Although still unfocused, scattered broadcasting activities, taking advantage of improvements in vacuum-tube technology, accelerated after the end of the Great War. Initially there was a shortage of equipment, especially vacuum-tubes, due to ongoing patent disputes, and many of the early efforts were government related or by persons who had access to surplus military equipment. But the experiments continued to expand, as the radio industry returned to civilian control.
Post-War Experimentation and Development -- Pioneering News and Entertainment Broadcasts
POST-WAR EXPERIMENTATION AND DEVELOPMENT
Broadcasting experimentation, in most cases using vacuum-tube transmitters, accelerated beginning in 1919, especially after the end of the wartime civilian radio restrictions. In late 1918, A. A. Campbell Swinton, in an address to the Royal Society of Arts in London, suggested that radio was poised to develop in its "proper field" of "communication of intelligence broadcast over the earth", as reported in New Possibilities in Radio Service from the December 28, 1918 issue of Electrical Review. Swinton's talk dealt mainly with the idea of transmitting news accounts to tickers located in businesses and private homes. (In Device to Supplant News Tickers, from the February, 1920 Radio Amateur News, Guglielmo Marconi wrote about plans to change ticker connections from fixed telegraph lines to the flexibility of radio transmissions, which would make possible mobile tickers located in automobiles.) However, Swinton also envisioned the possibility, in the near future, "of a public speaker, say in London, in New York or anywhere, addressing by word of mouth and articulate wireless telephony an audience of thousands scattered, may be, over half the globe." Louise Wallace Hackney's The Call of the Goddess, a short story appearing in the January, 1919 Miladay Beautiful, although primarily a formulaic melodrama, also addressed concerns that entertainment broadcasts might interfere with critical emergency radio communication. In a paper about Radio Telephony given by E. B. Craft and E. H. Colpitts, presented at the Convention of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers and reported in the May, 1919 issue of Telephone Engineer, the authors noted that, in addition to being a future adjunct to standard telephone links, radio had a potential "third class of service... which is concerned, not with single individuals, but with groups; such service as the broadcasting of news, time and weather signals, and warnings".
Prior to World War One, jewelers in particular had been fans of the daily time signals broadcast by government stations, but, due to the wartime ban on the use of radio receivers by private citizens, they lost access to this valuable service. At least one jeweler, in Norwalk, Ohio, got a little too impatient for the restrictions to end, which resulted in its Wireless Outfit Dismantled, according to the April 8, 1919 Cleveland Plain Dealer. However, the listening restriction was in fact lifted a short time later, effective April 15, 1919, and, responding to the existence of a niche consumer market, a short notice appeared in the October, 1919 issue of QST announcing the availability of a Jeweler's Time Receiving Set, sold by the Chicago Radio Laboratory, which was "ideal for the jeweler to whom receipt of time signals is a matter of business and who cannot spare the time to learn the operation of a more complicated set". A 1921 catalog from the William B. Duck Company noted that "All the progressive jewelers are taking advantage of the time being sent out daily by a great number of Government Naval Radio Stations" and offered a Type RS-100 Jewelers Time Receiver, manufactured by the DeForest Radio Telephone and Telegraph Company, which, when combined with a loud-speaker, promised to be an "exceptional commercial value to the jeweler since the time signals may be heard all over his store, and should produce an excellent advertisement for his business".
PIONEERING NEWS AND ENTERTAINMENT BROADCASTS
The pioneer broadcast which appears to have had the most international impact was Nellie Melba's June 15, 1920 concert transmitted from the Marconi station at Chelmsford, England, which was reviewed in Radio Concerts by Hugo Gernsback for the September, 1920 issue of Radio News, Melba Entertains Europe by Wireless Telephone in the July 10, 1920 Telephony, A "Wireless" Concert, in the June 18, 1920 issue of The Electrician and The Voice Around the World, from the October, 1920 The Mentor, by A. A. Hopkins. One observer however was less than impressed, as A. P. Herbert groused that "I cannot get enthusiastic about this Wireless Singing" in Modern Nuisances, from the August 7, 1920 Living Age.
