by Ross Bloomquist
The transmission of sounds, that is, words, music, messages and information in general by wire, by means of the telephone system on wires strung from home to home, farm to farm and city to city was wonderful enough in the early days of the twentieth century. Some of the elderly pioneers had never become fully accustomed to the casual use of telephone communication when an even newer invention came upon the scene‑ communication over long distances without the use of wires was completely beyond their comprehension.
Wireless telegraphy, the sending of information over the air to be received at a distant point, was the invention of Guglielmo Marconi in 1895. Messages were sent over the Atlantic in 1901. This new scientific development had an almost instant appeal to the young and as early as 1914 and 1915 several high school students in Carrington were experimenting with wireless as it was called.
Information on how to construct simple wireless sets was readily available in publications such as "Popular Science, " "Popular Mechanics, " "The Scientific American, " the Hugo Gernsbach Publications, and even the Sunday newspapers of the day. Some of the needed equipment was not hard to come by, dry cells and storage batteries, wire to be wound in coils and strung high in the air to catch the signals were usually at hand. More specialized parts such as sending keys, condensers, rheostats, head phones were available from suppliers advertising in the above named publications. Besides the construction of their own equipment the young amateurs had to become proficient enough in the use of the radio telegraphy dit‑, dit‑, dah‑ code to be able to communicate with others. The most important requirements were the imagination, ingenuity and persistence of the young people.
The first successful wireless station was reported in the Record for December 17, 1914: "Finley Sapp, a 16 year old pupil in Carrington High School, has erected at the yard in the John C. Gooden home in the vicinity a wireless station that is quite complete. The pole is 30 feet high and on this is suspended a 50 foot aerial. With this apparatus he can hear Grand Forks each day as they give out the weather report and at exactly 5 o'clock he catches the time report. He has also intercepted messages from greater distances and will soon have the plant perfected to the extent that he will be able to hear messages from Colon at a distance of 3000 miles. At‑an early date the Record will give its readers a complete detailed write‑up of Finley's wireless plant which we believe to be the first in Foster County." Finley's parents lived in Minot and he was, apparently, temporarily living with the Goodens. The write‑up promised did not appear in the newspaper.
In January 1916 there were three wireless operators in Carrington, Lawrence Boylan, Earl Hansch and Lewis Lemert. Each of them had built a receiving and sending station capable of reaching out 10 to 20 miles. There were no other stations in this radius so the three had to be satisfied with exchanging messages with each other. They could, however, pick up more distant station, 10 or 12 in North Dakota, and the Naval Station at Arlington, Virginia. During World War I Lemert was the radio operator on a submarine but he did not pursue this career in later life.
Wireless communication by amateurs was closed down during the years of World War I. Soon after, in the early 1920's the Carrington young men put together a sending and receiving station on the third floor of the Lincoln school building and an elaborate multi‑wire aerial was strung up between the two school buildings. The operators, not named in the newspaper item dated September 8, 1921, offered to send messages anywhere in an 800 mile radius of Carrington between 7 and 10 o'clock in the evening. It is not known if this service had much use at the time but in the years to come the network of such amateurs across the country and indeed the world (The Amateur Radio Relay League) had provided an extremely valuable service whenever other methods of communication have broken down.
An important development in wireless transmission was taking place in the early 1920's when it became possible to transmit over the air the actual sound of voices and music rather than just the coded dit, dit, dah's. Radio, as it now was called, became not only a much more convenient method of communication but also a medium for entertainment and the dissemination of news and information understandable by all. The Westinghouse Electrical Company of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania established the first commercial radio station, KDKA, in 1920. The signals and programs broadcast by the sending station could be received by anyone with the proper equipment. The first broadcast, it is said, reported the results of the voting in the November 1920 General Election when Harding was elected president.
The Carrington amateurs were quick to master this new technical development and built receiving sets to catch the signals which were filling the air with music and talking from all over the country. One night's activities were described in the November 10, 1921 Independent: "The other night atmospheric conditions were good and wireless conversations were held between Carrington and an amateur in Pittsburgh, Pa. Lewis Lemert, wireless operator on a submarine chaser during the war, was at the key for the Pittsburgh talk and the operator at the Smoky City was mainly interested in hearing about the outcome of the Recall Election.
