first we hear about the house because role from former house historian, raymond smock. >> the constitution requires the house of representatives to choose the speaker. what is the speaker's job? >> the speaker has a big job. it started out as a constitutional office. the constitution says the house will choose its speakers. there were no other duties mentioned. it was assumed, since the founders knew all about speakers, that what the speaker wires __ was a presiding officer. in our congress, the speaker was not only presiding officer, he quickly became a powerful person because he appointed committees. that evolved into __ as party systems of all, first congress did not have organized parties. as the two_party system evolved, the speaker became the leader of the majority party, and took on political ramifications. the constitution is very silent on this __ the powers of the speaker are what the speaker make of them. that is the unique part of it. some speakers have exercise great power __ even rivaling the president. most recently, but even long ago. there were powerful figures who set the

first, we learn about the speaker's roll from the house historian raymond smock. >> what is a speaker's speaker has a big job. it started as a constitutional office. because the constitution says the house shall choose their speaker. choose its speaker and other officers. there were no other duties mentioned. it was assumed since the founders knew all about speakers from colonial legislatures and from british parliament going back to the 13th century that what a speaker was, he speaker -- a speaker was a presiding officer. but in our congress, it was not only a presiding officer. he quickly became a powerful person because he appointed appointees and as the two-party system developed, the speaker it became the leader of the majority party with political ramifications. the constitution is silent on this. on the powers. the powers of the speaker is what the speaker can make of them, and that is the unique part of it. some speakers exercised great power, even rivaling the presidency in terms of setting the national agenda. most of those in recent times but also 100 years ago, two , powerfu

we hear first about the house speakers role from raymond smock. >> the constitution requires the house of representatives to choose a speaker. what is the speaker's job? >> speaker has a big job and it's evolved over a long period of time, over 200 years. it started out as a constitutional office because the constitution says the house will choose the speaker and other officers and there were no other duties mentioned. and it was assumed, since the founders knew all about speakers from colonial legislatures and from the british parliament going back to the 13th century what a speaker was. a speaker was a presiding officer. but in our congress the speaker was not only a presiding officer, he quickly became a powerful person because he appointed committees and evolved, as party systems evolved, the first congresses didn't have organized parties as a two-party system developed, the speaker became the leader of the majority party and took on political ramifications. the constitution is silent on the powers. the powers of the speaker are what the speaker can make of them and that's the uniq

we'll hear from raymond smock who explains the role and offers brief profiles of the four congressional leaders. that's today at noon eastern time on c-span 3's american history tv. >> monday night, on "the communicators," martin cooper inventor of the cell phone on spectrum issues and the efforts by federal agencies to provide for the growing needs of mobile phone service providers. >> the ultimate in the spectrum efficient technology is dynamic spectrum access. it includes a lot of things. it includes cognitive radio. and it includes some new technology that's just starting to become laboratory available where we can use satellites to actually create a model of the world so when somebody transmits, they will know whether they're going to interfere with somebody else. you put all of these things together i hesitate to tell you how much more efficient it will be because you will laugh me out of this room. but we're talking not about tens of times improvement or hundreds or thousands, but millions of times improvement. and that's not as crazy as it sounds. from the time of marconi till n

first we hear about the house because role from former house historian, raymond smock. >> the constitutionres the house of r