The Philip B. Petersen Collection Broadcast November 19, 1988

The Beginning of Radio Broadcasting

     Did you know that the first radio broadcasting station was started by a radio amateur?  His name was Frank Conrad and he had the call letters 8XK.  He was licensed in August 1916 in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh.
     In the early days, almost all radio amateurs used spark transmitters with Morse code but a few amateurs were beginning to use vacuum tube transmitters with voice supplementing the Morse code.  Frank Conrad had a Victrola and on October 17, 1919, he thought he would try to send phonograph music through his radio transmitter.  Soon many radio amateurs were so surprised to hear music and many radio hams would ask him to play more music.  Frank Conrad, 8XK, decided that he would play records each Wednesday and Saturday night for two hours.  He soon exhausted his supply of records but the local music store kept him supplied with new records because they were already getting increased business.
     By late summer of 1920, interest in broadcasting became so generally known that a Pittsburgh department store arranged for radio amateur Frank Conrad, 8XK, to broadcast a live concert for 20 minutes that could be heard on a simple radio receiver by the public in the department store on September 29, 1920, a Wednesday night at 10:00 PM.
     This started much interest in the public to obtain these simple radio receivers from radio amateurs and soon Frank Conrad and many other radio amateurs were building wireless receivers for sale to their friends, neighbors and the public for $10 each.
     Frank worked at Westinghouse Electric in Pittsburgh and convinced them that it would be a good idea to have the Westinghouse Company apply for a license to operate a broadcasting station.  On the 27th of October in 1920, the U.S. Government issued a license to Frank Conrad as trustee for the Westinghouse Company to make regular broadcasting on 360 meters.  That, my friends, is the story of how a small amateur radio station operated by Frank Conrad with the call letters 8XK developed into the first ever regularly scheduled radio broadcast station in the world with the call letters KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
     Little did Frank Conrad with his amateur radio station 8XK realize then that his development of radio broadcasting would become the big industry it is today.

November 19, 1988

** Broadcasts recordings preserved and presented here by Mr. Robert Buss and Mr. Bernie Ricciardi, Phil's friends and fellow Marconi Chapter 138 QCWA members **

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