"Several boys are at the school house almost nightly and remain up to as late as 2 o'clock sending and receiving messages. It is the custom among wireless operators over the country when they hear a distant station to drop a card in the mails. A card was received a few days ago from an operator from Syracuse, New York who said he had heard Carrington talking to Denver, Colorado.
"Almost every Thursday night from Pittsburgh a musical concert is put on the wireless circuit and can be heard here. One evening recently Galli‑Curci was plainly heard in recital. "
The other radio amateurs in town took up the building of radio sets with great enthusiasm. They were of two kinds. The simplest, the crystal set, used a small chunk of the mineral galena in the hook‑up in contact with a fine wire called the "cat's whisker". This combination acted as detector to transform the high frequency radio waves into the audible frequency range. The rest of the equipment, coils, dials, batteries, etc. selected the wave length to be received and supplied the power needed to amplify the extremely weak signal from the sending station. Even so, the sound from stations not too far away could be heard only with headphones clamped over the listener's ears. The other more sophisticated and versatile receiving type which was the prototype of all radios for years to come used vacuum tubes to detect and amplify the sounds to any degree of loudness desired.
In the fall of 1921 the Masonic Lodge planned to install a radio set in their meeting rooms. The set in its large bulky box never worked satisfactorily. After much tinkering by Professor Jackson of Jamestown College on Monday night May 15, 1922 "They heard distinctly some talking that was going on between Minneapolis and Fargo." The local amateurs, Van Cousins, Perry Goss and Haney Robertson and possibly some others, were much more successful. On November 16, 1922 it is noted that "The first radio party was enjoyed by guests. Mrs. Cousins invites many to listen to music picked from the air." At the same time the crystal set amateurs were also meeting with success, among them were Herbert Hagen, Leon Galehouse, Thomas Lowery and LaVerne Wolf.
In 1922 and 1923 radio broadcasting stations began proliferating all over the country and in Canada, Mexico and Cuba but it was not yet possible to receive broadcasts from overseas. The stations were owned or promoted by newspapers, electrical equipment manufacturers and in the Midwest by seed companies. The stories of the interesting programs, speeches, news that the amateurs were receiving aroused the great interest of the public. Among the first to purchase radios were George Beier who installed a Grebe set in his elevator in November 1922 and E.L. Beaty in his restaurant on Main Street about the same time. Beaty's radio attracted a great deal of attention when people dropped in for their morning or afternoon coffee. Reception was often poor during daylight hours but in the evening a crowd of people would fill the seats along the counter as they listened for the sound coming out of the loud speaker while Mrs. Beaty twisted the dials for the clearest reception. Sometimes there was only static and noise and then music or speech would emerge with amazing clarity out of the feedback howls and squeals.
The early commercially built radios came in bulky wood or metal boxes with three, sometimes only two, tuning dials and a few other knobs to fiddle with to improve the quality of the reception. A jack for the insertion of headphones was usually provided but in these models the sound originated from a loud speaker shaped much like the old‑fashioned phonograph horn. A little later a cone speaker 12 or 15 inches in diameter provided somewhat better sound reproduction. The receiver was usually placed on a table with a mass of batteries connected to the set. There were three kinds, "A", "B", and "C". The "A" battery was a six volt automobile wet cell which was the standard of that era. The "A" batteries furnished power to heat the filaments of the tubes and the others provided the voltages needed to make them function. Depending on the hours of usage, of course, the "A" battery's charge was used up in about a week's time. More often than not the long awaited program came on the air just as the battery died. If another freshly charged battery was not at hand there was nothing to be done except take it to the local garage or tire shop for recharging. The two or three 45 volt "B" dry cells needed replacement only after several months' service, the 4 1/2 volt "C" battery was replaced at the same time.
To catch a strong signal from the broadcast stations, never closer than Fargo. or Bismarck required an aerial high in the air. These were of several different types, single wire, pairs of wires or even four wire aerials were used. All had to be carefully insulated from their supports or they would not function. A separate ground was essential, the best was an iron stake driven several feet in the ground or a wire clamped to the water pipes in the house.
