RADIO'S VERSION OF 'WHO'S ON FIRST?' Many Claims Have Been Made, But Radio's Paternity Is Still a Question Broadcasting, Nov. 2, 1970 The origins of radio broadcasting are subject to continuing dispute. An eccentric inventor in backwoods Kentucky is thought by some to have been the fist to transmit the human voice from one point to another without wires. Nathan Stubblefield claimed to have made a transmission in 1892. He gave no public demonstration, however, until Jan. 1, 1902, in his home town of Murray, Ky. Witnesses said voices and music were sent through the air. On March 30, 1928, Nathan Stubblefield was found dead in the shack where he had lived alone, apparently the victim of starvation. Reginald Aubrey Fessenden, a Canadian-born electrical wizard, sent a human voice by wireless telephony for hundreds of miles on Christmas night 1906. The broadcast was transmitted from a station at Brant Rock, 11 miles from Plymouth, Mass., and was said to be heard by ships at sea. The remarkable Mr. Fessenden, variously professor of physics at Purdue University, professor of electrical engineering and post-graduate mathematics at Pittsburgh University, head chemist at the Edison laboratory at Orange, N. J., chief electrician of the eastern works of Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Co., died of heart disease in Hamilton, Bermuda, on July 22, 1932, at the age of 65. He is credited with originating the continuous-wave principle of wireless transmission and the heterodyne system of reception and with inventing the radio compass along with numerous submarine-safety devices. A Yale-educated minister's son, Lee de Forest, is credited with making several early broadcasts: a program of phonograph records from the Eiffel Tower in Paris in 1908; the voice of Enrico Caruso in a performance of 'Cavalleria Rusticana' on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House on Jan. 13, 1910; self-styled 'radio concerts' three nights a week in 1916 from an experimental broadcasting station at High Bridge, N. Y.; news bulletins of the Woodrow Wilson-Charles Evans Hughes presidential election in November 1916. The inventor of the three-element vacuum tube in 1906 (among other things it helped develop radio, long-distance telephony, sound movies and television), Lee de Forest died in Hollywood in 1961 at 87, leaving behind four fortunes gained and lost and patents for some 300 inventions. Charles David Herrold, in San Jose, Calif., in 1909, established a radio-telephone station for experimental work and as a promotional device for a school of engineering and radio, which he also operated. 'This is San Jose Calling,' the station of the Herrold College of Engineering and Wireless, would identify itself and then, using a 15-watt spark transmitter and water-cooled microphones, broadcast music and news. Mr. Herrold's station grew into KQW in 1921 and KCBS in 1949. It's now a 50-kw CBS-owned station in San Francisco. Charles David Herrold, also a microscopist and astronomer, built his own telescopic and driving clock, an observatory, a high-speed focal-plane shutter to take photographs of the sun; produced more than 50 different electrical devices in dentistry and surgery; perfected an electrical deep-sea illuminator used by salvage companies and pearl fishers; developed electrical machinery for pipe organs and designed a high-speed turbine. Earle Melvin Terry helped found 9XM Madison, Wis., now WHA, still calling itself 'the nation's oldest broadcast station.' Earle Terry, a professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin, inspired C. J. Jansky Jr., a student, to design and construct three-element power vacuum tubes to be used in an already established experimental radio-telegraph station (started in 1914 with 2000 watts of power on 475 meters), in operation in Wisconsin's old Science Hall and licensed under the call letters 9XM. The station achieved its first transmissions of voice and music in 1917 under the direction of Professor Terry and with the devoted efforts of such university students as Mr. Jansky, Malcolm Hanson and Grover Greenslade. On Jan. 3, 1919, daily radio-telephone broadcasts of weather reports were started. C. M. Jansky Jr., the son of a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, went on to become an international authority on radio engineering and still is associated with Jansky and Bailey Inc., Washington, consulting engineers. Malcolm Hanson, another of Professor Terry's precocious students, was later chief radio operator on Admiral Richard E. Byrd's first expedition of Antarctica. Professor