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...Howard K Smith born (died at age 87 - February 15, 2002).  He was an  journalist, radio reporter, television anchorman, political commentator, and film actor. He was one of the original members of the team of war correspondents known as the Murrow Boys.

Upon graduating, Smith worked for the New Orleans Item, with United Press in London, and with The New York Times. In January 1940, Smith was sent to Berlin, where he joined the Columbia Broadcasting System under Edward R. Murrow. He visited Hitler's mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden and interviewed many leading Nazis, including Hitler himself, Schutzstaffel or "SS" leader Heinrich Himmler and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. When Smith refused to include Nazi propaganda in his reports, the Gestapo seized his notebooks and expelled him from the country. He left for Switzerland on December 6, 1941, the day before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

He was one of the last American reporters to leave Berlin before Germany and the United States went to war. His 1942 book, Last Train from Berlin: An Eye-Witness Account of Germany at War describes his observations from Berlin in the year after the departure of Berlin Diary author William L. Shirer. Last Train from Berlin became an American best-seller and was reprinted in 2001, shortly before Smith's death.

Unable to leave Switzerland, where he and his young wife spent most of the war, Smith reported whatever the Swiss government would permit. After the liberation of France, he began reporting on Germany and central Europe from Berne. By the winter of 1944–1945, he began sending vivid radio accounts of the German counter-attack in the Ardennes known as the Battle of the Bulge, and he accompanied Allied forces across the Rhine River and into Berlin.

Smith became a significant member of the "Murrow Boys" that made CBS the dominant broadcast news organization of the era. In May 1945, he returned to Berlin to recap the German surrender.

He moderated the first Kennedy-Nixon presidential debate, and went on to be anchor of the ABC evening TV news.

➦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 theater 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.

The first track was recorded pm 10 May 1965 at Chess Studios in Chicago, which included Brian Jones on harmonica. The Stones lip-synched to a dub of this version the first time they debuted the song on the American music variety television program Shindig!  The group re-recorded it two days later at RCA Studios in Hollywood, California, with a different beat and the Maestro fuzzbox adding sustain to the sound of the guitar riff.



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...WNEW-FM sponsored a free concerts with Jefferson Starship for a crowd of 60,000 in New York’s Central Park. Later the band and WNEW-FM were charged $14,000 to cover the cost of the clean-up and damage did to the park.

➦In 2001...Entertainer Perry Como died ( Born - May 18, 1912). During a career spanning more than half a century he recorded exclusively for RCA Victor for 44 years, after signing with the label in 1943. "Mr. C.", as he was nicknamed, sold millions of records and pioneered a weekly musical variety television show. His weekly television shows and seasonal specials were broadcast throughout the world. In the official RCA Records Billboard magazine memorial, his life was summed up in these few words: "50 years of music and a life well lived. An example to all."

Como received five Emmys from 1955 to 1959, a Christopher Award (1956) and shared a Peabody Award with good friend Jackie Gleason in 1956.  He was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame in 1990 and received a Kennedy Center Honor in 1987.


He has the distinction of having three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in radio, television, and music.  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.

➦In 2016… Singer/radio host (WNEW 1130 AM and WNSW 1340 AM)NYC Julius LaRosa, who gained notoriety for being fired by the host on a live, national radio broadcast of "The Arthur Godfrey Show," died at the age of 86.