Pittsburgh's heritage in wireless communications goes back to the turn of the last millennium. The city became home to voice radio, commercial broadcasting, shortwave broadcasting, electronic television, and public broadcasting, along with dozens of documented "firsts" in the industry.
Before broadcasting radio was born here, though, a few other things had to fall into place. The roots of radio broadcasting actually extend further back to the Industrial Age. During the mid-1800s, the telegraph transmitted coded signals, providing the world’s first instantaneous news service. Once success with the telegraph had been achieved by Samuel Morse, the next step was to send voice messages. Alexander Graham Bell created the necessary technology when he invented the telephone. Bell completed his first successful voice transmissions by wire in 1874.
The telegraph and the telephone were critical inventions in the history of American electronic communication. But the real challenge was to develop a method of sending coded and voice messages without wires. James Clerk Maxwell, a Scottish physicist, was the first to publish a theory that a spectrum of electromagnetic energy beyond visible light exists.
In 1888, a German physicist named Heinrich Hertz proved Maxwell’s theory by demonstrating electromagnetic waves carry electrical energy. He didn’t envision radio as we know it today, but his experiments laid the groundwork for the next critical invention in radio history: the wireless telegraph.
The technology for a device that would send coded messages without wires was developed by Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian inventor. Marconi took Maxwell’s theories and Hertz’s lab experiments and put them into practice. He created the first radio transmitter and receiver—devices that used the electromagnetic spectrum to send bursts of radio energy. In 1901, he succeeded in sending a wireless telegraph signal across the Atlantic Ocean. Marconi realized the commercial value of his inventions and established corporations to market them, first in Great Britain, then in the U.S., Canada, and Italy.
The station credited as the first broadcasting station was Westinghouse Corporation’s KDKA. KDKA grew from the experiments of a Westinghouse engineer named Frank Conrad. In 1920, he began evening broadcasts from his garage. Rather than just talking, Conrad played phonograph records and was surprised to get music requests by letter from regular listeners. Conrad’s broadcasts began to affect record sales and drew the attention of the Hamilton Music Store in Wilkinsburg. The store began to market radio receivers to people who were interested in listening to Conrad’s station and were happy to furnish more records for the programming.
At this time, when most radio engineers considered the shortwaves practically useless, Conrad demonstrated that although shortwave signals faded relatively close to the transmitter, they became stronger at greater distances. From a high-powered shortwave station on the Greensburg Pike in Forest Hills, shortwave broadcasts were made that were heard in Europe, Australia, South Africa and the Antarctic.
For the first time in history, a person could speak into a microphone and be heard virtually anywhere on the planet. So revolutionary was this concept that radio engineers from all over Europe, including Marconi himself, traveled to the Forest Hills station to tour the state-of-the-art facilities.
Soon, executives at Westinghouse saw the opportunity to sell receivers as well and licensed KDKA. From this site, Westinghouse operated the first national and world-wide radio networks, sending out programs to its affiliates by shortwave which were then re-broadcast to the public over the standard AM radio band. The station’s first official broadcast was coverage of the Harding - Cox presidential election in 1920 (under the call letters 8ZZ).
Other pioneering stations have claimed to have been first, but KDKA is the oldest of the four claimants in the United States. Westinghouse and KDKA were the first to move decisively into commercial broadcasting, and KDKA was the first commercially licensed station in the United States.
Harold Arlin is credited with being the first regular announcer on radio. Arlin started his work at KDKA in February 1921.He introduced guests and performers and later reported baseball and football games. For all intents, it was he who created the profession of the radio announcer. As programming expanded, others were hired to assist Arlin.
Some other interesting broadcasting radio tidbits, according to the book, “When Radio Was Young:”
- Most announcers in the earliest days of radio were not permitted to identify themselves over the air. The stations apparently did this out of a fear that announcers might become too popular and hard to control. Oh, if they only knew.
- The Joseph Horne company was the first retailer to offer radios for sale to the general public. Horne’s sold the sets for $10 apiece.
- Ironically, Frank Conrad was not at the first KDKA broadcast. Because the transmitter had not been adequately tested, Conrad stood by at his amateur station ready to take over if the Westinghouse equipment faltered.
- Four months after reporting his victory, KDKA broadcast President Harding’s inaugural address – the first ever heard over the radio on March 4, 1921.Twenty-nine months later, the station broadcast news of his death.
- KQV was Pittsburgh’s second radio station. It broadcast under the call letters, 8ZAE. WWSW and WJAS soon followed within a year.