Terry died May 1, 1929, less than four months beyond his 50th birthday. Name originally spelled Cripps, newspaper publishers and bookbinders emigrated form England, the Scripps family--James Edmund Scripps, William John Scripps--founded the Detroit station 8MK, later WBL, later WWJ, which claims that on Aug. 20, 1920, it 'became the first radio station in the world to broadcast regularly scheduled programs.' According to this claim the first broadcast began at 8:15 p.m. from the second floor of The Detroit News Building with the words 'This is 8MK calling,' followed by the playing of two phonograph records, 'Annie Laurie' and 'Roses of Picardy,' a query by an announcer to unseen listeners, 'How do you get it?,' and the playing of taps. The broadcast is thought to have been received in some 30 Detroit homes. The station, then and now licensed to the Detroit Evening News, says it has been on the air continuously ever since. The newspaper was established in 1873 by James Edmund Scripps, who apparently first became interested in radio in 1902 after listening to a Detroit experimental wireless operator, Thomas E. Clark. James E. Scripps and his only son, William Edmund Scripps, attended a private demonstration of Clark's system of wireless transmission of Morse code and then helped finance Mr. Clark's work. Meanwhile, William John Scripps, known then as 'Little Bill,' son of William E. Scripps, was by 1918, at the age of 13, a devoted ham radio hobbyist. Out of that hobby grew WWJ. It was largely in the Detroit News plant that young Bill did his radio experimenting and it may have been in deference to the boss's son (J. E. Scripps died in 1906), that the newspaper started a radio page which later led to the formation of the newspaper's station. An ex-Marconi man, formerly a shipboard wireless operator, Fred Christian, put together a five-watt transmitter in his Hollywood, Calif., home a half century ago. Granted the call letters 6ADZ, Mr. Christian, on Sept. 10, 1920, began broadcasting records he borrowed form music stores. This was the forerunner of KNX Los Angeles (new call letters assigned in March 1922), now 50 kw of power, owned by CBS. Mr. Christian was then manager of the Electrical Lighting and Power Co. and went into broadcasting because he wanted to encourage people to build their own radio sets os that he could sell them parts. In 1924 he sold KNX to Guy Earle, owner of the Los Angeles Evening Express, who resold it to CBS in 1936. Today, 68 years old, Fred Christian operates American Electrodynamics Co., West Los Angeles. Born in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1874; attended public schools only through the seventh grade; started as shop assistant with the then Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co.; almost immediately designed an improvement in the mechanism of an arc lamp; experimented with everything, obtaining an understanding of the fundamentals of physics and electricity; general engineer of the Westinghouse company, acting as assistant to the vice president in charge of engineering--this was Frank Conrad's resume when he took a major part in organizing KDKA Pittsburgh. Frank Conrad's visionary ally was Harry Phillips Davis, from 1911 until his death on Sept. 10, 1931, vice president in charge of engineering and manufacturing for Westinghouse. If Conrad, as some have claimed, is the father of today's radio broadcasting, H. P. Davis is the godfather. It was Mr. Davis who saw the possibilities of radio broadcasting as a medium of mass communications and it was he who approved the creation of KDKA. The station started as a byproduct of the Westinghouse Co., during the 1916-18 period of wartime activity, receiving contacts from the Navy Department for various types of radio equipment. One of these contracts called for the development of a vacuum-tube-type radio-telephone transmitter. As part of his development work, Mr. Conrad installed a low-power tube transmitter in a shed at the rear of his home at Wilkinsburg, Pa., a suburb of Pittsburgh, which communicated with the Westinghouse plant in East Pittsburgh. His experimental station, 8XK, thanks to its developmental work, was allowed to operate throughout World War I. Afterward, Mr. Conrad, encouraged by the interest of radio amateurs in the Pittsburgh area, continued to operate his radio-telephone station, apparently broadcasting speech and music--Oct. 17, 1919 being the date credited for his first broadcasting using phonograph records. By 1920 his broadcasts, heard by amateurs several hundred miles distant, sparked