Hey Guys!! Does anyone know where the first radio station was located
in United States? Thanks!!!

Samantha wrote:
Hey Guys!! Does anyone know where the first radio station was located
in United States? Thanks!!!

Permanent station, permanent phone station, or what?
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

"Samantha" wrote in message
...
Hey Guys!! Does anyone know where the first radio station was located
in United States? Thanks!!!

First licensed station, KDKA in Pittsburg. First operating station could be
one of a number, including Madison, WI and San Jose, CA.

On 20 Mar 2005 21:00:15 GMT, "Samantha" wrote:

Hey Guys!! Does anyone know where the first radio station was located
in United States? Thanks!!!

Define "radio station". Do you mean the first regular radio
transmission from a permanent location? The first licensed radio
station? The first commercial licensed radio station?

Credit for the first wireless radio telegraphy transmissions in the
U.S. is generally given to Guglielmo Marconi, who demonstrated the
first controlled transmission and reception of long-range radio
signals in 1895.

Daily time signals were transmitted by the U.S. Navy stations
beginning in 1904.

Hobbyist radio broadcasting also began in earnest in 1904 with the
marketing of complete transmitter-receiver systems by Electro
Importing Co., NYC.

A number of events in 1919-1920 could qualify as the "first" radio
station in the U.S. that broadcast a regular schedule of programming:

# A station located at the Glenn L. Martin aviation plant in
Cleveland, Ohio, under the oversight of F. S. McCullough, which
transmitted a concert on April 17, 1919, and was also reported
planning weekly broadcasts, according to the August, 1919 Electrical
Experimenter: Caruso Concerts to Amateurs by Wireless 'Phone.

# WWV, set up as an experimental station in 1919 by the Bureau of
Standards in Washington, District of Columbia. An Almost Unlimited
Field For Radio Telephony, which appeared in the February, 1920 Radio
Amateur News, enthusiastically reviewed a test broadcast by WWV,
noting that recent advances meant radio was poised to make "Edward
Bellamy's dream come true", for soon it would be possible to transmit
entertainment directly to homes nationwide. The May, 1920 issue of the
same magazine reported on the continuing tests in Washington Radio
Amateurs Hear Radio Concert, 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".

# 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. A report in the January, 1921
QST noted that the company was now offering a nightly news service
broadcast.

# 8XK, beginning in late 1919, licenced to Westinghouse engineer Frank
Conrad, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. An early report on this
experimental station, Amateur Radiophone Concerts, ran in the January,
1920 Radio Amateur News.

# 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.

# A station at McCook Field 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.

# 8XB, beginning in early 1920, an experimental station operated by
the Precision Equipment Company in Cincinnati, Ohio: 8XB First Station
to Radiocast, by Lt. H. F. Breckel, Radio Digest, October 4, 1924.

# A cluster of stations in the San Francisco Bay area, an early
example of which was reported in American Legion Couples Dance to
Music by Radio from the March, 1920 Radio Amateur News. The most
prominent, however, was Lee DeForest's experimental station 6XC, the
"California Theater station", beginning in April, 1920. Wireless
Telephone Demonstration in San Francisco, an early report on 6XC's
activities, appeared in the August 21, 1920 issue of Telephony, 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. 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.

# 9BW, Charles A. Stanley's amateur station in Wichita, Kansas, which
in mid-1920 featured Sunday night sermons by Dr. Clayton B. Wells,
reviewed in Enter--The Radio Preacher, Radio News, November, 1920.

# 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".

# A concert performance by the Georgia Tech band in Atlanta, Georgia,
transmitted by radio through the efforts of Sergeant Thomas Brass, as
reviewed in the July, 1920 issue of Telephone Engineer.

# 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.

# 2XJ, AT&T's experimental station in Deal Beach, New Jersey, whose
weekly Tuesday night concerts, consisting of "selections by famous
artists, band music, humorous pieces and lectures" were reported 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.

# 8MK, an amateur station on the air beginning August, 1920 for the
Detroit News: WWJ--The Detroit News (extract), by the Radio Staff of
the Detroit News, 1922.

# 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.

# 9BY, an amateur station licenced to the Young & McCombs Company in
Rock Island, Illinois, which the September, 1920 QST reported was
planning Thursday evening concerts, to begin around September 1st.

# 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.

RCA made its broadcast debut in 1921, using a temporary longwave
station, WJY, with its broadcast of a Jack Dempsey heavyweight fight.
A transcript of the fight was sent to Westinghouse station KDKA,
Pittsburgh, for rebroadcast. KDKA, generally credited with being the
first commercial radio station in the U.S., had begun regular radio
broadcasts in 1920.

For more info: http://earlyradiohistory.us/

Btw, a simple Google search using the keywords "u.s. first radio
station" unearthed the site.

Samantha had written:
| Hey Guys!! Does anyone know where the first radio station was located
| in United States? Thanks!!!

Guess what. No one really knows. The first radio station in any
*state* often can't really be determined.

It's even true of cities: for example, the first radio station
(voice) operating in Kansas City may be one of: WDAF, WHB, or WOQ.
Early stations often shared transmitters and definitely shared
frequencies. So then you get to the question of what is a station.

So perhaps you should do your high school term paper on something else.


--
Mark Roberts

Permission to archive this article in any form is hereby explicitly denied.

I've just recently begun reading about the history of radio,
particularly amateur radio-- mostly web articles so far--and I've
noticed some conflicting dates for Frank Conrad's broadcasts. Did he
begin them in 1916, then continue them after the war? I've read on two
different sites that he first directed his microphone to the phonograph
in autumn 1919. Even in a single letter posted in a column, someone
states at the beginning of the letter that Mr. Conrad began
broadcasting in 1916, then later in the letter states he began in 1919.
I was wondering which was correct. I'm also curious about radios
themselves in 1919-1920. From what I've read, people were still using
primarily headsets (or exclusively headsets?) to listen in; I couldn't
pinpoint just when it was that speakers were first in use. Was that
after the first sales of sets to the general public? I was wondering if
the hams were using headphones or speakers. Actually I'm wondering
quite a lot of things, since I'm still in the beginning of reading
about all this. I love the earlyradiohistory.us site and wish it
had more to it. Can anyone direct me to any sites that have more
historical information with more detail, such as particular dates when
speakers came into use and how these early sets were put together and
how they worked (I've read a little general information about that but
my mind hasn't wrapped around all the tech jargon just
yet...frequencies and oscillators and vacuum tubes and couplings and
all. Science isn't my strong subject. I could use a site or book that
explains it on the level of a ten year old; that I could probably
understand g). I've also been looking for sites with personal
stories of early radio but haven't found any that go quite back to
1919. Thanks for any information anyone can offer. I really do
appreciate it.