Listening to the radio became a popular diversion for almost everyone in a very short time. Instead of going to the movies the whole family would cluster around the living room radio. A forest of aerials, no two alike, sprang up on almost every house in town. On the farm, if there was a windmill, the aerial wire would be stretched from the tower to the house. On January 31, 1924 the Independent notes, "An amateur on the first night at the radio dial falls into thrills. The air is now filled with jazz to prayer, lessons for housewives, choir sings in a poker deck factory. Davenport, Cleveland, Chicago, Hastings, Nebraska, Minneapolis were picked up."
The first advertisement for radios noted appeared in the Independent for November 20, 1924. Perry J. Goss' Dakota Electric Shop offered: "Radio. Long Distance Four Tube Radiola, $100.00. Four radiotrons, WD415, headphones, loud speaker." Reception with these first sets was never good during the day except for the two North Dakota stations WDAY at Fargo and KFYR at Bismarck, CKY at Winnipeg and WNAX at Yankton, South Dakota. The last was owned and operated by the Gurney Seed and Nursery Company and often transmitted personal messages of people who dropped in at the station. After dusk the dial became full of stations and the reception of the more distant stations was loud and clear. Among them were WGN, WLS, and WMAQ in Chicago, WOC in Davenport, Iowa, WLW in Cincinnati, Ohio, KOA in Denver and KRLD in Dallas‑Fort Worth to name only a few. A pleasant pastime in those days was to locate and listen to the faraway stations in other time zones. Sometimes late at night it was possible to tune in KNX in Los Angeles after the eastern stations had gone off the air. Listening to the Coast stations was seldom satisfactory, the sound would sometimes fade out completely for a minute or two and then come back as loud as ever. Then, too, there were evenings when static arriving in noisy bursts would make listening to the programs and music unbearable.
At first broadcasting stations operated on a strictly local and individual basis with local performers and talent supplying the programming. However, it was not long before the stations in New York City supported by the major electrical manufacturers, General Electric, Westinghouse and Radio Corporation of America began to dominate the air waves. It was found that the long distance telephone circuits could carry the programs to faraway stations for re‑broadcasting and the formation of the radio networks began. Two stations in New York, WEAF and WJZ, controlled by RCA formed the National Broadcasting Company with the Red and Blue Networks in 1927. In the same year the Columbia Broadcasting System was organized. In 1934 the Blue Network was purchased by the American Broadcasting Company and these three, NBC, CBS, and ABC have been the chief purveyors of broadcast programs nationwide, first on radio and later on television until the present day.
All the stations continued to send out local news and special programs of interest to the nearby audience.
The radio receiving sets were undergoing improvement rapidly; they became more sensitive and stable and easier to tune. A big advance came in 1925 when the sets became self‑contained and no longer needed external batteries. Transformers within the cabinets supplied the proper voltages and currents for the various parts of the circuit. Such "all electric" sets were advertised by P.J. Goss' Electric Shop in August 1925. Another development, the complete revolution in the internal circuitry of the set occurred at about the same time. The TRF, tuned radio frequency, became obsolete and was replaced by the super heterodyne circuit which remained standard until its replacement by solid state electronics. Speakers also became smaller and made into a part of the cabinet and even the external aerials and grounds were no longer necessary.
By the early 1930's there were radios in nearly every home. They were of many different manufacturers. Among the dealers besides the Electric Shop which offered RCA and Atwater‑Kent sets, the Carrington Drug was selling Crosley, Brunswick and Sonora brands. Cummings Brothers Garage offered Stewart‑Warner models as did Wiley's Variety Store. The prices ranged between $100 and $150 for a console model. All electric table sets were available with prices as low as $25.
The first large bulky receiving sets of the late 1920's and early 1930's became more compact but the cabinets tended to become larger as time went on. Instead of the strictly functional metal box the cabinet became the cabinet maker's dream. These cabinets, called consoles, stood solidly on the floor or had long spindly legs in all styles of furniture ranging from Gothic and French Provincial to Art Noveau and stark Modern. The dials in various colors and shapes were usually illuminated from the rear and other red and green lights further decorated the set.
