[Hallicrafters] First MW Broadcast. Do You Know? |
Ian
ianwebb5 at comcast.net
Tue May 10 15:29:55 EDT 2011
I sure don't agree...
Ian
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Duane Fischer, W8DBF [mailto:dfischer at usol.com]
>Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2011 12:11 PM
>To: Mike Everette; Ian; hallicrafters at mailman.qth.net; Richard Knoppow
>Subject: Re: [Hallicrafters] First MW Broadcast. Do You Know?
>
>Hello Mike,
>
>Thank you for sharing some historical information that the majority of us
>were not familiar with.
>
>I would be interested in learning more. Do you have printed or audio
>transcribed material available?
>
>Do you agree that KDKA was the first commercially licensed MW station?
>
>Do you agree that the first music broadcast for the public was on KDKA?
>
>Do you agree that the first commercial was broadcast on KDKA?
>
>Thank you Mike.
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message
>-----
>From: "Mike Everette" <radiocompass at yahoo.com>
>To: "Ian" <ianwebb5 at comcast.net>; "W8DBF''Duane Fischer"
><dfischer at usol.com>; <hallicrafters at mailman.qth.net>; "Richard Knoppow"
><1oldlens1 at ix.netcom.com>
>Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2011 2:27 PM
>Subject: Re: [Hallicrafters] First MW Broadcast. Do You Know?
>
>
>The first broadcast was December 24/25, 1906 (nineteen hundred SIX),
>transmitted from Reginald A. Fessenden's station in Brant Rock,
>Massachusetts. An alternator was used as the transmitter. (Remember the
>ARRL "Hello" campaign? This is what it was commemorating.)
>
>Fessenden actually achieved the first transmission of voice by "wireless"
in
>a lab experiment at Western University of Pennsylvania (now University of
>Pittsburgh) in 1899 (!!!), but the first practical transmission was over a
>one-mile distance in January 1900 at Cobb Island, Maryland while Fessenden
>was in the employ of the US Weather Bureau.
>
>There is a "historian" within the Antique Wireless Association who seems
>hell-bent on discrediting Fessenden regarding the 1906 broadcast; but I
>don't believe a word of what he claims. In the course of writing my Master
>of Arts thesis in History on Fessenden, I examined all (ALL) the documents
>in all (ALL) 104 archival boxes of Fessenden's papers which are in the
>collection of the North Carolina State Archives... no doubt in my mind:
>Fessenden DID do it.
>
>By the way, Fessenden (who died in 1932) was a ham, with the call VP9F,
>after his retirement to Bermuda.
>
>73
>
>Mike
>W4DSE
>
>--- On Sun, 5/1/11, Richard Knoppow <1oldlens1 at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
>> From: Richard Knoppow <1oldlens1 at ix.netcom.com>
>> Subject: Re: [Hallicrafters] First MW Broadcast. Do You Know?
>> To: "Ian" <ianwebb5 at comcast.net>, "'Duane Fischer, W8DBF'"
>> <dfischer at usol.com>, hallicrafters at mailman.qth.net
>> Date: Sunday, May 1, 2011, 5:26 PM
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Ian" <ianwebb5 at comcast.net>
>> To: "'Duane Fischer, W8DBF'" <dfischer at usol.com>;
>>
>> <hallicrafters at mailman.qth.net>
>> Sent: Sunday, May 01, 2011 12:40 PM
>> Subject: Re: [Hallicrafters] First MW Broadcast. Do You
>> Know?
>>
>>
>> > You are brainwashed like the rest who think that the
>> > Eastern US was first...
>> >
>> > Here's the true story from San Jose, CA - A
>> DECADE
>> > EARLIER!!!!
>> >
>> > Ian, K6SDE
>> >
>> >
>> > "This is San Jose calling" - World's First Radio
>> station
>> >
>> > While many people were experimenting with "wireless"
>> > point-to-point
>> > communications in 1909, the first radio broadcast was
>> the
>> > brainstorm of Dr.
>> > Charles David Herrold, who ran a small engineering and
>>
>> > wireless school in
>> > San Jose. In early 1909 Herrold and one of his
>> students,
>> > 16-year-old Ray
>> > Newby, connected an antenna, battery, spark coil and
>> > microphone to broadcast
>> > some random comments from a 14-watt transmitter.
>> >
>> > Local amateur radio operators, who at the time
>> > communicated only with the
>> > dots and dashes of Morse code, were surprised to hear
>>
>> > voice coming over the
>> > air and contacted Herrold to let him know his
>> transmission
>> > had worked.
>> >
>> > Soon after, Herrold was broadcasting a short program
>> every
>> > Wednesday night,
>> > often identifying himself as "This is San Jose
>> calling".
>> > By 1910 he was
>> > broadcasting both regular news reports read from the
>> local
>> > newspaper and
>> > records played on a phonograph. His wife also invented
>> a
>> > program, "The
>> > Little Ham Program" where she played "young peoples"
>> music
>> > from records
>> > borrowed from the local music store. The "hams" - as
>> > amateur radio
>> > enthusiasts were called - would buy the record they
>> had
>> > heard on the radio,
>> > making the radio "station" truly commercial.
>> >
>> > When licenses were instituted for radio operators,
>> Herrold
>> > was given the
>> > call sign KQW in 1912. The station remained KQW until
>> it
>> > was purchased in
>> > 1942 by CBS, and was eventually moved to San Francisco
>> to
>> > become what is
>> > today KCBS.
>> >
>>
>> I had thought of Chuck Herrold,
>> WWJ, in Detroit, also
>> claims to have been broadcasting (under a different call)
>> as
>> early as 1912, but the problem is that the the
>> discontinuance of all civilian radio during about a three
>> year period makes it very difficult to prove any of the
>> claims. Also, the question of who first generated revenue
>> from selling commercial announcements is hard to answer.
>> Previous to the availability of
>> practical vacuum tubes
>> modulating a carrier was difficult and none of the
>> experiments in transmitting voice were very successful.
>> First of all a true continuous wave signal is necessary,
>> letting out arc and spark sources. The Alexanderson
>> alternator generates quite pure CW but modulating it
>> required the use of absorption modulation. There were even
>>
>> experiments using water-cooled carbon microphones!
>> Tubes
>> began to be available about 1912 so a number of early
>> experiments date from about that time.
>> Its difficult to asses if the
>> creation of RCA helped or
>> hindered the development of broadcasting. I think it
>> probably encouraged it at first but held up innovation
>> later
>> because of the near complete monopoly RCA had on patents.
>> It
>> was necessasary to have an RCA license and they were hard
>> to
>> get and expensive. The problem is made clear in the history
>>
>> of Hallicrafters; Bill Halligan had to buy a small company
>>
>> which had a license in order to manufacture his own stuff.
>>
>> Before that he had to farm it out to licensed
>> manufacturers.
>> What _is_ clear is the rapidity
>> which which
>> broadcasting became popular once it was established. The
>> record of early broadcast station licenses can be found on
>>
>> the FCC web site in the form of the old radio bulletins and
>>
>> lists of licenses issued year by year.
>> Certainly the West coast was
>> extremely active, both San
>> Francisco and Los Angeles having many stations quite early
>>
>> on. L.A. probably had more than S.F., by the mid-1920s
>> there
>> were about twenty-five stations here. Radio shops, car
>> dealers, newspapers, churches, and patent medicine
>> purveyors
>> were among those who put stations on the air albeit some
>> didn't last long.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Richard Knoppow
>> Los Angeles
>> WB6KBL
>> dickburk at ix.netcom.com
>>
>>
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>
>
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