Numerous broadcasting experiments were also taking place throughout the United States, although at the time most had only a local impact. The independent nature of these efforts later led to conflicting claims about primacy, still being sorted out. But, separately, for a variety of reasons, the possibilities of broadcasting were starting to be developed in earnest, especially after the April 15, 1919 lifting of the wartime ban on public reception of radio signals. A few of these pioneering stations, in 1919 and 1920, included:
- The United States Bureau of Standards, located in Washington, District of Columbia, conducted some of the earliest post-war broadcasting experimentation. The February 26, 1919 Washington Times reviewed how a demonstration by the Bureau saw Awed Visitors Listen to "Pretty Baby" Played by Wireless Phonograph, predicting that "Washington merrymakers will soon be able to dance to the music made by an orchestra on one of New York's roof gardens". In the May 3, 1919 Mohave County Miner, New Wonder Staged reported on a test transmission of phonograph records, and quoted the Bureau Chief, Dr. Samuel W. Stratton, as predicting that "not... far in the future, we shall be able to sit comfortably in our homes at almost any distance and listen to the Boston or Chicago symphony orchestra playing in those cities or participate in any great musical festival of the country". Reports of further test transmissions, originating from the Bureau's station, WWV, included An Almost Unlimited Field For Radio Telephony, which appeared in the February, 1920 Radio Amateur News, and Washington Radio Amateurs Hear Radio Concert, from the May, 1920 issue of the same magazine, while Music Wherever You Go, which appeared in the August, 1920 Radio News, reviewed the Bureau's "Portaphone", a portable radio receiver designed to allow people to "keep in touch with the news, weather reports, radiophone conversations, radiophone music, and any other information transmitted by radio". And a report in the October, 1920 Scientific American Monthly, Radio Music, noted that the Bureau's Radio Laboratory was now broadcasting Friday-night concerts, and "the possibilities of such concerts are great and extremely interesting".
- A station located at the Glenn L. Martin aviation plant in Cleveland, Ohio, under the oversight of F. S. McCullough, which began transmitting weekly concerts on April 17, 1919, as that day's Cleveland Plain Dealer invited local residents to Hear Caruso Sing by Wireless Thursday! However, the broadcasts were suspended the next month, according to Stop Wireless Concerts Here from the same newspaper's May 29, 1919 issue, due to complaints of interference from the U.S. Navy.
- In early 1919, the U.S.S. George Washington was outfitted with a vacuum-tube transmitter for a transatlantic voyage, in order to test long-range radiotelephony, and during these tests the experimenters found time to broadcast "nightly talking machine concerts" to nearby vessels, reported by Concert by Wireless for Vessels at Sea from the May 7, 1919 Dallas Morning News. One of the ship's passengers was U.S. president Woodrow Wilson, and it was announced in Wilson's Voice Today to Carry 300 Miles, from the July 4, 1919 Los Angeles Times, that the president's Independence Day speech would be broadcast from aboard ship. However, as noted in Radiophone Transmitter on the U.S.S. George Washington, by John H. Payne, from the October, 1920 issue of General Electric Review, the president's speech actually went unheard, because he stood too far from the microphone. Still, the ship's transmissions were widely heard -- the January, 1920 QST carried a report, This Looks Like Record Reception, that James B. Corum had heard the George Washington July 4th transmission in Derring, North Dakota, although the loss of the broadcast's featured speaker meant that the programming consisted of such things as the ship's members singing popular tunes. Theodore Gaty, noting the remarkable range of the Independence Day broadcast, contacted General Electric radio engineer Ernst Alexanderson and reported in Re Mr. Corum's Letter in January QST, from the April, 1920 QST, that what Corum heard in North Dakota did not come directly from the on-board transmitter, but was actually a relay of the broadcast by the high-powered alternator-transmitter at New Brunswick, New Jersey station, NFF. (Not all of NFF's entertainment offerings were relays, however, as in April, 1919 the station had transmitted live music via telephone line from the New Brunswick Opera House and the Hotel Klein).
- In August, 1919, the U.S. War Department, in conjunction with the International Radio Telegraph Company, planned a series of aerial publicity broadcasts, as the "transcontinental recruiting expedition" of the All-American Pathfinders Squadron flew across the United States. The initial transmission, over New York City, was reported by Airplane Provides Jazz for Broadway Dancing Contest, from the August 14, 1919 New York Tribune, and Radio Telephone Concert for New York as All-American Pathfinders Start, from the August 25, 1919 Aerial Age Weekly.
