Robert B. Goldschmidt (1877–1935) was a Belgian chemist, physicist, and engineer who first proposed the idea of standardized microfiche (microfilm).

In 1906, he and Otlet proposed what they called the "livre microphotographique," which they considered to be a cheaper, more space-saving means of storing data.

In their 1906 essay "Sur une forme nouvelle du Livre: Le Livre Microphotographique," Goldschmidt and Otlet wrote that from the point of view of scientific research, books are not the best possible means of storing information, because "access to the libraries is not always easy and delays in the transmission of books often discourage the most tenacious workers, to the detriment of scientific progress....Travel by scholars, the international exchange of scientific books between libraries, the copies or extracts requested from abroad, are seriously under-resourced."

Interest initially centered on the need to establish effective communication throughout its sprawling central African colony, the Belgian Congo.

The central site for the radio projects was established at the Villa Lacoste, located near Brussels on the grounds of the summer Royal Palace of Laeken.

[10] However, World War I broke out in late July, and the next month Germany invaded Belgium, eventually occupying 90% of the country.

However, prior to the destruction of the Laeken facility, experimental work was done to develop equipment capable of making audio transmissions, which led to Europe's first organized entertainment radio broadcasts.

(Moretti's transmitter only approximated a true continuous-wave transmission, which limited sound quality, and reportedly when no audio was being sent, instead of silence the result was "a terrible noise in the ears").

In the fall of 1913, the Laeken experimenters began to employ a microphone that had been developed by Italian Giovanni Battista Marzi.

The equipment was perfected to the point that by 13 March 1914 a test transmission was successfully heard at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, about 350 kilometers (220 miles) away.

[5] Entertainment radio broadcasts would not resume in Europe until November 1919, when a station established by Hans Idzerda, PCGG, began weekly concerts from The Hague in Holland, and they did not return to Belgium until 1923.

On 28 March 1934, the Institut National de Radiodiffusion produced a broadcast commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the debut concert.