In the 1930s and 40s, wireless ‘was what television, the internet and the iPhone, all rolled into one, are today’. Empire State tells the story of Ernest Fisk, the man who led the Australian wireless company AWA in those extraordinary decades, and was managing director of the music giant EMI in London after the war.

Fisk considered wireless ‘the greatest gift of science to Australia’. Its possibilities were ‘as great as the future of Australia itself’. His story is about a technology that helped change the world, and the great global political shifts that turned this son of the British Empire into a citizen of Australia.

A radio documentary ‘Empire State: Ernest Fisk and the World Wide Wireless’, made for ABC Radio National’s Hindsight program, will be broadcast this Sunday 12 February 2012.

It joins a number of excellent docos to do with the age of wireless. You can catch up with the podcasts available at the Radio National Hindsight site.