Alfred Traeger Alfred Traeger Alfred Hermann Traeger, OBE (2 August 1895 – 31 July 1980) was an Australian inventor, chiefly known for the development of the pedal radio. Traeger was born at Glenlee, near Dimboola, Victoria, and raised near Adelaide, South Australia. He was instrumental in the establishment and early success of the Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia. Traeger had an interest in radio for much of his life. During the 1920s, he was contacted by Rev John Flynn to assist in experiments which were to enable remote families access to medical treatment by using radio equipment. He also suggested the
John T. Flynn the role of the so-called "merchants of death" (munitions manufacturers and bankers) in leading to U.S. entry into World War I. By 1936, Flynn had publicly broken with Roosevelt. He was already drawing comparisons between the centralist features of the New Deal on the one hand, and Benito Mussolini's policies on the other: "We seem [he wrote] to be not a long way off from the kind of Fascism which Mussolini preached in Italy before he assumed power; and we are steadily approaching the conditions which made Fascism possible." Flynn was one of the founders of the non-interventionist America First