These radios were extremely reliable and often needed no maintenance for years. If a set failed to work at all or functioned poorly the tubes were probably at fault and replacing them would remedy the difficulty. The usual procedure was to pull out all the tubes which were readily accessible and take them to the local radio shop or hardware store for testing., When the suspected tube was inserted in the proper socket of the tester the pointer on the indicating dial told immediately if the tube was in good condition or needed replacement because it was dead or weak. P.J. Goss and later C.C. Richardson of the Electric Shop had an inventory of the most commonly used tubes. The replacement tubes were not expensive, usually no more than $5. If the set still failed to work properly with the good tubes the technician at the radio shop or some other local expert could diagnose the trouble and put the set back into good operating condition.
Innovations and improvements in the sensitivity, stability and sound quality continued all through these years. The sets became smaller and cheaper. Excellent reception was obtained with sets costing no more than $15 to $50 in the Depression years if electric power from the high line came to the house. Five or six tube table radios were probably the most popular. Another development eliminated the need for an alternating current supply. Small light weight dry cell batteries were all that was needed to operate these small radios in colorful plastic cases. Radios now were easily portable and the programs could be heard almost anywhere. A parallel development was taking place in automobile radios. Their power was derived from the electrical system of the car and in the 1940's and 1950's radios became standard equipment for all makes of automobiles from Fords to Cadillacs.
In the late 1930's all wave radios were being offered to the public. Besides the standard wave band of the American Broadcasting stations, 550 to 1600 kilocycles, both ‑longer and shorter wave length bands could be tuned in. The shorter waves traveled much longer distances and with the high sensitivity sets and proper aerials broadcasts from Europe, South America and even Africa and Asia could be heard. Reception was seldom good but as World War II approached the ability to receive broadcasts from England and Germany was a big selling point for the radio dealers. Combination radio‑phonographs were also promoted in those days. At this time phonographic reproduction had changed little over the years except that now the sound on the 78 rpm records was reproduced through the audio amplification and speaker of the radio set.
The years of the Great Depression and World War II were the Golden Years of radio broadcasting. The dials were full of every imaginable kind of live entertainment, news, sports, religion and, of course, advertising now known as commercials. Some of the long remembered highlights of these years come to mind:
Comedians: Will Rogers, Amos 'n' Andy, Ed Wynn, the Perfect Fool, Eddie Cantor, George Burns and Gracie Allen
Variety: Eddie Cantor, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, Lum and Agner, Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Bob Hope, Fibber McGee and Molly and their closet, Major Bowes Original Amateur Hour
News: Lowell Thomas, Gabriel Heatter, Elmer Davis, William L. Shirer, H.V. Kalterborn, Edward R. Murrow broadcasting from Berlin just before the war, The March of Time
Sports: Ted Husing, Graham MacNamee, the Army‑Navy game, the Rose Bowl, the World Series, The Kentucky Derby Quiz Programs: Information Please, Quiz Kids, Truth or Consequences, The Sixty‑Four Dollar Question
Daytime Serials (now soap operas): Just Plain Bill, Ma Perkins, Stella Dallas, Vic and Sade, Myrt and Marge, The Guiding Light and many others which had 15 minute spots on NBC every weekday afternoon.
Drama and Mystery: Inner Sanctum with its creaking door, The Shadow, Superman, The Lone Ranger, Jack Armstrong All American Boy, The Aldrich Family, One Man's Family, Lux Radio Theater
The Big Bands: Vincent Lopez, Rudy Vallee, Paul Whiteman, Guy Lombardo, Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Ben Bernie, Wayne King, Your Hit' Parade
Classical Music: The Ford Sunday Evening Hour, The New York Philharmonic, Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony, The Voice of Firestone
There were also many unforgettable special programs and events that thrilled the nation. Some of them were: The National Republican and Democratic Conventions, Lindbergh's flight across the Atlantic in 1927, the Lindbergh kidnapping and the trial and execution of Bruno Hauptmann, the two Joe Louis‑Max Schmeling fights, King Edward VIII abdicating the throne of England for "the woman I love", Franklin D. Roosevelt's Fireside Chats, the Lindenburg disaster, the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor interrupting the Sunday afternoon Symphony. And, most of all, the suspense during the last days of the war in Europe culminating in the V‑E Day celebration.
These programs and events gave all much cheer and enjoyment during Depression Days and a lift during the World War II because they made us almost instant participants in these great events. But, again, there were changes in the air; the development of television slowed by the war came as a landslide to replace radio, almost completely as the chief source of home entertainment.
Source: A History of Foster County 1983 Page 438