Who's On First?
by Barry Mishkind
TUCSON, Arizona, January 2002- This fall marks the 82nd anniversary of the beginning of broadcasting. Or does it? As with of mankind’s history, facts are not always found easy to find, nor as clear cut as we’d like to see. In fact, there are so many conflicting claims to “firstness,” sorting them out can become quite an undertaking. Indeed, whenever broadcasters get together to discuss the beginnings of the industry, the conversation soon seems to sound something like the famous Abbott and Costello routine. Trying to figure out "Who's on first?" often turns into a frustrating, even maddening attempt to put a label on a moving target.
Was KDKA's appearance in November, 1920 that of the first broadcast station? Many people believe that, having learning it at school. Others are just as certain that KDKA was a pioneer, but just as certainly not first. And the more we research the early records, the cloudier things can become.
Perhaps the best place to start is definitions. Which actually was the first broadcast station? Indeed, what is broadcasting? Was it operation on a regular schedule? A daily schedule? Was it continuous operation from some early date? Designed to be heard by the general public? Licensed by the US government? Was it required to be telephony? Depending upon the criteria, many stations have strong claims for being first. And like Lou Costello, you also may find a straight answer is somewhat elusive.
Some of the contenders go way back.
Definitions
Under one definition, broadcasting might even be said to have started in the 1880s, when the Budapest Cable Company began sending out scheduled entertainment programs via telephone lines. They hired people with "specially loud voices" to read out the news. A similar system was put into place in Newark, NJ in 1912. And in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Compania Telephonica del Plata served a few hundred subscribers beginning in 1883.
Of course, RF wasn't involved in either case, but they were "broadcasts" in the sense of programming going out to a variety of locations, where the general public could hear it. Other “broadcasts” included telegraphic code sent through wires.
Or, how about the fire signals set to pass information up and down England in the Middle Ages? Was that “broadcasting?”
I think we had best step back a bit for a moment, and lay down some definitions that will help us define the “First Broadcast Station.” You may or may not agree with these definitions, but they ought to provide a basis for discussion.
1. Wireless - As the name indicates, this would involve transmission of information without the use of wires. Any number of various means could be used to "send" information, including magnetic induction, conduction, and electrostatic coupling. While these were indeed wireless, they were extremely limited in the distance they were capable of covering, usually less than 5 km..
2. Radio - The eventual "breakthrough" in wireless transmission came with the successful harnessing of ultrasonic "electromagnetic radiation", which proved much more practical for distant signaling than the other methods tried. The term "radio" was coined as a shortened name for "electromagnetic radiation". The "radio frequencies" that made this possible are also referred to as RF. Hence, it is possible to be "wireless" without being "radio" transmission.
3. Broadcasting - Because radio (RF) signals can radiate over a relatively large area, in a sense all radio is "broadcast". However, broadcasting usually refers to transmissions intended to be received by a wide group of listeners. (This excludes transmissions meant for selected listeners that just happen to be overheard by others.) Furthermore, although most of the earliest broadcasts used telegraphic dots and dashes for sending out things like weather forecasts to farmers and seagoing vessels, broadcasting is generally considered to be a form of radiotelephony (essentially voice), hence the transmission of information and entertainment in a readily understandable audio and/or visual form to the general public.
4.
Broadcast Station - Conflicts in defining a broadcast
station occur due to differing interpretations of what constitutes broadcasting.
Today, "broadcast" is a distinct station
classification. However, during the early years, experimental broadcasts were
conducted by a wide variety of stations, and often were just a sideline for the
station's normal use in developmental or other activities.
When you factor in such variables as the original use of the station, the
percentage of time a station was broadcasting, as opposed to other activities;
whether the broadcasts were a one-time effort, on a sporadic schedule, or on a
regular basis; the intended audience, whether radio hobbyists or the general
public; and the different licence classifications utilized in the early days
(The Department of Commerce - indeed most broadcasters - had no idea
what they were starting!), it becomes clear that even with 90 years of
hindsight, it can be hard to determine what is as broadcast station.
I would then suggest a definition of a broadcast station as one
that transmits radiotelephony to a "mass" audience on a regular
schedule.
5.
Commercial broadcast station - Many accounts would begin
the story of broadcasting with the grant of the "First Commercial
License" or the "First Limited Commercial License"
issued by the Department of Commerce in 1920 and 1921, specifying operation in
what was to become the Broadcast Band.
Nevertheless it seems clear that under the definitions of broadcasting
that the Experimental and Amateur licensed stations were also
broadcasting. And, the word classification commercial itself
did not mean what we consider it today. Commercial stations
were those licensed to provide services to customers. Initially, it referred
mainly to ship-to-shore or other point-to-point communications, where the
station would charge for the transmission of a message. Commercial
announcements, or “spots” as we call them today, were a different animal.
(Actually, even the experimentals were permitted to operate
"commercially" without having to change to a "commercial"
license at first.)
With these definitions in mind, let’s see what we can say about the earliest efforts to move information around.
Early Contenders for “Firstness”
As mentioned above, there was telegraphy in the early 19th Century. Samual Morse, a professional painter, received a grant to build the first long distance telegraph line. That line, from Washington DC to Baltimore, was successfully installed in 1843. Information was passed along. However, it really wasn’t broadcasting in any meaningful way.
