Rogers was born on June 21, 1900, in Toronto, Ontario. His father, businessman Albert Stephen Rogers, was a director of Imperial Oil and formerly a partner in Samuel and Elias Rogers Coal Company, founded in 1876 by his Quaker father and uncle. Elias Rogers served as a Toronto alderman for St. Lawrence Ward in 1887. The family descends from Timothy Rogers, a Quaker leader who founded Newmarket and Pickering in what is now Ontario.
Career
Rogers first became interested in radio when he saw a receiver at age 11. By 1913, he was noted in local newspapers for his skill at operating a radio station, which at the time was an impressive technical accomplishment. Rogers worked as a radio officer on Great Lakes passenger ships during the summers of 1916-1919 inclusive. In 1921, Rogers operated the only Canadian station to successfully compete in the first amateur trans-Atlantic radio competition. Rogers held the amateur radio call sign 3BP, and joined the Canadian chapter of the American Radio Relay League in 1921. In the early 1920s, radio transmitters and receivers ran on large and expensive batteries to provide the high voltages needed for the vacuum tubes used. Early attempts at producing a radio receiver to operate on household alternating current were unsuccessful, since tubes designed for the low current supply from batteries were unsatisfactory when operated on 25- or 60-hertz alternating current. The batteries were also extremely large and bulky. In April 1924, Rogers travelled to the United States and saw experimental AC receiving tubes at the laboratories of Westinghouse in Pittsburgh. He purchased the patent rights to the experimental alternating current tubes of Frederick S. McCullough. After further development, Rogers produced a design of vacuum tube that would operate on alternating current. By 1925, Rogers had introduced not only a complete radio receiver using the new tubes, but had also produced a "battery eliminator" that could be used with other manufacturers' receivers to eliminate the expensive batteries. By August 1925, the Rogers batteryless radio was in commercial sales, the first radio receiver in the world to operate from household current. At a time when a schoolteacher might earn $1,000 per year, the top-of-the-line Rogers radio sold for $370. Rogers formed the company "Standard Radio Manufacturing" to produce radio receivers using the new design of vacuum tubes. In 1927, Rogers founded CFRB radio station. The station is owned today by Bell Media. In 1930, he married Velma Melissa Taylor. Three years later, they had a son, Edward S. Rogers Jr., who grew up to build Rogers Communications into a media conglomerate. The family lived at 49 Nanton Avenue in the Rosedale area of Toronto.
Death
Rogers died suddenly in 1939 due to complications of a hemorrhage. He was buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto. Velma Rogers subsequently married John Graham, a Toronto lawyer who became the stepfather of Edward Rogers Jr.
