What Was the First U. S. Radio Station?

Elizabeth McLeod

Date: Wed, 8 Jul 98 08:02:58 -0400
From: Elizabeth McLeod (lizmcl@midcoast.com)
To: old.time.radio@broadcast.airwaves.com
Subject: Re: First Broadcasters?

The question of who was the first broadcaster in the US depends largely on how you define "broadcasting." There were many stations on the air during the 1910s offering code transmissions of weather reports, news summaries, and market information for reception by amateurs (as opposed to specific point-to-point signals intended for a single recipient).

But if voice transmission is the defining factor, there are several claimants to the "first broadcaster" title prior to KDKA in 1920.

Dr. Lee DeForest claimed to have begun a regular series of voice transmissions from an experimental station in New York in 1907, and was inarguably active in promoting special broadcasts of voice and music thruout the decade. He tended to use a series of special "remote" stations, however, and wasn't based in a single location. His earliest broadcasts preceded the issuance of the first radio licenses by the Department of Commerce.

Charles Herrold of San Jose began his voice transmissions in the spring of 1909, using the self-assigned call sign of "FN." By 1912-13, he was self-identifying as "SJN," and was offering a regular—but limited—schedule of voice and recorded music.

Herrold's amateur station was licensed by the Department of Commerce in 1916 as 6XF, with an additional mobile transmitter licensed as 6XE. He was forced to close down his operations—along with all other radio amateurs—in 1917, as a result of wartime restrictions on the use of radio—and he resumed operations in 1919, still as 6XF/6XE. In 1921, he was granted a commercial broadcast license as KQW. The station remains in operation to this day, having become KCBS in 1949.

Other stations active during this era included DeForest's 2XG in New York, which regularly broadcast phonograph records donated by Columbia Phonograph in exchange for promotional consideration. 2XG also presented running coverage of the results of the 1916 presidential election—and got the outcome wrong!

There was also 1XE in Medford, Massachusetts, operated by Harold Power of the Amrad Corporation; 2XI in Schenectady NY, which was a predecessor to WGY; 2ZK in New Rochelle, NY and 9ZP in Pierre, SD—all of which were broadcasting voice and music on a semi-regular basis in the years just before the war.

And, as mentioned, there were many other stations broadcasting "programs" in morse code. The New York Herald was broadcasting regular programs of news bulletins in code as far back as 1915, and recordings of some of these transmissions exist, thanks to amateur Charles Apgar and his cylinder recorder.

Frank Conrad of Westinghouse in East Pittsburgh received his first license in 1916, as 8XK—and was on the air with experimental voice and music broadcasts right thru the war—as a major defense contractor Westinghouse was the only entity whose licenses weren't suspended for the duration by the authorities.

After the war, there was a new wave of interest in broadcasting, with many of the pre-war stations starting up again, and new outlets going on the air steadily in 1919-1920. One was 8MK, operated by an employee of the Detroit News, which began an aggressive programming schedule in the summer of 1920. This station later became WWJ. 6ADZ in Los Angeles also commenced broadcasting around this time, and later evolved into KNX.

Meanwhile, the Conrad broadcasts over 8XK in Pittsburgh had generated enough interest for Westinghouse to make a permanent commitment to them. In October 1920, the company applied to the Commerce Department for a commercial broadcasting license (all broadcasters up to this point were operating as amateur class stations) The license was granted on October 27th, assigning the call sign KDKA, and operations with the new call commenced on November 2nd, with election night coverage.

So, in one sense KDKA's "First Station" claim is accurate—it was the first commercial broadcasting license to be issued.

But KDKA wasn't the first broadcaster—not by a long shot. Nor were the 1920 election returns the first scheduled broadcast—several stations had announced schedules for programming prior to KDKA, notably XWA in Montreal (later CKAC), which broadcast on a scheduled basis six months before KDKA.

In other words, history's a lot more complicated than most people realize...

Elizabeth

However, many years ago there was a station with call letters KQW. It was the predecessor to KCBS-San Francisco, However, I believe that KQW was licensed to San Jose and that KQW used also claim credit as the first station on the air/ Anybody know anything about this?

KQW is in the same category as KDKA, WWJ, and many other pioneer stations—a broadcast outlet that evolved from an experimental amateur station, and it very clearly pre-dates both KDKA and WWJ in experimentation with broadcasting. The station had its origin in the experimental work of Charles Herrold of San Jose, a scientist who operated the "Herrold College of Wireless and Engineering."

