The Centenary of Radio

The centenary of the generally accepted (thanks to the publicity departments of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company and the Radio Corporation) inauguration of radio broadcasting is fast approaching. On November 2nd 1920 Station KDKA broadcast the Harding-Cox election returns.

We who collect radios have immense resources of programming available today through the internet, programming which we can easily broadcast to our sets using modern flea-power Part 15 transmitters. The one thing which most of us do not have is access to a real antique signal, with all of its distortion and poor modulation. Now, by the mid-1920s (earlier for major industry players) radio signals were of pretty good quality. In some ways the broadcasts of the big name stations in 1928 or 1929 were of better audio quality than our modern overmodulated AM signals, but in the early 1920s that was not necessarily so.

I’m in the process of assembling a small (20 watt) transmitter of 1920 style. The intention is to more or less re-create the election return broadcast. This sort of thing was pretty commonly done for earlier anniversaries, but the big 100 appears to be fairly quiet, probably because AM Radio is no longer particularly relevant to much of our population. This antique signal will be demodulated using a quality modern receiver and live streamed, so that any collector who is so inclined may transmit it to his century old receiving set.

I wonder whether there would be any interest in this crowd? I know that 1920 is a little early for the Lounge.

I'd be very interested. Existing pre-1925 radio recordings, and there are a few, were mostly linechecks rather than signals taken off the air, so we really don't have any aural documentation of what those signals really sounded like. It'd be very interesting to hear a period transmitter in action. What do you plan to use for a mic? And will you be wheeling the phonograph up for musical selections while waiting for bulletins?

LizzieMaine said:

I'd be very interested. Existing pre-1925 radio recordings, and there are a few, were mostly linechecks rather than signals taken off the air, so we really don't have any aural documentation of what those signals really sounded like. It'd be very interesting to hear a period transmitter in action. What do you plan to use for a mic? And will you be wheeling the phonograph up for musical selections while waiting for bulletins?

Click to expand...

I’m planning to use a telephone transmitter, a Western Electric 285 White Solid Back, as used on the DeForest OT-10, the transmitter used here in Detroit at 8MK. Yes, I will have a nice Chippendale Diamond Disc phonograph sitting next to the transmitting desk, in fact the 8MK picture is the setting which I’ll copy.

I’ve got a couple of better double button microphones, a 389 in a desk stand and a 600 in a 1A housing, but both of them would be inappropriate for a transmitter with a magnetic modulator. I suppose I could go with plate modulation and get the KDKA sound. What do you think, Miss Maine?

Those mics would sound better, but wouldn't quite be period-right for KDKA. Here's a shot of the actual "tomato can" used for the 1920 election broadcast:



It had a characteristic sound that caused members of the station staff to call it a "mushophone."

I have a WE 387, but I've never been able to use it because the diaphragm is split and I've never been able to find the right type of material to replace it. Tinfoil doesn't work, as I learned when I first got it.

Please have some friends videotape this experiment when you pull it off.