Blogpost #29

Welcome back, friends! Here's a preview of what's coming up for the month of November.

November 2, 1920 marked a milestone in the history of radio. It was on that day that KDKA signed on the air under the ownership of the Westinghouse Electric Company. Today, nearly 90 years later, it is still on the air with its original call letters. Other stations have claimed to have started transmitting prior to 1920, and WBZ claims to have the first legally defined broadcast license in 1921, but only KDKA can claim to have retained its original call letters since 1920.

The station was started by Dr. Frank Conrad, a radio hobbyist who worked for Westinghouse. In the fall of 1920, he was operating a small radio transmitter out of his garage purely for his enjoyment. He would read news items out of the paper and play records from a Victrola. Since microphones hadn't been invented yet, he spoke through a telephone mouthpiece propped up in a cardboard box insulated with cotton. He called his station 8XK.

Harry Davis, Conrad's boss at Westinghouse, knew about his radio hobby but thought nothing of it until a Pittsburgh department store placed an ad offering radio sets to the public for ten dollars. When Davis read the ad, he suddenly realized that radio offered unlimited potential for growth. Not every home could use electricity back then, but any home could use a battery-powered radio. He asked Conrad to start up a radio station for Westinghouse, and he managed to get it on the air just in time to announce a breaking news story: Republican candidate Warren Harding had been elected president. KDKA had scooped every newspaper in Pennsylvania.

To honor this historic occasion, I will be presenting a special two-hour edition of A Time To Remember which will document radio's famous firsts. You'll hear a reenactment of the first broadcast on KDKA along with dozens of other milestones, including the radio debuts of many of radio's best known performers such as Frank Sinatra and Edgar Bergen. You'll also hear an hour-long documentary produced to commemorate KDKA's golden anniversary.

Don't forget, it's a two-hour show next Sunday, November 1. Thanks for reading and thanks for listening.