Herrold made his first voice transmissions in the spring of 1909, using the self-assigned call sign of "FN." Beginning in 1912, he began broadcasting (without any official sanction) as "SJN," offering a regular—but very limited—schedule of voice and recorded music. Herrold's phonograph and records were donated by the Wiley B. Allen Company of San Jose, and promotional acknowledgements were given over the air. In addition to Herrold himself, his wife Sybil and a colleague by the name of Emil Portal are known to have announced these programs. Herrold's activities were widely reported in the Northern California newspapers, and he became sufficiently prominent that "public receiving sets" were used to receive his broadcasts for curious headphone-wearing listeners at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in 1915.

Herrold's amateur station was licensed by the Department of Commerce in 1916 as 6XF, with an additional mobile transmitter licensed as 6XE, and programs of recorded music were presented on a regular weekly schedule. He was forced to close down his operations—along with all other radio amateurs—in 1917, as a result of wartime restrictions on the use of radio—and he resumed operations in 1919, still as 6XF/6XE. In 1921, he was granted a broadcast-class license as KQW. The station remains in operation to this day, having become KCBS in 1949. Herrold had sold the station in 1925, but remained active in Bay Area radio for several years as an engineer, advertising salesman, time broker, and occasional air personality. He died in 1948.

Herrold's advocates present a very strong case for him being "the first broadcaster" if you define broadcasting as being the presentation of entertainment programs on a regularly-scheduled basis. There is ample documentation in the regional press that Herrold and his associates were doing this between 1912 and 1917.

It has been argued by KDKA advocates that true "broadcasting" could not exist until ready-made radio sets were being sold to the general public. This is a clear case of special pleading. Plans and parts for building home-brew receivers were widely available in the pre-war era, and radio was well on its way to becoming a mainstream hobby before 1917. This argument also glosses over the fact that even though the marketing of ready-made sets for broadcast listening began on a very limited basis by Westinghouse in 1920, the use of such sets was far outweighed by home-brew equipment thruout the first half of the 1920s. It wasn't until 1924-25 that ready-made receiving equipment made any real impression on the public—the radio craze of 1921-23 was fueled all-but-entirely on home-brew equipment constructed by "amateurs." In other words, attempts to define the beginning of broadcasting by drawing a sharp line in 1920 between the end of the "amateur" era and the beginning of the "broadcast" era are both arbitrary and artificial.

As another aside on this debate, a distinction should be made between "commercial" licenses and "standard broadcast" licenses, because they were not the same thing. The license issued to KDKA in 1920 was a "Limited Commercial" license, and it was not the first "Limited Commercial" radio license to be issued by the Bureau of Navigation. This classification dated back to 1912, and "Commercial" in the sense that it was used here has nothing whatsoever to do with "commercial broadcasting." It refers to the use of radio for business purposes, such as in ship-to-shore and ship-to-ship communications. Many such licenses had been issued by the DOC to shipping companies, and in fact KDKA's call letters fall within the sequence of call signs assigned to shore-to-ship stations during late 1920. Westinghouse made no secret of the fact that it intended to use this license for broadcasting purposes—but nevertheless, it was in no sense specifically designated as a "broadcasting" license.

The "broadcast service" as a category of license did not exist until it was formally created by the Department of Commerce on December 1, 1921—this was a Limited Commercial class license with a rider restricting the licensee to operation on specified wavelengths of 360 or 485 meters, for broadcasting of "news, concerts, lectures, and like matter." While several broadcasters operating prior to this date had operated on 360, and Westinghouse's WBZ in Springfield had actually been assigned to use this wavelength in September of 1921, the first license to specify an operating wavelength for broadcast use—it wasn't until this December 1921 action that the Government actually took the first formal step toward creating a "broadcast band." (For the record, the first license assigned after this change took place was to the Portable Wireless Telephone Company in Stockton, California for station KWG. Charles Herrold received his broadcast license for KQW on December 9th.) It wasn't until 1922 that the Department of Commerce began to file broadcasting stations separately from "coast stations" in its records, and it wasn't until 1922 that broadcasting under an amateur-class license was officially prohibited.

There are carefully-documented accounts of the evolution of the broadcast service at Thomas White's U. S. Early Radio History website, http://www.ipass.net/~whitetho/, including reproductions of original government source materials. KDKA's own 1920 record card is especially interesting: the only references to "broadcasting" on the original card are brief notations at the top and bottom—which look like they might have been added as afterthoughts.

Elizabeth

Donna Halper

Can you tell me what the oldest radio broadcasting station in the world is and where it is located? Thank you for you time.

