Showing posts with label first radio broadcast. Show all posts
Showing posts with label first radio broadcast. Show all posts

August 20 - National Radio Day

Posted on August 20, 2019



August 20, 1920, Detroit residents operating under an amateur radio license with the call sign "8MK" began daily broadcasts as the Detroit News Radiophone.

That news broadcast grew into an all-news radio station WWJ, which is an AM radio station based in Detroit, Michigan. 








"All news" includes traffic and weather, which WWJ broadcasts every ten minutes, "on the eights." On the eights means the times that end with the digit "8," such as 7:08, 7:18, 7:28, 7:38, 7:48, and 7:58...and so forth. The exception to this frequent updating of traffic and weather is when the station is broadcasting a Detroit sports team's game, live.


In 2015, KDKA celebrated its 95th
anniversary. This year it will be 99!
But KDKA also claims to be the first. A ham radio operator named Dr. Frank Conrad, who lived in Pittsburg, was asked by a radio manufacturer, Westinghouse, to begin regular transmissions like the ones he made for his friends; Conrad's radio broadcasts grew to be KDKA. 

However, I noticed that the first day of the Pittsburg broadcasts was election day, November 2, 1920 - more than two months after the WWJ broadcasts. I'm not sure if KDKA fans make the claim that the Detroit station's news broadcast doesn't count as commercial, or if they've never heard the claim, or...?

No matter who was "first," it wasn't long before the amusing techie hobby of radio became a huge commercial success and then a virtual necessity...




Radio waves, of course, are super important in communication - including two-way communication like police radio and walkie talkies, space communication, and radio broadcasts - plus scientific research and remote control technologies and GPS and radar and and and and...





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December 24 – First Radio Broadcast (?)

Posted on December 24, 2013

Check out the crazy-looking
antenna Fessenden built at
Brant Rock!
It may be that the first-ever radio “show” was broadcast on Christmas Eve, 1906, by Reginald Fessenden, a Canadian inventor who experimented with the use of continuous waves and patented a variety of improvements to transmitting and receiving equipment.

Fessenden transmitted his short radio show from Brant Rock, Massachusetts. He played a phonograph record of a piece by Handel, then he played “O Holy Night” on the violin, sang a Christmas carol, and read a passage from the Bible.


Fessenden asked his listeners to write to him telling him about their location when they heard the radio show, and also describing the sound quality (or lack of quality).

The good news was, people heard the short show from several hundred miles away. The bad news was, the show was accompanied by a disturbing noise that was caused by irregularities in the spark gap transmitter.

Reginald Fessenden
The “show” was more about experimentation, feedback, and improving technologies than it was about entertainment. It isn't even certain that it happened in 1906; some historians believe that Fessenden's later writing about the event had been mixed up, and that his short show had been put on in 1909.

However it went, it is certain that the experiments run by Fessenden and others, and the innovations made by the scientists and engineers, resulted in a very big boom by the 1920s. There was a radio craze, and as consumers purchased their first radios at an unprecedented rate, radio stations sprung up to fill the broadcasting needs. Radio-as-entertainment became huge and still is huge!

There are sure to be special holiday broadcasts today (and tonight)! Check one out, if you have time.

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