Historical Moments In Radio
June 1996

After KDKA What?

	Historical Moments in Radio .. stories of the rich and exciting
past on the a.m. radio dial .. and today I want to read to you from
Gleason Archer’s book called the History of Radio to 1926.  Now, once
again, we return to the very beginnings of broadcast radio but with a
fresh viewpoint provided by Mr. Archer and published by the Arno Press in
1971.  He writes:
	The success of the radio broadcasting station at Pittsburgh
naturally suggested to the Westinghouse officials the idea of opening
other broadcasting stations.  In the summer of 1921 plans were formulated
for stations in the New York City area and at Springfield, Massachusetts.
 Records of the Department of Commerce disclose that Station WJZ at
Newark, New Jersey was listed as a new station June 1, 1921 whereas WBZ
in Springfield was first listed October 1, 1921.  These listings do not
mean that the stations went into operation in the order of the licensing
by the Department of Commerce.  As a matter of fact, Station WBZ went on
the air in September, 1921, some days in advance of WJZ.  A curious
legend has grown up that WBZ was the first radio broadcasting station to
be licensed by the Government.  In 1930, in response to an inquiry by the
National Broadcasting Company, an official of the Department of Commerce,
confused by the fact that a new classification of such stations was not
adopted until September 1921, erroneously stated that the first four
stations to be licensed were in the following order:
WBZ, Springfield; WDY, Aldene, NJ; WJZ, Newark; KDKA, Pittsburgh.  
	The truth, however, appears in the listings month by month as
published by the  Department of Commerce.  The bound volumes of these
reports in the Library of the National Broadcasting Company have been
checked by the author and yield the following facts:
KDKA was first listed on November 1, 1920;  WJZ, another Westinghouse
station, was first listed June 1, 1921; WDY, the RCA station in Aldene,
NJ and WBZ in Springfield were both listed for the first time on October
1, 1921.   Now, while WBZ and WDY appear on the same list for the first
time, it was the custom of the the Department of Commerce to list
stations in the order of their registration, rather than alphabetically
.. and WDY had the earlier registration date.  So WBZ comes in fourth
when all the facts are in.

Historical Moments in Radio - June 1996 - page 2

	So thanks to Mr. Archer for that research into the NBC library
files.  Those files he just mentioned, by the way, were kept in my RCA
Frequency Bureau office .. but when RCA went out of business in 1987 and
my work ended, the NBC lawyers retained those volumes .. and I have
personally hurt ever since.  
	You know, we’ve mentioned KDKA several times in this item .. but
there’s a sidelight to their operation that might amuse you.  Do you
recall that they started out on an upper floor of the Westinghouse
manufacturing plant in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania?  You may have seen
a photo of that historic first day of broadcasting where four men are
crowded into the corner of a room.  Shortly after that, the studio was
moved to the roof of that building and a large tent was erected to
contain all the studio personnel and equipment.  Well all was fine until
the autumn of 1922 when a gale hit Pittsburgh and, among other damage,
completely removed the tent from the roof of that building.  Ever
inventive, and realizing that the microphones of 1922 would sound awful
in an untreated room, the Westinghouse engineers found some open space on
a lower floor, gained the permission of Westinghouse brass to take it
over at least temporarily and, believe it or not, erected a tent within
the space on that floor!  The tent cloth deadened the sound nicely, and
the quality of broadcasts was not at all compromised.  Later on, of
course, studio rooms in most broadcast stations were lined with burlap ..
or, as they preferred to call it, "Monks Cloth".  That was their way of
deadening the sound so echoes wouldn’t mar their audio.
	Now, if you think the idea of smelly burlap is bad, wait until
some future program when I tell you about the dueling cats at WJZ?  Yes! 
The open windows prior to air conditioning in Newark, New Jersey in
August, allowed unscheduled feline sound effects to go over the
metropolitan airwaves .. but, as I say, that’s another story and, even as
today, the rest is history.   This is John Bowker.