- On August 24, 1919, Vice President Thomas Marshall apparently became the first elected official to make an address carried by radio, as General George E. Squier, the U.S. Army's chief signal officer, set up a radio transmitter -- described as a "great voice" -- in Trinity Church in Washington, D.C. This event was reviewed by Marshall at Forum in the August 24, 1919, Washington Post, and 'Great Voice' Tells of Nations' League in the next day's Washington Times.
- Hugo Gernsback's review of Grand Opera By Wireless, in the September, 1919 Radio Amateur News, claimed that a test transmission of a live opera had taken place recently in Chicago (although the participating Opera House and radio firm are not identified), and speculated about ways to broadcast audio entertainment, and also synchronize live singing with filmed performances shown at movie theaters nationwide.
- Another Navy effort, a radio concert transmitted from the destroyer Blakely, located at Albany, New York, was reported in Navy Man Gives Albany Concert By Radiophone from the November, 1919 issue of Radio Amateur News.
- A demonstration station set up by the Army Signal Corps, which on October 13, 1919 transmitted phonograph selections to an electrical show held at the Chicago, Illinois Coliseum, also heard as far away as Ludington, Michigan, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, according to Wireless Phone Carries Airs to Show in the October 14, 1919 Chicago Tribune and Opera by Radio is Novelty of Electric Exposition from the January, 1920 Popular Mechanics.
- 2XG, Lee DeForest's experimental "Highbridge station", which returned to the New York City airwaves after being shut down during the war. On November 18, 1919, the station broadcast on-the-scene reports from the Wesleyan-New York University football game, as reported in Foot Ball Score--Via Wireless Telephone by Morris Press in the December, 1919 Radio Amateur News. However, in early 1920, DeForest moved the transmitter to a new location within New York City without first getting permission from Federal authorities, which resulted in the local Radio Inspector shutting the station down. At this point both DeForest and the radio transmitter moved to San Francisco, California, where the latter was used to establish station 6XC. The DeForest company eventually returned to the New York airwaves, and an entry in the January, 1921 QST noted that the company was now offering a nightly news service broadcast. The November 8, 1921 New York Tribune reported 50,000 Hear Curran Sum Up by Radio, as Henry H. Curran, coalition candidate for New York City Mayor, made a passionate -- and unsuccessful -- plea for voters to "defeat Hearstism, Hylanism and Murphyism".
- In December, 1919, Navy Chief Electrician Grover M. Dickman broadcast, from the Great Lakes Naval Station near Chicago, Illinois, a Jazz Concert and Grand Opera Over Wireless, reported in the December 12, 1919 Aberdeen American, as well as Wireless Sends Jazz 600 Miles Through Space from the next day's Belleville News Democrat. That same month saw the transmission of Music 400 Miles by Radio, as the April, 1920 Electrical Experimenter reported that L. W. Elias, officer in charge of the radio station, had broadcast entertainment for convalescent soldiers at Fort Sheridan, which was in turn retransmitted by the government station in Detroit, Michigan. An additional report, Hears Music Miles Away Through the Atmosphere, appeared in the December 26, 1919 Stevens Point Daily Journal. These broadcasts featured phonograph records provided by the Brunswick Phonograph Company of Chicago, as publicized by their dealers in advertisments, including one by the Terry Sullivan Jewelry Co., which ran in the January 22, 1920 Hamburg Reporter, plus a Chas. E. Wells Music Company Advertisement, in the January 20, 1920 Denver Post, which proclaimed "The Brunswick Phonograph Scores Another Triumph". 237 Miles of Air-Music, from the May 1, 1920 Iowa City Daily Press, recorded the successful reception of a later broadcast.
- 8XK, beginning in late 1919, licenced to Westinghouse engineer Frank Conrad, in Wilkensburg, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. An early report on this experimental station, Phonograph's Music Heard on Radiophones, ran in the December 26, 1919 New York Times. His experiments eventually inspired his employer to establish its first broadcasting station, KDKA, in November, 1920, but a month later Conrad was still making his own broadcasts, and the reception of an 8XK Wireless Concert made the front page of the December 6, 1920 Monessen Daily Independent.
