 1925, he launched Canada into the age of electronic entertainment. Today, his son and namesake guides Rogers Communications, a world leader in communications technology [Edward ("Ted") Rogers].

Rogers was born in Toronto on June 21, 1900, into a highly respected and wealthy family descended from Quakers. He graduated from Pickering College, a Quaker secondary school, and for a time studied practical science at the University of Toronto. Developing his own laboratory in the family garage and working on his own projects, this amateur engineer was soon transmitting radio signals to the Pacific Coast.

By 1921 “Ted” came to the conclusion that battery-operated radios were too expensive, too bulky and too heavy. He consciously decided to develop a radio that would run on alternating current and eliminate, among other problems, the constant hum present in battery-operated reception. Working day and night for over a year, he perfected an alternating radio tube and filed a patent application. It was granted as number 269205 in March 1927.

Simultaneously, to enlarge the market for radios, the Rogers family founded Toronto’s radio station CFRB in February 1927. It immediately became one of Canada’s most influential and successful broadcasting companies. The call letters of Canada’s most listened to radio station CFRB, stand for “Canada’s First Rogers Batteryless.”

Rogers was issued an experimental television broadcasting licence and was working on the development of radar at the time of his death in May 1939. His son, Edward Samuel — born in Toronto on May 27, 1933, and also called “Ted”— took over the family business which he has developed into an international communications network— Communications Inc.