Joseph Horne Co., an important local department store, to advertise the availability of radio sets to receive the Conrad broadcasts. Westinghouse management, in the person of H. P. Davis, impressed by the increasing local interest aroused by the experimental broadcasts, erected a more powerful transmitter and a studio atop the Westinghouse K Building in East Pittsburgh. KDKA went into service on Nov. 2, 1920, when it broadcast the Harding-Cox national presidential election returns. H. P. Davis, who was 63 when he died, never lost his interest in radio and was the chairman of the board of NBC from the time it was formed in 1926 until his death in 1931. Frank Conrad suffered a heart attack in 1941 while driving from Pittsburgh to his winter home in Miami. A month later he died at 67, leaving behind important work done on short-wave and frequency modulation broadcasting, as well as more than 200 electrical inventions including an electric meter, electric clocks and devices for automobile ignition. These are just some examples of the many pioneer broadcasts heard in the U. S., prior to the mushroom growth of broadcasting in the U. S. The experimental broadcasts generated engineering and public interest. Some broadcasts were of phonograph records. Some had singers and instrumentalists before the microphones. And also then, as now, in the descriptive term of RCA executive, the late E. E. Bucher, 'much plain voice jabber.' After the WWJ and KDKA broadcasts of 1920, the Department of Commerce, the government agency then charged with this responsibility, licensed 32 broadcasting stations in 1921 and 254 additional stations in 1922. Radio broadcasting was born and on its way to maturity. ================================================================= Date: 08-24-94 (15:06) Number: 6081 of 6150 (Refer# NONE) To: JEFF MILLER From: JOHNROSS@HALCYON.COM Subj: Re: first station? Read: NO Status: RECEIVER ONLY Conf: INTER EMAIL (1000) Read Type: MAIL FOR YOU (A) (+) ----------------------------------------------------------------- To: rlt@annex.com, OLDradio@online.comm-data.com From: johnross@halcyon.com (John Ross) Subject: Re: first station? X-Mailer: Content-Length: 3005 WWJ or a predecessor broadcast election returns on August 31, 1920. KDKA began in November 1920. At least two other stations were "broadcasting" before 1920--9XM (now WHA), and the station that later became KQW and is now KCBS. The "who was first" debate has been going on for at least 40 years. The way this question was worded in this case--"the first commercial radio station" means that the correct answer is probably WEAF, which was the first station to sell advertising time. But the four usual contenders for "oldest broadcast station" are Doc Herrold's operation in San Jose (now KCBS), WHA Madison at the University of Wisconsin, WWJ Detroit and KDKA Pittsburgh. Most historians accept a paper first published in the Journal of Broadcasting (Volume IV, No. 1 Winter 1959-60 pp 40-55) as the definitive examination of the question. It's called ' "Oldest Station in the Nation"?' by R. Franklin Smith. Smith offers five characteristics of a broadcasting station: 1) Wireless transmission 2) Transmission of telephony rather than telegraphic signals 3) Content aimed at the public 4) Continuous program service 5) Licensed by the government However, he says the license issue is not a valid base "for verifying historical claims of broadcast primacy." Using the other four criteria, he says Fessenden's 1906 hour-long program on Christmas Eve was the first broadcast, but since it was a one-time experiment rather than the start of continuous service, it was not the earliest broadcasting station. That strikes me as a bit arbitrary, but clearly, there was no successor to Fessenden. There were also some early broadcasts of music from the Metropolitan Opera House in new York by Lee de Forest around 1912. San Jose (later KQW) began radio telephone transmission of programs in 1912. Herrold had been sending code since 1909. KDKA was the first radio station licensed for broadcasting (as opposed to either amateur or experimental operation), and has been in operations continuously since then. That's the basis of their claim as "first". But clearly, there were others doing something that resembled broadcasting before November 1920. WWJ was one of those. If you're really interested in this stuff, I recommend you find a copy of "A Tower in Babel," the first volume of Erik Barnouw's history of American broadcasting. It's in print (Oxford University Press), and your local library can get it for you.