- DeForest Company engineer Robert F. Gowen's experimental station in Ossining, New York, 2XX, which beginning in late 1919 made test voice and music transmissions, reported by Gowen in Some Long Distance Radio Telephone Tests from the April, 1920 Electrical Experimenter, and by Marlin Moore Taylor's Long-Distance Radio Talk With Small Power, from the April, 1920 Telephone Engineer. These tests were followed by more comprehensive entertainment programs, including one featuring Broadway's Duncan Sisters, reviewed in "Radio Vaudeville" Heard Miles Away from the May, 1921 Science and Invention.
- 1DF, an amateur station operated by A. H. Wood, Jr., of Winchester, Massachusetts, which was reported by the February, 1920 QST to be transmitting concerts on weekday nights and Sunday afternoons.
- The U.S. Navy's NOF, in the Anacostia section of Washington, DC, began an experimental broadcast service on January 17, 1920 under the direction of Commander A. Hoyt Taylor, according to the NOF section of C. Austin's "The Romance of the Radio Telephone" from the May, 1922 Radio Broadcast. S. R. Winters' report on The Passing of "NOF" as a Broadcast Station, from the March, 1923 Radio News, recounted the programming which had been provided during this station's three-year broadcasting career.
- 8XB, an experimental station operated by the Precision Equipment Company in Cincinnati, Ohio, beginning in early 1920. A short wire service report, Wireless Concerts Said Coming in the Near Future, carried by a number of newspapers, including the February 5, 1920 Seattle Daily Times, reported that the station had transmitted a concert of phonograph records, with company president John L. Gates predicting that broadcasts heard nationally "will be an innovation of the near future". A more detailed review of the station, 8XB First Station to Radiocast, by Lt. H. F. Breckel, appeared in the October 4, 1924 Radio Digest.
- A cluster of stations in the San Francisco Bay area, an early example of which was the National Radio Company's 6XG, located atop the Fairmont Hotel, whose experimental transmission of the hotel's orchestra by Emile Portal was reported in Local Lad Puts Over Great Test of Radio Phone, from the February 17, 1920 San Jose Evening News. (Radio Telephone Development in the West, an overview of early regional radio activity by Harry Lubcke, comes from the February, 1922 issue of Radio News.)
Most prominent, however, was Lee DeForest's experimental station 6XC, the "California Theater station", which, beginning in April, 1920, employed the transmitter previously used by 2XG in New York. Melody by Radio Given First Trial, from the June 21, 1920 San Francisco Chronicle, and Wireless Telephone Demonstration in San Francisco, in the August 21, 1920 issue of Telephony, provided an early report on 6XC's activities, while Talking to a Nation by Wireless, from the September 1, 1920 Journal of Electricity, reviewed a broadcast by 6XC of a talk by American Radio Relay League president Hiram Percy Maxim, who predicted that someday radio broadcasts would have audiences in the millions. And an entry in the November 2, 1920 News of Palo Alto, Stanford University, Mayfield, Runnymede, from the San Jose Evening News, announced that "Because of the invention of a wireless of peculiar adaptability, Lee De Forest of this city will help everyone who has a wireless to receive direct election returns to-night in this territory."
- A station, MCF, at McCook Field radio laboratory conducting point-to-point communication and broadcasting tests, according to William T. Prather's report, Radio Telephone at Dayton, Ohio, in the May, 1920 Radio Amateur News.
- A couple of experimental efforts conducted by Sergeant Thomas Brass in Atlanta, Georgia, the first occurring on March 12, 1920, as noted by an International News Service wire report carried by a number of newspapers, including "Jazz Tunes" are Played by Wireless from the March 25, 1920, New Castle News. This was followed by a concert performance by the Georgia Tech band in Atlanta, Georgia, reviewed in the June, 1920 issue of Telephone Engineer.
