Where this lesson sits. This lesson bridges Section A, on the 19th Century wired networks, and Section B, on broadcasting. The telegraph and telephone lessons end with a country tied together by cable, where every message travelled over a wire that some company had paid to lay and therefore owned. Broadcast radio opens with a country listening to the air, where the path the signal travels is a natural resource that nobody laid, nobody paid for and nobody could, therefore, own. The American government worked out what to do about medium nobody could own before a single entertainment broadcast aired. Every assumption the broadcast lessons rest on, that the airwaves are allegedly public, that transmitting requires a federal license, and that a license can carry conditions, was in place by 1912.