May 12 Radio History

In 1908...wireless Radio broadcasting was patented by Nathan B Stubblefield

Stubblefield

Stubblefield (November 22, 1860 - March 28, 1928) was an American inventor and Kentucky melon farmer. It has been claimed that Stubblefield demonstrated radio in 1892, but his devices seem to have worked by audio frequency induction or, later, audio frequency earth conduction (creating disturbances in the near-field region) rather than by radio frequency radiation for radio transmission telecommunications.

He made public demonstrations of voice and music transmission to five receiving locations on the courthouse square in Murray on January 1, 1902, witnessed by at least 1,000 people, apparently using voice frequency transmission through earth conduction, to a radius of one-half mile. Later he demonstrated wireless telephony in Washington, D.C. on March 20, 1902, where voice and music transmissions were made over a third of a mile from the steamer Bartholdi to shore. He demonstrated wireless telephony as well in Philadelphia on May 30, 1902 to a distance of a half mile. His experiments were discussed in leading scientific journals.

In 1903, he could transmit 375 feet without earth connections, using induction. In 1904, he could transmit 423 yards. The total wire required for the transmitting and receiving coils was of a greater length than what would be required to simply interconnect the transmitter and receiver, but the invention would allow mobility.

By 1907, with a 60-foot transmitting coil, he could work 1/4 mile or 1,320 feet "nicely." On May 12, 1908, he received U.S. patent 887,357 for his Wireless Telephone, using the voice frequency induction system. He said in the patent that it would be useful for "securing telephonic communications between moving vehicles and way stations". The diagram shows wireless telephony from trains, boats, and wagons. In foreign patents he showed wireless telephony with cars. However, there is no indication that he was using voice-modulated continuous high frequency waves, as used for radio today.

Stubblefield's inventions did not lead directly to radio as the technology works today, but the public demonstrations in 1902 and the press coverage in the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Washington Post, the Louisville Courier-Journal, Scientific American, and elsewhere helped to spur public interest in the possibilities of wireless transmission of voice and music. Most other inventors of the era sought to provide point-to-point messaging, to compete with telephone and telegraph companies.

Stubblefield in the 1902 was in a sense the "Father of Broadcasting", in that he said to the St. Louis Post Dispatch reporter in 1902, "..it is capable of sending simultaneous messages from a central distributing station over a very wide territory. For instance, anyone having a receiving instrument, which would consist merely of a telephone receiver and a signalling gong, could, upon being signalled by a transmitting station in Washington, or nearer, if advisable, be informed of weather news. My apparatus is capable of sending out a gong signal, as well as voice messages. Eventually, it will be used for the general transmission of news of every description".


In 1914...radio & TV newsman Howard K Smith was born in Ferriday Louisiana.  He covered WWII in Europe as one of ‘Murrows Boys’ for CBS radio.  He moderated the first Kennedy-Nixon presidential debate, and went on to be anchor of the ABC evening TV news.   He died Feb 18 2002 at age 87.


In 1930…Syndicated gossip columnist Walter Winchell made his radio debut on WABC (then a CBS Radio affiliate) in New York. From 1930 to the late 1950s, his Sunday night broadcasts on the ABC Radio Network were heard by an estimated 20 million people.

Winchell was raised in New York City, and when he was 13 he left school to go into vaudeville with Eddie Cantor and George Jessel. Then he teamed with a singer named Rita Greene (whom he later married and later divorced) as Winchell and Greene. After two years of service in the U.S. Navy during World War I, he returned to the Winchell and Greene act. Quick-witted and inquisitive, Winchell rapidly learned personal and family background and gossip about others with him on the vaudeville circuit, and he took to posting such intelligence, neatly typed and punctuated and with often far-fetched puns, on theatre bulletin boards. One of these documents reached the publisher of Vaudeville News, and he became its Western correspondent. This evolved into a full-time job in 1927, and Winchell’s career as a gossip columnist was launched. In 1924 he was given a show-business column, “On-Broadway,” in the New York Evening Graphic, which he conducted for five years. He moved to the New York Daily Mirror, where his widely syndicated column appeared until 1963. He introduced a weekly radio program in 1932, continuing it until the early 1950s. Winchell’s news reports, always very opinionated, brought him both admirers and detractors. But the reports interested millions of people, as did the Broadway idiom in which he wrote and spoke.


Here's audio from a 1941 broadcast...




In 1965…In Hollywood, the Rolling Stones re-recorded "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," which they had first recorded in Chicago two days earlier. It was this Hollywood version that was released. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked "Satisfaction" #2 on its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, runner-up to Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone." In 2006 it was added to the Library of Congress National Recording Registry.



In 1975...Jefferson Starship gave a free concert for a crowd of 60,000 in New York’s Central Park. Later the band and sponsor of the concert WNEW 102.7 FM were charged $14,000 to cover the cost of the clean-up and damage the mob did to the park.


In 2001...the singing barber, Perry Como, a first-line star of radio, TV & recording, died at age 88. He scored fourteen No.1 singles among 150 US chart hits, including the singles ‘It’s Impossible,’ ‘Magic Moments’ and ‘Catch A Falling Star.’  In the 1960’s Como had been television’s highest-paid performer.