I can tell you who it was NOT—it was not KDKA, no matter what they say. There were a number of stations on the air before KDKA, including stations in Medford Hillside MA (1XE, later WGI) and Detroit (8MK, later WWJ). Up in Canada, XWA (later CFCF) was on the air in 1919, and I recall reading that a station in Argentina also broadcast in 1919. This is something we may never truly know, since there were no audiotapes back then and few American newspapers wrote extensively about broadcasting. KDKA does hold the distinction of being one of the oldest stations still using the same call letters, but since a number of ham radio stations were playing music and doing what we think of today as "professional" broadcasts (which were permitted till February of 1922, when the government ruled that hams could no longer broadcast programs of music and sports) in a number of countries, we may never know the definitive answer. Some historians would suggest Charles "Doc" Herrold, who operated a station at his college in San Jose circa 1909-12, and that is certainly among the earliest—and I believe a descendent of it is still on the air...

I will throw my $.02 in here and that is probably an overvaluation at that. We have been down this path before. Donna is correct, there were many radio stations "broadcasting" long before KDKA came upon the scene.

Fast forward to 1920. Dr. Frank Conrad has been "broadcasting" from his experimental station 8XK in his garage. He first broadcast music on October 17, 1919 when he held his microphone up to his phonograph. He was heard by amateurs (hams) for miles around and began getting letters requesting more musical broadcast.

Umm, no offence, but little 1XE did a broadcast in late February of 1919 when the President came to town, and the Boston Herald confirmed it. But that was a news broadcast. You want music? Harold Power, founder of 1XE had been doing musical concerts for the ships at sea and whoever else, since January of 1916 and I have the newspaper clippings from the Boston Globe that document these weekly (every Saturday night, I believe) concerts of phonograph records. I don't want to get into a war of words over "who's on first" but my point is the Westinghouse publicity machine had a tendency to obliterate everybody else's achievements and spotlight only Mr Conrad. While I do not dispute his genius and innovation, even the scholars in his own city of Pittsburgh questioned the KDKA mythology and whether Conrad was as unique as his press agents claimed he was. (See for example the April 1978 issue of the Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, wherein historian Dr. George Swetnam, a former Pittsburgh journalist himself, discredits some of the claims made about Mr Conrad. The article is called "History's Unweeded Garden—Common Errors in Western Pennsylvania History.")

Westinghouse wanted to develop a market for radio receiving sets and speculated that a radio broadcast station would generate a demand, so it was decided that Westinghouse would build its own radio station. This was not to be an experiment, but a service, it had a purpose, it was business.

Umm, sounds like exactly the reason Harold J. Power created AMRAD and 1XE. AMRAD sold receiving equipment, and 1XE was used to spread the word about the AMRAD product line. Every announcer who worked there was also an engineer at the factory. They made the radios during the day and then went on the air to demonstrate 'em! How is this different from what Westinghouse did? Oh I forgot—Westinghouse was a big famous company, whilst little 1XE, the AMRAD station, in Medford Hillside MA, lacked the huge publicity budget to let the entire world know about their achievements. It was an ongoing battle, and many AMRAD staffers years later expressed great frustration that even when they documented to the press that they had done what KDKA did and had even done it three months earlier than KDKA, very few minds were changed. For whatever reason, the myth of KDKA lived on, spread by journalists (and perhaps by all the advertising dollars Westinghouse pumped into newspapers all over the country) and also spread by Westinghouse speakers, who were sent to schools and colleges all over the country to talk about "advancements in radio", when in fact they were shilling for Westinghouse and for their own stations. Newspaper editors were frequently invited to these events, and treated to a highly professional presentation. That is why I have found clippings from cities as small as Centralia Illinois, talking about how amazing Westinghouse was. This is not to diminish Westinghouse in any way—they were amazing indeed. But I wonder how the story might have been remembered if the Detroit News (owner of WWJ) and little AMRAD (owner of 1XE, later called WGI) had the money to go to almost every city and give fancy presentations about THEIR accomplishments.

There is an article on the history of KDKA radio on the front page of the May 15 Wall Street Journal (www.wsj.com). It credits the station with the first words ever spoken on a commercial radio station (in dispute in these pages recently).

