Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society
History Quarterly Digital Archives

Source: April 1986 Volume 24 Number 2, Pages 43–49

Recollections of the Early Days of Radio

Leighton Haney

Page 43

I have been interested in radio for many years as a hobby, but my interest now is also in radio as it relates to history. We now have a history of radio just as we have, for example, a history of Waynesborough-- and with many more people involved in it!

Like a lot of things, radio as we know it today got a real boost during the First World War. Radio, prior to World War I, was limited to communications between ships at sea or between ships and land. But during World War I it came into its own, so to speak.

A radio signal was actually sent over the Atlantic Ocean for the first time in 1901, and in 1908 the crystal detector was developed. But there was no commercial development of radio at that time. Radios in the United States were generally operated by amateurs, or "hams".

I recently happened to come across a booklet published by the Department of Commerce in 1922, when its Bureau of Navigation was responsible for radio. It lists all the licensed amateur operators in the United States at that time, and from the size of the booklet you can see that there were a lot of amateur radio stations in 1922. Several of them were operated by local people in our area.

One listing, for example, as for Alexander L. M, Dingee, whose address was given as a post office box in Paoli. (His father, John H. Dingee, before his death in 1913, had been active in local politics and was vice-president of the Tredyffrin School Board for eleven years, a president of the Paoli Town Association, and an elder in the Great Valley Presbyterian Church.

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The Dingees owned the property that is now the Paoli Shopping Center, Burroughs [in Paoli], and, on the north side of the railroad, on up to Pennington road. Alexander Dingee operated with the call letters 3ADH, and with a lot of power, 950 watts. (The maximum power allowed was 1000 watts.)

In Wayne there was a Paul J. Adelberger, on Wayne Avenue, with the call letters 3APN, 250 watts; and also a Francis W. Adelberger, at 218 West Wayne Avenue, with call letters 3TT, 250 watts. (Whether they were brothers or related in some way, I don't know.) Also in Wayne was Charles H. Howson Jr., 134 Walnut Avenue, call letters 3BEU, 500 watts. The next listing is 3BEV, operated by John H. Rushton, at 112 Runnymede Avenue. When you get two listings next to each other like this, you sort of believe that the two boys worked together and got their licenses at the same time. Rushton had a very low-powered station, only 10 watts. There's also a listing for Andrew W. Long, at 148 W. Wayne Avenue, 3DZ, at 500 watts.

In Berwyn, on Kromer Avenue, is a listing for Harold A. Roberts, station 3MX, 700 watts. He was the son of Dr. Charles Roberts, and had been a captain in the 304th Divisional supply train in France during the First World War. His younger brother, George, recently recalled, "When the bungalow at Kromer Ave. was built, a barn-like structure was added and a horse, 'Bill Taft', installed there. ... As cars came in and horses went out, there was no need for a man to use the second floor and tend to a horse. Therefore, Harold started an early 'wireless' set-up in the unoccupied space, and he became pretty good in the dot/dash system in talking to ships going down the Delaware River or to other 'hams'. One day he rushed in all excited and yelled, 'I heard them talking, I heard them talking! ... As he grew older, he developed other interests and the old 'wireless' set languished or the parts were given away as I did not follow his footsteps."

There were also three listings for Malvern: Charles J. Bachman, Broad Street, 3BQZ, 9 watts; William H. Rushworth, also on Broad Street, 3BRA,also 9 watts; and Vincent Farley, 3BRN, 18 watts.

So there were several amateur radio operators in this area as early as 1922, as listed in this book of "Amateur Radio Stations of the United States".

The first commercial radio station, as you all know, was station KDKA in Pittsburgh. It started in November of 1920. But earlier in that year Dr. Frank Conrad, who was with the International Radio and Telephone Company, was operating an experimental station with music, under the call letters W8FK. A store in Pittsburgh started to sell some type of receiving equipment to bring in this station W8FK, and that was the first commercial sale of radio equipment.

A year later, in 1921, there were WBZ in Boston, WJZ in New York, and KYW, then in Chicago, not Philadelphia. (Actually, WBZ in 1921 was in Springfield, but the Springfield station was later changed to WBZA and WBZ operated out of Boston, as it does today.)

