October 27
RADIO DAY
Marconi, Fessenden, and De Forest were the catalysts. However, it was an engineer for Westinghouse Electric who, in 1916, was broadcasting music from his garage (in Wilkinsburg, PA, a suburb of Pittsburgh) over a wireless (amateur radio station 8XK) who really got the whole thing started. A newspaper article about the broadcasts caused such interest that the head honchos at Westinghouse decided to build a real radio station.
It took until this day in 1920 for the Westinghouse radio station to receive a license to broadcast. The license for KDKA, Pittsburgh came from the U.S. Department of Commerce. Although the license was officially issued on this day, KDKA did not start their broadcast operations for a week (they had to wait until the license was posted in the station). On November 2, 1920, the station aired the returns of the Harding/Cox election ... the first radio programming to reach an audience of any size ... approximately 1,000 people.
And so we salute this day as the official birthday of mass-appeal radio.
Those Were the Days, the Today in History service from 440 International
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