January 2011

(This resumes Mr. Kaltenborn’s recollections.)

I was the first person to interpret news on the air. No one else had tried it. Not until 1923 was there any regular reporting of news, much less any attempt to interpret news. All the news services were then very jealous that their material should not be used on the air, and this was one factor in discouraging regular news broadcasts.

The WEAF station was owned and operated by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, which had gone into radio because radio seemed to be allied with the communication business. They had to have telephone wires whenever they broadcast from some place that was not in the studio. They had to have telephone wires to link up stations just as soon as WEAF was connected with station WRC in Washington. As a matter of fact that was one reason I got into trouble, because certain officials in Washington heard my broadcasts and didn’t like some of the things I said.

Correll and Gosden—later to become famous as Amos ’n Andy—were originally song pluggers in Chicago. They originated the first of the strip programs that gained wide recognition, a black-faced act which was broadcast from the Edgewater Beach station, WEBH, a station partly owned by the Chicago Herald-Examiner.

The success of the act—called Sam and Henry at the time—prompted the station manager, Mr. Homer Hogan, to ask for a raise for the team from Mr. Rank, publisher of the Chicago Herald-Examiner . He wrote across the bottom of the memorandum which asked for a raise from $35 to $50 a week each, “I do not believe they’re worth it,” and signed his name. That memorandum has been framed and remains in the office of subsequent publishers of the Hearst papers in Chicago.

A pioneer announcer and program manager who has been associated with New York broadcasting for many years recalls an incident about Thomas A. Edison. At the time, in 1921, he was doing the talking, such as there was, over WJZ, first New York area station.

One day, when we were thoroughly tired of talking endlessly into this telephone microphone, I got an idea. So I went up to see my old boss, Thomas A. Edison. It was a Friday, the last day of September, 1921. I thought we should try to get something that would make continuous sound, like a phonograph. Mr. Edison cooperated; he sent me a phonograph and some records—I didn’t buy them. We hoisted the phonograph onto the roof where we had the WJZ transmitter—it was too big to go through the hatchway —and carried the records up into the radio shack.

To Arthur Judson, well-known manager in the field of music, the new field of radio presented a challenge and an opportunity. The results were both explosive and unexpected.

Along about 1920 or 1922, I noticed my son fooling around with some gadgets. He told me with great glee that it was a radio machine. I didn’t believe in it much then.

At that time, the First World War was over. There had been, during that war, a pool of patents which ceased to operate after the war. Some cross-licensing agreements were signed in an effort to make the patents covering radio available for use, since some were held by one company, some by another, and nothing could be manufactured without agreement among the patent-holders. It resulted in the long run in the formation of the National Broadcasting Company, which merged the broadcasting interests of RCA and A.T.&T. WGY at Schenectady had the experimental end of it, but it was not allowed to sell advertising time. That problem was ironed out later on, which gave an opportunity for the radio chains to start.

A long-time executive of the General Electric Company who became associated with its broadcasting activities just before the pioneer G. E. station, WGY, went on the air in February, 1922, Mr. Lang tells how he and his company got to know a young man named Sarnoff.

In the summer of 1920, I was assigned with an associate to audit the newly formed Radio Corporation of America.

I shall never forget that experience, because RCA was then a pretty small enterprise, and it seemed as though—and its budget for 1921 reflected that—its business for all time might be transoceanic communication, into which we had been brought via the Alexanderson alternator (they were then being installed in a number of stations). The business of transoceanic communication—then made really practical for the first time—seemed to be the real potential business for RCA.

In the years immediately following the First World War, I had a boy who, like all boys of that period, had gone daft on wireless; and the house was cluttered with the apparatus which he had assembled. It was demanded of me that I listen in on his crystal set, which I did, so I had some interest in wireless before I became secretary of commerce.

On January 15, 1921, some six weeks prior to my taking that office, I delivered an address from the Duquesne Club of Pittsburgh. That speech was broadcast. It was probably one of the earliest broadcast speeches.

Before I became secretary of commerce, I was very much aware that I would control broadcasting as a part of my administrative work. I had examined the functions of that department before I went into it.

A pioneer amateur operator as well as an able engineer in the radio field, Mr. Little was a Signal Corps second lieutenant, assigned to the Bureau of Standards, when his story begins.

My introduction to Westinghouse and Dr. Frank Conrad occurred in this way. While I was at the Bureau of Standards in late 1917, Westinghouse received a contract from the Signal Corps for, I believe, 75 small portable transmitters and 150 portable receiving sets. I was sent by the Signal Corps to East Pittsburgh to assist in the development of this transmitter and receiver at Westinghouse.

Dr. Conrad and I worked very closely together. He arranged a room in one of the Westinghouse laboratories and together we worked out the transmitter later given the Army type number SCR-69. The receiver, SCR-70, was designed largely by Conrad alone in his workshop at home. These were built by Westinghouse in Pittsburgh at the Shadyside Works. These were developed before my SCR-79.

Mr. Hawkins, who was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in 1877, went to the General Electric Company in 1903 and was executive engineer of its research laboratory from 1912 to 1945. The following passages comment interestingly on some of the scientists whose work helped to make radio possible.

The term “research” has been used to cover a multitude of activities but in General Electric it has a very special significance. Research is not testing, it’s not development, it’s not measurement, it is exploration of the unknown. The research man deals with unknown things, the engineer deals with things that are known.

Dorothy Gordon has had a distinguished career in radio, both in the field of music and with children’s programs. She founded youth forums and is director and moderator of the New York Times Youth Forum. Here she describes some of her earliest experiences in broadcasting.

I started my concerts in 1923 over WEAF. At the station there was a glass window that separated the studio from a sort of waiting room outside.

My announcer was Graham McNamee. We were having a great deal of fun together before I went on the air because I was so frightened of this thing. There was this little tiny round instrument in front of me. I said, “Well, what happens?”

He said, “Well, you just stand right there—and you just sing.”

I said, “Oh no, I just can’t. There’s no audience, no people.”

I think a stage person always needs that relationship between audience and artist.

My first exposure to wireless, as this form of communication was called in those days, was in 1907 when I happened to glance through a copy of a magazine called Electrical World, which I found on my father’s desk. I read about this new method of communication that was becoming more and more popular here and abroad.

The necessary equipment, fortunately, was simple as compared to that used today, so that a boy who was mechanically minded and interested in electrical matters could put together a workable apparatus.

I interested my father in the possibilities of this thing called wireless and, with his help, acquired a few parts. Some of them came from his shop and some were made at home. I made a wireless receiver and was able to tune in on the air, hoping to hear someone talking—in dots and dashes, of course—thousands of miles away. That was my hope anyway, but it was many months before it was realized.