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Things happened quite fast after that. In 1922 WEAF in New York and KYW in Chicago teamed up to put on the same program, which, incidentally, happened to be a football game. WCAP in Washington also came in in 1922 and that was the start of "networks". There was the National Broadcasting Company's red network (WEAF) and blue network (WJZ), and in addition there were orange and purple networks on the West Coast. (They didn't go all the way across the country with their red and blue networks at that time.)

By 1925 all was chaos! The Bureau of Navigation of the Department of Commerce was simply not able to control the stations. The stations were supposedly given frequency and power allotments -- but they all found out that they could reach out further if they went up to the higher end of the band, so to speak. And many did. It was a jungle!

I have a little book that I found inside one of the old radios I bought; it is a radio log book that the original owner kept for the period from February 1924 to February 1925. He has a couple of stations for which he lists about three different places on the dials that he got them during this period. They kept moving around! You can imagine the chaos. Imagine tuning in to WCAU, for example, at 1210 on the dial and finding that WCAU is not there but is somewhere else on the dial.

So in 1925 the Department of Commerce gave up the regulation of radio, and the Federal Communications Commission was formed. They really put the screws on. By 1927 there were even international meetings to make sure that the Canadians had frequencies they could broadcast on which did not interfere with stations in the United States, and vice versa.

Radio at that time -- in the mid-1920s -- was a real growth industry, unparalleled, I think, even by television or computers. There were so many different companies making radios that they were actually overbuilt and there was a glut in the market for radios. In 1924 the traded stocks of these companies had a value of $160 million, but by July 1925 they were down to only $65 million! The dominant company was RCA. It was formed by General Electric and Westinghouse, who pooled their patents, and RCA was the outgrowth. So the first radio sets with the RCA name were actually built by the General Electric Company.

The principal owners of radio stations in Philadelphia at that time were the department stores. Wanamakers operated station WOO, while Lit Brothers operated WLIT, and Strawbridge and Clothiers, WFI. (The first call letters for Lit Brothers were actually WDAR; the change must have taken place during the period when the gentleman kept the little log book that I referred to earlier, for in the front of it he has listed "WDAR, Lit Brothers" and on the back page he has "WLIT, Lit Brothers". So sometime between February 1924 and February 1925 the call letters were changed.) Gimbel's also had a station in Philadelphia, WIP.

Page 46

I have an old Crosley radio in my collection. For some reason, the original owner apparently didn't bother to send in the card for the guarantee; it's still in the set! It has earphones. To tune in a station you had to turn two different dials and pull a knob out -- you couldn't just turn the dial to 1060, for example, and turn the set on and have the station come in clearly. And you had to adjust the dials each time. Each radio was different, and had to be adjusted differently to get the frequency on which the station was operating. You couldn't just tell a person where to set the dial; he had to find out for himself, on his own set.

The big thing at that time was to come in to work in the morning and announce, "Last night I heard KDKA real loud" or "I got WCFL, the Chicago Federation of Labor station, real good". The ultimate was to get KFI in Los Angeles! "DXing", as this was called, was very popular and important.

My dad was typical. He had a radio log by his battery set, a Case. It was a list of all the stations, and he'd mark off the stations he got. (I got started on this hobby myself a little later, and found this old log book, and erased all his markings. By that time the Case set had been sitting up in the attic, replaced by an electric Philco, and he was never going to hook up that old battery set and tune it in again, so it didn't really make any difference -- but I sure heard about it!)

The radios in those days were all operated off batteries. When that old Case was put in the living room, my mother insisted that she wouldn't have any batteries in the room. So they were put in the basement, on a shelf Dad built right underneath the radio, with wires running down through the floor to the batteries down in the basement.

