After recovering from his illness , Herrold moved to San Francisco , where he developed a number of inventions for dentistry , surgery , and underwater illumination . However , the April 18 , 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work site and apartment . He next took an engineering teaching position for three years , at Heald 's College of Mining and Engineering in Stockton , California . While there , his various research projects included the remote detonation of mines using radio signals . During this time he received further inspiration from the novel '' Looking Backward '' by Edward Bellamy , which foresaw the transmission of entertainment programming over telephone lines to individual homes . Herrold began to speculate about the possibilities of instead using radio signals to distribute the programming more efficiently
1906 San Francisco earthquake
1906 San Francisco earthquake
Charles Herrold