- The front page of the April 6, 1920 Lowell Sun announced that the local radio club was planning to conduct an experimental broadcast of phonograph records that evening, and for a 50 cent admission one would be able to Dance to Music From the Air. In the next day's edition, a review boasted that one result of the success of the Dance to Music From the Air meant that "Lowell stands today preeminent over every other municipality in the United States, possibly in the world". In the April 10th issue, Man About Town speculated about using radio to transmit live orchestra music to various clubs, but decided it was cost-prohibitive. Meanwhile, in the May 2, 1920 Boston Globe, the company that had provided the record player for the broadcast advertised that the participants had been "Dancing by Wireless" with the Aeolian-Vocalion.
- The May 6, 1920 Glenwood Opinion reported that Dr. Frederick Millener, taking a break from his attempts to hear signals from Mars, had provided a special demonstration of the radiotelephone to students at the local high school, with a Wireless Telephone Message Sent From Glenwood Tuesday. Millener also predicted that "homes of the future would have on the library table an instrument so constructed that when we desired to hear the latest sport news we would press a button and receive it, if we desired music by which to dance in our own home if anywhere in the land an orchestra was playing we could get in touch with the sound waves therefrom and have it rendered audible for our pleasure or if we desired to listen to the sermon Sunday morning while we lounged in bed the wireless telephone will accommodate us."
- 2XJ, AT&T's experimental station, operated in Deal Beach, New Jersey by its Western Electric subsidiary, which provided widely heard test broadcasts, until AT&T management directed its engineers to concentrate on point-to-point efforts. The transmissions meant that Henry Wheat in Geneva, New York was Hearing Things at Night, according to the May 13, 1920 Geneva Daily Times. Syracusan "Listens In" On Messages Going Through Air, from the June 27, 1920 Syracuse Post-Standard, reported on a broadcast where "a Western Electric announcer 250 miles away sang out his features like a side show barker", while the weekly Tuesday night concerts, consisting of "selections by famous artists, band music, humorous pieces and lectures" were mentioned by Bright Outlook for Amateur Radio, in the October, 1920 Radio News, along with the prediction that "the next five years will see many radical changes". This station also inspired a whimsical innovation by W. Harold Warren, reviewed in The Radiophone on Roller Chairs, Radio News, August, 1920.
- Physician Dr. William D. Reynolds had an early interest in the possibilities of radio telephony, operating from his home under amateur licence 9JE. His expanding work appeared in a number of articles in the Colorado Springs Gazette, beginning with Reynolds Plans Wireless Study; Outfit on Way in the June 6, 1919 edition. He initially experimented with point-to-point communication, in conjunction with the forest service, but soon moved on to entertainment broadcasting, with the May 14, 1920 issue reporting Dance Music by Wireless Transmitted by Reynolds, as local high school students "tripped the light fantastic to it with satisfaction". By the end of the year, he had formed the Reynolds Radio Company, and in addition to regular twice-weekly radio concerts, the November 18, 1920 issue reported in Dancers in Mountain Cabins Fox Trot to Wireless Tunes
that the company was investigating the establishment of an "ultra-modern music service" to provide dance music to the surrounding mountain resorts. In 1921, the company began operating a Special Amateur station, 9ZAF, in Denver, which later evolved into KLZ -- Colorado's first standard broadcasting station.
- Charles A. Stanley's amateur station, 9BW in Wichita, Kansas, featured Sunday night sermons by "the original radio preacher" Dr. Clayton B. Wells, beginning in May, 1920--these broadcasts were reviewed by the station's owner in Enter--The Radio Preacher from the November, 1920 Radio News and A Real "Sky" Pilot in the February, 1921 The American Missionary.
- On Memorial day, May 30, 1920, the Navy transmitted the proceedings live from the field of an Army-Navy baseball game at Annapolis, Maryland, which were then relayed world-wide by high-powered radiotelegraph stations, as Radio Reports Army-Navy Game to World, from the August, 1920 Popular Mechanics.
- 8MT, an amateur station operated by Robert M. Sincock in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. A one-line notice in the June, 1920 QST reported that the station was being used to "broadcast information on entries, schedules, etc., for the races to be held at the Uniontown Speedway".
- The June 25, 1920 Lexington Herald carried a short review of A Wireless Jazz, reprinted from Letter of the Army Air Service, about test broadcast transmissions taking place at the Aviation Repair Depot at Indianapolis, Indiana.