In April 1922 an article entitled "What Next in Wireless" appeared in the magazine The World's Work, published by Doubleday, Page & Co. The magazine was full of articles. (In this issue Henry Morganthau wrote on "The Jews in Poland", Herbert Hoover on "American Individualsim", and Lloyd W, Parsons on "Gas vs. Coal as a Fuel", in addition to the article on "What's Next in Wireless".) It's always interesting to read, after the fact, what someone said it was going to be like in the future. Here is a part of what was predicted:

"The word broadcasting, which is used to describe the sending forth from central stations of news, music and the like, suggests not only its methods but its limitations. Whatever men want generally known will be communicated by this means. Its worth for advertising is obvious. Department stores will announce bargains; soap manufacturers will cry their wares; politicians will declaim upon the merits of their legislative nostrums. The educational possibilities are enormous. Instead of having instruction by second-rate teachers, pupils in rural schools will hear lectures by the greatest teaching experts, speaking from a central station perhaps 1,000 miles away. If one wearies of hearing second-rate sermons at his local church, he may sit at home and hear the most eloquent preacher at his best. This, of course, is already being done. If one tires of hearing second-rate music at the local concert halls, he presses a button and the voices of the world's famous singers issue from the wall. As an agency for spreading broadcast information of general interest to public, universal wireless is unrivaled."

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This was in 1922 -- just one year after KDKA went on the air!

By the 1930s, radio was it! In 1934 it was estimated that there were 18 million radio sets in the United States -- just thirteen years after the first commercial radio station. They were probably more important then than television is today.

And there were all sorts of promotional booklets and publications put out by radio stations and various programs. I have a number of them that I saved or collected from the 1930s.

One was a magazine called Radio Guide. The copy I have is for the week ending December 26, 1936, with Deanna Durbin on the cover. It also included free music -- that was one of the features to sell the magazine; in this issue it was "Gee! but I'm Happy".

Here is one entitled "An Armstrong Quaker Rug in Every Home": in it are pictures of the Armstrong Quaker girl and the Armstrong Quaker orchestra and quartet, heard in 1930. Another promoted "Today's Children". Do you remember "Today's Children"? It came on every afternoon. And if you were a real fan, you wrote in to the network to get these booklets, with the story of "Today's Children" and what not in them.

There were also booklets for religious programs: "The Calvary Hour", Rock of Ages Broadcasting, out of Warwick, Virginia; Dave Davis' "Morning Cheer", Morning Cheer Book station, over WIP from 7 to 8 in the morning and on WIBG from 12:30 to 1 (I don't think it's still on today-- but it was in 1930!); "Young People's Church of the Air", with Percy D. Crawford.

Here is the 1932-33 edition of "Tony's Scrapbook" -- Tony Wans, on the Columbia Broadcasting System. Sammy Kaye also put out booklets of poetry, from his "Sunday Serenade".

And there were cookbooks. Here's "A Good Place to Eat from Out of the Air", one hundred and thirty six trusted radio recipes. Proctor & Gamble put it out.

Or how about this pamphlet, with a reprint of the Hon. Robert M. LaFollette's radio address on the enlargement of the Supreme Court in 1937? Or one for Gabriel Heatter's program? This is a little resume of the Lindbergh kidnapping and Flemington trial, with a lot of pictures.

One I particularly like is a "World-Wide Radio Tour". It is a map of the United States, showing all the radio stations, and was published in 1934. In Philadelphia we have WCAU, WDAS, WFI, WHAT, WIP, WLIT (it was before its merger with WFI to form WFIL), WPEN, WRAX, and WTEL. I guess they're all operating today, in one form or another, except for WRAX.

Page 48

When World War II came along, the radio stations took advantage of it too. Here is a booklet from WSAN in Allentown, "The Radio at War". It has the flags of our allies and enemies, and pictures of various decorations and awards. But its main purpose is to promote the programs on WSAN: the Aldrich Family, on Thursdays, 8:30 p.m.; Red Skelton, on Tuesdays at 10:30; Jay Simms, Fridays, 7 p.m.; Abie's Irish Rose, Saturdays, 6 p.m.; Bob Crosby, Sundays, 7 p.m.; the Sealtest program with Joan Davis, Thursdays at 9:30; Phil Spitalny and the Hour of Charm, Sundays at 10 o'clock; Can You Top This?, Saturdays at 9:30; Maxwell House Coffee Time, with Baby Snooks and Frank Morgan, Thursdays at 8 o'clock; Jack Benny and Mary Livingston, Sundays at 7; and Donald Vorhees' Cavalcade of America, the Telephone Hour, Mondays at 9 p.m. (Remember them?)

