Radio Broadcasting Begins

Radio station KDKA transmitted the 1920 presidential election returns to as many receivers as it could reach, thereby engaging in the first major radio “broadcast”—that is, a transmission intended for a broad, or mass, audience.

Summary of Event

At 8:00 p.m. on November 2, 1920, the airwaves near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, crackled with sound as the tiny, newly licensed KDKA KDKA (radio station) radio station broadcast the first scheduled public radio program, the presidential election returns. Using only a 100-watt transmitter, Leo H. Rosenberg of Westinghouse Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company’s publicity department, read the returns as they were received by telephone from the offices of the Pittsburgh Post newspaper. Westinghouse, owner of the station, had announced the event in advance, and its success set off a boom of enormous proportions for the new radio industry. The first station to begin radio broadcasting was actually WWJ WWJ (radio station) in Detroit, on August 20, 1920. However, it was KDKA’s successful transmission into American homes of Warren G. Harding’s landslide victory over James M. Cox that signaled the beginning of a new era: Republicans were again in control of the White House, Prohibition was in effect, and scheduled broadcasts of radio programs had begun. Radio;broadcasting development [kw]Radio Broadcasting Begins (Aug. 20-Nov. 2, 1920) [kw]Broadcasting Begins, Radio (Aug. 20-Nov. 2, 1920) Radio;broadcasting development [g]United States;Aug. 20-Nov. 2, 1920: Radio Broadcasting Begins[05160] [c]Radio and television;Aug. 20-Nov. 2, 1920: Radio Broadcasting Begins[05160] [c]Communications and media;Aug. 20-Nov. 2, 1920: Radio Broadcasting Begins[05160] Sarnoff, David Marconi, Guglielmo Fessenden, Reginald Aubrey Conrad, Frank Davis, Harry P. Rosenberg, Leo H. De Forest, Lee Hertz, Heinrich Harding, Warren G. [p]Harding, Warren G.;radio broadcast of election results

A young woman of the 1920’s tunes a radio.

(Library of Congress)

The birth of this remarkable cultural innovation was the result of a series of fortuitous circumstances. KDKA’s broadcast was really a desperate move by Westinghouse. The company had long been a leader in the large vacuum tube and telegraph industry, but the end of World War I brought cancellation of lucrative war contracts, and the company found itself caught in a corporate squeeze. Its great rival General Electric General Electric Company (GE), along with American Telephone and Telegraph American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) and the newly formed Radio Corporation of America Radio Corporation of America (RCA), controlled the profitable field of international communications, as well as the invaluable vacuum tube—a device that had almost unlimited potential.

Modern radio technology had begun in 1888 when German physicist Heinrich Hertz demonstrated the existence of the electromagnetic waves predicted in James Clerk Maxwell’s paper for the Royal Society, “A Dynamical Theory of Electro-Magnetic Field” (1864). Guglielmo Marconi of Italy built on Hertz’s work and, by 1895, developed the first wireless telegraph designed to send Morse code signals. Great Britain was the first nation to become interested in Marconi’s discovery and immediately began to explore its military and industrial applications.

The next major development in radio technology came when Reginald Aubrey Fessenden, a Canadian who had worked with Thomas Alva Edison, discovered that he could transmit not only Morse code but also the human voice and other sounds. By 1906, he and colleague Ernst F. W. Alexanderson Alexanderson, Ernst F. W. had built an alternator at Brant Rock, Massachusetts, from which, on Christmas Eve, he broadcast to ships’ wireless operators and amateur radio receivers throughout the world an entire program including violin music and poetry.

In 1907, Lee de Forest patented a modification of the vacuum tube. By adding a third element, called a grid or “audion,” he increased the efficiency of the device both as an amplifier and as a detector. Considered a giant leap forward in radio technology, the audion tube was only one of many contributions de Forest made to the industry. Audions During his lifetime he was granted more than two hundred patents in the field and devoted his career to developing and promoting radio technology.