Thirty years later, a dentist by the name of Dr. Mahlon Loomis sought funding to take telegraphy out of wires, and over the air. He proposed to send signals from the US to Switzerland. The US Congress refused to fund this effort, and some people still claim this prevented Loomis from developing a radio system two decades before Marconi got around to it.
Loomis was apparently a colorful fellow: In speeches he gave at the time, Loomis claimed his system could be used to melt icebergs, make the seasons milder, eliminate malaria, and provide an inexhaustible source of energy. His apparatus was a “key” at one site and a galvanometer at the other, each connected by wire to a wire screened kite. Although he claimed to have transmitted telegraphic messages over 18 miles in 1865 and 1866, there is no independent evidence of this feat. Furthermore, if it actually worked, it was not a electromagnetic effect, but a conductive wireless system. Some have pointed out that the flaw in his system was the belief that there were special layers in the lower atmosphere that conduct electricity. Such channels do not exist. Yet, Loomis supporters still suggest he unknowingly modified his system somehow in such a way that it worked.
In March, 1882, Professor Amos E. Dolbear of Tufts University received a U.S. patent for a wireless telegraph that worked up to a quarter mile. A few years later, Thomas Edison sought a similar patent, granted December 29, 1891. By them Edison was fully involved in work for the Western Union Telegraph Company, and he let his radio work lie fallow, eventually selling his patent to Marconi in 1903. Both Dolbear and Edison’s systems basically used an induction method, not RF. On the other hand, if either Dolbear or Edison had developed a real useful mechanism, we today might be listening to our favorite stations on "inductos" instead of radios!
Another claimant for wireless transmission is Nathan Stubblefield. Reputed to have made the first wireless voice transmissions in 1892 in Murray, Kentucky, his goal was to develop a method of "general transmission of news of every description." For some reason, the business arrangements were unsatisfactory, and Stubblefield went into seclusion, continuing to research until his death in 1928. One major problem with what is known of Stubblefield’s efforts: there appears to have been no way to transmit other than very short distances. It is unlikely he used "radio waves" (RF), instead relying on an induction field. The issue is still hotly debated in Kentucky, yet the Kentucky Association of Broadcasters does not recognize Stubblefield's claims.
From Theory to Reality
Let’s see if we can draw our defining links a bit tighter. It was in 1865 that James Clerk Maxwell developed his theory predicting electromagnetic radiation actually existed. Not only that, but Maxwell asserted that visible light was simply high frequency radio waves. We, in the 21st Century can only imagine the controversy that Maxell encountered. Yet, 20 years later, Heinrich Hertz experiments confirmed Maxwell’s mathematics.
While many focus on Hertz’ spark transmitter, and the resulting spark at the receive site, the real discovery was that, unlike induction fields, radiation sent out by the spark discharges had a wave-like structure, matching the electromagnetic radiation predicted by Maxwell's equations.
And so we come to Guglielmo Marconi. In 1895, Marconi developed what is generally accepted as the first practical “generator” of radio waves, as defined by Maxwell and Hertz. (Of course, if you are reading this in Russian, you were taught it was Aleksander Stepanovich Popov who did it!) Marconi sought and failed to get support from the Italian government, and ended up moving to England.
Marconi was very active between 1895 and 1901, developing improvements to his “wireless telegraph” and trying to sell it to someone. The British Navy and the British Post Office were among the agencies that saw demonstrations of transmissions over several miles in 1897. Commercial potential was further demonstrated in October 1899, when Marconi transmitted the results of a Yacht Race off Sandy Hook, NJ for the New York Herald Tribune. Patents followed, and more improvements led to the attempt to transmit a signal across the Atlantic Ocean.
Using a four tower circular array at Poldhu, England, the transmission was on approximately 500 meters or 600 kHz with an input power to a spark transmitter of around 18 kilowatts. Originally, the antenna was to consist of twenty 200 foot wooden towers, however, the towers were toppled by storms in November 1901, and the four replacement towers were hastily built for the transatlantic transmission.
The reported reception of the three dot “S” by John Ambrose Fleming in December 1901 was said to be proof of the viability of the medium. While some suspect the results were “coffee shopped,” Fleming went on to invent the diode vacuum tube.
Nevertheless, with all this background, we still have not gotten to the broadcasting that spawned our industry. However, that was about to change!
Watson, We’re Broadcasting!
Despite Marconi's groundbreaking efforts, no one had yet "broadcast" messages other than telegraphic dots and dashes. That changed forever on Christmas Eve of 1906, when, with little warning, Reginald Fessenden connected a carbon telephone transmitter into the field winding of an Alexanderson alternator he had installed at a shore telegraph station at Brant Rock, Massachusetts. Astonished ship radio operators heard not the normal dots and dashed, but rather Bible and poetry readings as well as Fessenden's own artistry on the violin.
Fessenden there demonstrated a new sort of "transmitter," one that generated "continuous waves," as opposed to Marconi's spark gaps and their "discontinuous waves." Many regard this transmission as meeting the criteria of broadcasting ...
Still, Fessenden was not interested in setting up a broadcast station on any sort of regular basis. At least not as we would define a broadcast station. For one thing, there was no program schedule for the public to seek out and listen. For another, Fessenden’s interests were not in providing entertainment nor news.
Barry Mishkind, aka "The Eclectic Engineer," can be reached at
barry-at-oldradio.com
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