At this time H. V. Kaltenborn and Lowell Thomas were vying for whose war maps you should use. Lowell Thomas came on at a quarter to seven, just before Amos & Andy. He wrote these little booklets -- he wrote a lot of long ones too -- that were put out by Sunoco. He was Sunoco's "News Voice of Radio". His sign off was always "So long, until tomorrow".

I don't have very many booklets of the '50s, but here's one from Don Mc-Neil's Breakfast Club, on WABC, from the Hotel Sherman in Chicago. You remember "Let's march around the breakfast table" or "It's a lovely day in Chicago"? (It was always a lovely day!) Here's another, promoting Silvercup Bread and the Lone Ranger, on WXYZ in Detroit, WOR in Newark, New Jersey, and WGN in Chicago. "Where's Tonto?", they'd ask, and then they'd give clues as to where he was.

As in World War I, during World War II there were many advances in radio broadcasting. World War II brought about big differences, not so much for the average listener sitting in his living room, but for the state of the art in general -- transmitters and what have you. The range of tubes was also increased, and we had much better receivers after the Second World War.

But there were some mighty fine receivers in 1930 too. In fact, by the time you hit the 1930s, radio was far from "ancient". For the average listener it wasn't that much different from what AM radio is now. Obviously programming has had to change because of television, but the use of call letters and assigned frequencies were as they are now. In fact, the average little radio that you buy today can't begin to do the job that the ones did in the thirties, because it's been made much cheaper. You don't notice it because there are a lot more stations nearer by, so you don't have to get your programs out of New York or from Washington as you did then. But we don't talk about "antique" radios until you get back before 1925 or so.

I have several older sets here. This is a crystal set, made by General Electric for RCA. When most of us think of crystal sets we think of a wire coil wrapped around an oatmeal box and a crystal. But there were also commercially manufactured crystal sets, because a set with tubes was very expensive. Here's one that is a Westinghouse. Another is from a little outfit up in Attleboro, Massachusetts.

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They are all different crystal sets, all dating back to about 1921 and 1922. On a crystal set there's nothing to go bad! You have to have a long antenna with a good ground, but that's all you need -- though you still have to fiddle and fiddle and fiddle to get the sensitive spot on the crystal.

Here is a late 1922 model RCA, with very rare tubes. (I do not know whether they work or not, and I'm not about to find out!) These sets were very expensive when they first came out; this sold originally for close to $100 in 1922, which was a lot of money. But the state of the art was changing quite fast, and a friend of mine up in Boston tells me that by the end of the year they were selling in Filene's basement for five dollars!

I mentioned that my dad -- and anybody who had a radio set in those days-- tried to get different stations and programs. I went a little further than he did. When I was a teenager I used to listen to the various radio stations, and then write in to tell them what I had heard and when I had heard it. And they sent out a so-called verification card, or in some cases a letter, in confirmation. I have a verification card from the International Broadcasting Company, Ltd., in France, for several French stations I heard -- on the standard broadcast band, not on shortwave! I also have one from Happy Joe in Havana. (Can you imagine anything coming out of Castro's Cuba with a letterhead like that?) This was in 1936, when I was 15 years old.

In the '20s somebody promoted the use of stamps for verification. You'd write in to the station and tell them what program you had heard, and you'd get a stamp back, which you'd put into an album. I have a stamp from station KYA in San Francisco, and another one from Havana, Cuba, station CBMC.

The reason you could get these stations was that, in those days, stations went off the air at 12 o'clock whatever their local time was. They did not broadcast all night long. To make sure that they were on their assigned frequency, the FCC had a requirement that every so often they come on the air during the quiet hours. There were radio magazines that put out in advance when the check was due, and DXers would get up at two or three in the morning to hear stations from all over the country during these frequency checks. There were a number of these DX magazines, with reports of what stations had been heard and when they had been heard by various DX clubs.

I mentioned the Philco that my father bought after the Case set. I was allowed, before I was eleven, to get up and work that one to see what stations I could get. My father reported that he came down stairs one night to tell me I should come to bed just as KFI in Los Angeles was signing off the air -- and they tell me that there I was, standing at rigid attention during our national anthem!

These are some of my early memories of radio.