This flurry of technological activity in the early years of the twentieth century produced a cadre of highly skilled radio technicians. One such was David Sarnoff, an immigrant wireless operator with American Marconi, the company that eventually formed the core of RCA. In 1912, Sarnoff had manned a wireless set that kept in contact with ships in the vicinity of the Titanic as it sank. His dramatic effort captured public attention and generated intense interest in the potential of wireless telephony among the world’s giant communications and electrical companies.

Radio’s future was still hazy when World War I broke out. The war, however, proved to be a blessing for the radio industry, the promise of which had been dimmed by numerous costly and time-consuming patent disputes. Faced with the emergency of war, the government suspended all such disputes for the duration and pushed forward the full production of vacuum tubes, receivers, transmitters, and a whole range of complex electrical equipment. A giant Alexanderson transmitter at New Brunswick, New Jersey, using the call letters NFF, astounded the world by clearly broadcasting President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points throughout Europe on January 18, 1918. Later in the year, NFF epitomized Wilson’s principles of open diplomacy by publicly demanding the overthrow of the German emperor as a prelude to peace.

Many of those involved in radio were aware of the potential of the new electronics. When the war ended and restrictions on electronic equipment were lifted, it was merely a matter of time before someone dramatized the possibilities of radio. One who tried was Detroit publisher William E. Scripps, Scripps, William E. who built a receiver for his son. Using the call letters 8MK, he began broadcasting tests that extended news reports to the airwaves. These tests ended on primary day, August 31, 1920, just months before KDKA made its move.

In Pittsburgh, several Westinghouse workers had been experimenting with radio for some time and began to broadcast amateur programs using transmitters built by Frank Conrad, a company executive, in his garage. Harry P. Davis, a Westinghouse vice president, became aware of the commercial possibilities of radio programs when he learned that a local department store was advertising receivers by promoting Conrad’s broadcasts. Davis called a conference with other Westinghouse officials and proposed the idea of offering radio broadcasts on a regular basis to the general public. Westinghouse could then manufacture and sell radio sets intended for home use that consumers could use to receive these broadcasts. He proposed trying to have everything in place to broadcast the upcoming election returns. Westinghouse applied to the U.S. Department of Commerce for a license to begin regular broadcasting and, on October 27, 1920, received notification that the station was to have the call letters KDKA.

Others had tried to make radio a commercial venture. Sarnoff, for example, early grasped the potential of a huge market for radios. As early as 1916, he had declared that radio might become as popular in the home as the phonograph. In January, 1920, he tried to persuade officials of the newly formed RCA to market radio “music boxes” at seventy-five dollars each. He predicted that if they did so, the company would be able to realize an income of seventy-five million dollars in only three years. Unconvinced, the company committed only two thousand dollars to research in radios.

Significance

After KDKA’s groundbreaking broadcast, most people in the industry became convinced of radio’s commercial possibilities. Westinghouse, whose fortunes were reversed, assumed leadership in the field. Members of the industry at first expected to earn profits primarily through the sale of transmitting and receiving equipment. The early programs, which were usually informal, emphasized entertainment, including music and occasionally such dramatic events as the World Series, which was broadcast for the first time in 1921. Broadcasters soon realized, however, that radio could earn profits through the sale of advertising time. The role of radio as an advertising Advertising;radio medium began on August 22, 1922, when station WEAF in New York sold a ten-minute “spot” for a commercial message.

As the radio mania swept the country, it became apparent that the industry would have to be regulated. Prior to the first commercial broadcasts, the Radio Law of 1912 had assigned licensing responsibilities to the Department of Commerce. That system proved unwieldy, so in 1927 Congress passed new legislation establishing the Federal Radio Commission, Federal Radio Commission the forerunner of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Radio remained the primary vehicle of the electronic mass media until the advent of television. It was and is a crucial part of American life and culture, the roots of which can be traced to that initial broadcast from a garage in Pittsburgh. Radio;broadcasting development

Radio Broadcasting Begins Summary