Brian Vickery,September 11, 1918–October 17, 2009

The article reviews the life and work of Brian Campbell Vickery, one of the major figures of British classification and information retrieval, and a scholar of international reputation. His career as librarian, researcher, and academic is described, as is the part he played in the development of information science theory in the twentieth century. Some of his most significant publications are listed, with reference to the scale and breadth of his published work overall.     

The Beginnings of Radio Communication in Germany, 1897–1918

This article surveys the prehistory of broadcasting in the German Reich. It focuses on wireless telegraphy, where the Telefunken Company succeeded internationally with its quenched spark system on the eve of the war. Telefunken's system was developed as an efficient military technology between 1905 and 1908, and it soon became the core of Telefunken's successful attempt to break Marconi's monopoly in maritime radio communication. Encouraged by this success, Telefunken started to establish wireless transoceanic connections to build a global German radio network. The properties of radio broadcasting as a possible new mass medium only gradually became evident before 1918.