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Though not everyone agrees on what was the first radio station in the US,
most people agree that Westinghouse helped fund the first commercial
radio broadcast back in 1920, on KDKA Pittsburgh. KDKA grew out of
the hobby of Frank Conrad, an assistant chief engineer at Westinghouse.
Conrad was a modest man with a modest education. He didn't have a degree
from a prestigious university, in fact, he didn't have a degree at
all - (except an honorary Doctorate that he received later in life
from the University of Pittsburgh). In fact, Conrad didn't even have
a high school diploma - but what he did have was a genius for radio.
In 1916, Conrad started transmitting music on his amateur radio, 8XK.
Soon thereafter, he received requests for more music from people who
picked up his broadcast on their crystal radios.
His popularity grew, and it wasn't long before he had the interest
of a local music store, and was borrowing records from them in
exchange for an advertisement. That was probably the first radio advertisement
on the air, and it was probably the beginning of what we think of today
as commercial radio.
When Westinghouse picked up on the popularity of Conrad's idea, they decided
to create KDKA, and they used the station as a way to get more radios
into people's homes. KDKA's first broadcast on November 2, 1920, was
of the Harding-Cox Presidential election returns.
The more they broadcast, the more people wanted to
buy radios, which made for even more broadcasts. On August
5, 1921 they broadcast the first professional baseball
game. This successful cycle soon paved the way for thousands
of radios to find their way into American homes.
By 1924, the simple idea that Frank Conrad had begun in his garage in
Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania had grown to a huge industry. Just four years
after the first broadcast of the commercially licensed KDKA, RCA sales
of what it called the "Radio Music Box" totaled nearly $84 million,
an astounding amount of money back then, and it points out just how
much people loved the ability to send and receive information instantly
to a lot of people across a wide area.
Imagine a world without radio. You would lose the single most affordable, user-friendly,
and democratic mode of communication available. With radio, people
across the country can hear one another's thoughts. They can share
information, or just share in the knowledge that they're not alone
with the questions on their minds. Sure the Internet can do some of
that too, but not as easily and as affordably as radio. We owe much
of our thanks for this remarkable medium to a humble man who simply
pursued a hobby with passion - Frank Conrad.
Though the garage from which Conrad first broadcast music was taken down in
2001, you can see a picture of it at the National Museum of Broadcasting
Web Site: http://trfn.clpgh.org/nmb/index.html
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in the News Archives.
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see what we can do. Good-bye for now, Carlos. About
the author
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