- May L. Smith in Manchester, New Hampshire, who in mid-1920 was featured as the first prize amateur station winner in the August, 1920 Radio News: Radio Station of Miss May L. Smith.
- 2AB, the amateur station of Morton W. Sterns in New York City, which Concerts de 2AB in the August, 1920 QST noted was broadcasting regular Friday evening and Sunday morning concerts.
- Plans by the Michigan Agricultural College in East Lansing, Michigan for "a regular wireless telephone service, through which weather reports, crop reports, extracts from lectures on agricultural topics, etc., will be disseminated", reported in Michigan College Plans Wireless Telephones for Farms from the August 14, 1920 Telephony.
- Prior to World War One, Lee DeForest had talked about setting up a "wireless newspaper", but never figured out a way to charge subscribers. After the war a DeForest associate, Clarence "C. S." Thompson, formed the Radio News & Music, Inc. in order to lease DeForest transmitters to interested newspapers, with the "franchise open only to one newspaper in each city". Advertisements promoting the new company began running in the March 18, 1920 edition of Printers' Ink, asking questions such as "Is Your Paper to be One of the Pioneers distributing News and Music by Wireless?" Their first -- and apparently only -- customer was the Detroit News, which leased a low-power transmitter and initially operated under a standard amateur licence using the callsign 8MK. The station began its broadcast career with primary election results on August 31, 1920, reported in News Bulletins by Wireless Latest Newspaper Feat from the December, 1920 Popular Mechanics. This station later became WBL and then WWJ, and two years after the Radio & Music advertisement, the News ran its own Printers' Ink advertisement in the May 23, 1922 issue, proclaiming its status, at least among newspapers, as The Pioneer in Radio. The station's early history is recounted in an extract from the 1922 WWJ--The Detroit News (extract), by the Radio Staff of the Detroit News.
- 9BY was an amateur station licenced to the Young & McCombs Company in Rock Island, Illinois -- the September, 1920 QST reported its plans for Thursday evening concerts, to begin around September 1st. Radio Amateurs to Get Returns, from the November 1, 1920 Decatur Review invited the public to listen to the station for election returns, while Pathe Special Offer Popular, from the November 20, 1920 The Talking Machine Trade, reviewed weekly broadcasts which featured promotional phonograph records provided by the Pathé Frères Phonograph Company.
- 2ADD, an amateur station licenced to the Union College Electrical Laboratory in Schenectady, New York, which began weekly Thursday night concerts in October, 1920, according to Jetson O. Bentley in Radiophone Concerts, from the December, 1920 QST.
- The October 28, 1920 Cleveland Plain Dealer was one of the newspapers that carried the announcement that the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company was planning to use its new station, located at its plant in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, To Give Election Returns by Radio on November 2nd. Operating initially under a temporarily assigned call of 8ZZ -- soon to become KDKA -- this marked the debut of an extensive service by the company that would do the most to introduce radio broadcasting to the United States. A review in the November 6, 1920 issue of the Indiana Evening Gazette found this Sidelight of the Election Interesting, declared it a "complete success", and predicted that "four years hence the radio method of sending news of the election at that time will be almost universally used".
In the June 8, 1919 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle, Francis A. Collins' When the President at the Phone May Speak to All the People foresaw the imminent expansion of radio broadcasting into a nationwide service, reviewing the "astonishing advance of wireless by which a single voice may actually be heard in every corner of the country", as recent radio advances were poised to "work a revolution comparable to that of the railroad and the telegraph". In the June, 1920, Electrical Experimenter, "Newsophone" to Supplant Newspapers reported on a proposed news service by recorded telephone messages, and also predicted that readers could expect to soon see "radio distribution of news by central news agencies in the larger cities, to thousands of radio stations in all parts of the world", which would mean that "any one can simply 'listen in' on their pocket wireless set". And the San Diego Sun noted Nellie Melba's Chelmsford concert and Dr. Clayton B. Wells' weekly sermons, as reprinted in the Current Radio News section of the September, 1920 Pacific Radio News, and wondered -- "Why can't all the world listen in?" Meanwhile, as Christmas, 1921 approached, the comic pages reported that the young son of Cicero Sapp was hoping that this year Santa Claus would bring him his very own "wireless telephone outfit" -- would he get his wish? (spoilers).
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