At the risk of being this list's curmudgeon, I was (and still am) the historian for another former Westinghouse station, WBZ, and the words used by the Wall Street Journal writer come VERBATIM from KDKA's immense library of publicity. I know because I have seen the stuff they send out to reporters, and I also have copies of the photos, all of which have been used to spread the story of KDKA. And it certainly is an inspiring story. Too bad it's somewhat exaggerated. Their web-site even has what they used to claim was that first 1920 broadcast—a neat trick given that nobody had invented audio-tape yet and to my knowledge, they could only have transcribed it with maximum difficulty, perhaps on a dictaphone disk. Some of the members of this list took the web-master to task, and now I think they admit it's a re-creation, not the actual broadcast.

My only point is that I hold in my hand (can you see it—I'm holding it up to the monitor) SIX DAYS worth of articles from the Detroit News, beginning on 30 August 1920, about the on-going elections in Michigan and how 8MK (later WWJ) covered them. There are letters from people who heard the broadcasts, comments about the quality of the coverage, etc etc. Seems to me that August is somewhat before November, and seems to me that a station that for over a week broadcast regular newscasts, music, commentary, and weather can indeed be said to have been "broadcasting." I don't mind KDKA getting credit for the innovations they brought to radio, and I don't mind giving the Westinghouse publicity department credit for making people believe even 80 years later that those 5 other stations that were on the air really didn't exist—publicity is about persuading people, and Westinghouse was good at it. But I do mind stories that quote publicity as historical fact when plenty of research (not just mine) exists to question the accuracy of KDKA's claims. And contrary to the sunny picture the Wall St Journal paints, KDKA has had some staff changes, some problems, and some challenges from the conglomerate world of today's radio, where 4 corporations control the vast majority of what is heard, and are gradually controlling what is seen as well. But that is not a topic for an old time radio list, is it?

Bill Harris

I will throw my $.02 in here and that is probably an overvaluation at that. We have been down this path before. Donna is correct, there were many radio stations "broadcasting" long before KDKA came upon the scene. In addition to the ones she mentions, there was 2XN operated at City College in NY, 2ZK in New Rochelle, NY where the owners were broadcasting music for an hour each evening and of course Dr. Frank Conrad, Westinghouse Engineer, who began broadcasting voice and music programs over his amateur station 8XK in 1916. 9XM at the University of Wisconsin was set up to send weather forecast in Morse code for mariners plying the waters of the Great Lakes. This service was considered important enough that the government allow 9XM to remain on the air during WWI when all other stations were ordered off the air. The station also experimented with voice broadcasts. 9XM later became WHA. It must be noted that these stations were licensed as experimental or amateur stations. Radio's use was primarily thought of as point-to-point two-way communications. There were those who believed radio had no future as a broadcasting service.

When you ask who was the first radio broadcasting station, you have to define broadcasting. There certainly was broadcasting going on but there was no "broadcasting service" as such. So the debate has continued about who was the first "broadcasting" station.

Fast forward to 1920. Dr. Frank Conrad has been "broadcasting" from his experimental station 8XK in his garage. He first broadcast music on October 17, 1919 when he held his microphone up to his phonograph. He was heard by amateurs (hams) for miles around and began getting letters requesting more musical broadcast.

Westinghouse wanted to develop a market for radio receiving sets and speculated that a radio broadcast station would generate a demand, so it was decided that Westinghouse would build it's own radio station. This was not to be an experiment, but a service, it had a purpose, it was business. On October 16, Westinghouse applied to the Department of Commerce for a license to establish a broadcasting service. Westinghouse wanted to go on the air in time to broadcast the Presidential election returns on November 2. Since there was no broadcasting service at the time, apparently the DOC had to consider what call they would issue Westinghouse. A few days after receiving the Westinghouse application, the DOC, via telephone, assigned the experimental call letters 8ZZ for their use in case this new license did not arrive in time. On October 27, the DOC assigned the call KDKA which was from the commercial shore-station call letter group. So now Westinghouse had a commercial station license. They were authorized the use of the 360 meter wavelength.

Westinghouse was not the only station broadcasting the election returns that night. The Detroit News station 8MK, went on the air August 20, 1920, also broadcast the returns. I have read some historical text that lay claim that Westinghouse actually broadcast under the temporary experimental call 8ZZ on November 20. If they did indeed go on the air as KDKA that night, the license issued for commercial service, then I would think that a claim that they were the first station licensed for commercial broadcasting would be valid, but certainly not any claim of being the first station to broadcast.

So when it is ask, "who was the first broadcasting station", define "broadcasting station". The first station to broadcast voice/music or the first station licensed for commercial broadcast?

As an aside, Dr. Frank Conrad's house and garage was recently in jeopardy of being sold and torn down unless funds could be raised to save it. Does anyone have any more information about this?

Bill Harris