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Valerie Bell

COM 230

20 June 2016

The Importance of Frank Conrad’s Contributions to Electronic Media

Frank Conrad was a pioneer of radio technologies. Born in Pittsburgh, PA, this fledgling

teenager left school at the age of 16 to pursue an apprenticeship at Westinghouse. He began

moving up the corporate ladder, and seven years later, when he turned 23, “…because of his

mechanical abilities, Conrad was promoted and began working in the Westinghouse Testing

Department,” (Powell). With this promotion, he had more access to various technologies. This is

where his inventions and experimentations truly began to take off. “Conrad designed a disk-type

watt-hour meter, which was used in homes throughout the United States,”

(Explorepahistory.com). This particular type of meter measured the amount of electricity that

each household consumed. Conrad invented this device during his time inside the Westinghouse

Testing Department. Then, at the age of 30, the Westinghouse Company promoted him to

engineer. This new promotion gave him access to more tools, and sparked his creativity.

At the age of 38, his interests in radio were piqued after he entered into a bet regarding

the accuracy of a watch. He successfully “…built a wireless receiver to transmit time signals

from the Naval Observatory…He then constructed his own transmitter, which enabled his

amateur station in his garage to be licensed as 8XK,” (Powell). Conrad had been toying around

with radio and broadcasted music from his very own garage and transmitted the signals

throughout Pittsburgh. His show took place on Wednesday and Friday nights, and the music he

played was from phonograph records. At one point, he had exhausted all of his records, and

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mentioned this dilemma to his listeners. The audience then sent Conrad approximately 500

records. The audience enjoyed Conrad’s broadcasts and wanted them to continue, so the records

were their way of putting their input into the type of music they wanted to hear. His listeners

requested popular songs. Keeping in theme, Conrad’s show advertised a local record store in

Wilkinsburg, PA.

“This was the first radio advertising,” (McCoy). Conrad’s station spread awareness of the

record store, and listeners could purchase songs they heard on his broadcasts at the shop. This

added traffic and business to the record store. When he was not receiving records from listeners,

Conrad would also accumulate the records he played on the show from the store, which again,

provided content for his station. Local retailers advertised radio sets that could receive and

transmit Conrad’s broadcasts. One day, H.P. Davis, who was the vice president of Westinghouse,

passed by an advertisement for these sets and an idea emerged. “Davis was convinced that radio

was unlimited and could be used as a medium for mass communication,” (Pfaltz). Davis saw

radio in a way that was unique from Conrad’s own view.

From an invention side of things, Conrad saw the power of radio from a more behind-the-

scenes approach. As the vice president of Westinghouse, Davis had a different outlook and

approached radio from a business perspective. Conrad’s broadcasts persuaded people to purchase

radio sets, so they could hear the broadcasts. Davis could tell that Conrad was onto something

genius with his broadcasts, and wanted to become a part of this exciting new step in electronic

media history. With all of this in mind, Davis began making plans to move the location of the

radio broadcasts away from Conrad’s garage and into the Westinghouse plant. However, a

change in location was not the only alteration Davis had in mind for the station. The radio station

also needed a license from the government “In 1920, Conrad applied to the Department of

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Commerce for a special type of license to begin a broadcasting service. This station was

authorized to use a frequency away from amateur interference,” (Gross). The station was given

the call letters KDKA, though the reason behind these exact letters is still unknown. Davis also

wanted to add some programming changes and decided that the first program of the redesigned

radio show should be the results of the Harding-Cox election. “On November 2, 1920, KDKA

broadcasted the results of the Harding-Cox election, which Harding won. This was the first

regularly scheduled broadcast ever made,” (Nation’s Broadcast). KDKA was the first radio

station. A controversy does remain, however, because there were other amateur radio stations

around at the time.

But because KDKA made the first regularly scheduled broadcast, it cemented its

reputation as the first radio station in history. In 1921, KDKA accomplished another milestone

when it became “…the first radio station to offer play-by-play coverage of a baseball game. The

game that it covered was an 8-5 Pittsburgh Pirates win over the Philadelphia Phillies,” (Dreazen).

As KDKA was building its programming executives chose to broadcast religious services. They

took a risk when they chose to design equipment that could broadcast mass services over the

radio. With these types of broadcasts, Westinghouse wanted to transmit all aspects of the service,

from the music to the readings over the air. “Therefore, Westinghouse successfully designed

equipment that was installed inside of a church. After proper installation, the technology had the

capability to detect the choir and congregation singing and the sermon and spoken word portions

of the mass.

After picking up the frequencies of these different sounds, the technology was also

powerful enough to amplify all of these various components and send it out through a radio

broadcast with clarity,” (Earlyradiohistory.us). Listeners who heard the broadcast could easily

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distinguish each portion of the mass and had an easy time following along with the service. This

risk paid off in the long run, and listeners who could not attend services in person were happy

they could listen along instead. The station in Pennsylvania was so successful, that executives at

Westinghouse knew they wanted even more stations. In the fall of 1921, two new stations

emerged. Westinghouse built a radio station at one of their factories in East Springfield,

Massachusetts, known as WBZ.

Employees of Westinghouse built the other radio station at the factory in Newark, New

Jersey, and this station used the call letters of WJZ. Aside from stations in Pennsylvania, New

Jersey, and Massachusetts, Westinghouse also wanted to transmit broadcasts in the west.

The specific strategy in mind was to broadcast throughout the United States, moving

from east to west. Therefore, Westinghouse added a station in the city of Chicago, Illinois. “This

station began operation from the Commonwealth Edison Building on November 11, 1921.

Westinghouse opened this station through an arrangement with the Chicago Edison Company.

The Chicago Edison Company wanted to broadcast complete grand opera from the Auditorium

Theatre in Chicago,” (Earlyradiohistory.us).

The Chicago Edison Company was familiar with Westinghouse’s radio technology, and

knew that the company had the capabilities to broadcast the opera with clarity. On the other end,

Westinghouse entered into an arrangement with the Chicago Edison Company, because

Westinghouse wanted to broaden its content offerings as a way to grow its listening audience.

“On Monday, November 14, 1921, the opera season officially began and KYW

broadcasted this opera. This was the first time in recorded history that a complete opera, from the

overture to the final chorus, was transmitted through radio,” (Earlyradiohistory.us). The

incorporation of opera brought in a whole other audience of listeners and showed the diversity of

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content that Westinghouse could broadcast to its listeners. From baseball to political elections, to

the arts, the power that radio had for niche groups of listeners was monumental. Radio had

content for everyone, and Westinghouse wanted to offer a wide array of programming.

Meanwhile, Conrad moved up the corporate ladder and eventually made his way to

becoming the engineering chief at Westinghouse. He remained at the factory in Pittsburgh and

worked behind-the-scenes on various inventions. Conrad was mostly involved with the tactical

side of things and used his creativity to produce great technologies. He worked on perfecting

KDKA, and the transmission process of broadcast. “In 1924, Conrad attended an international

conference in London regarding the formation of a radio link between Europe and South

America. By using a shortwave receiver and a hotel hanger as an antenna, Conrad transmitted

extracts from newspapers in code, while colleague David Sarnoff copied them down. The next

day, Sarnoff presented the copied code, which revealed the effectiveness of shortwave. As a

result of this, a proposed long-wave system was replaced by short-wave transmitters,” (Powell).

After this discovery, Conrad went on to accumulate over 200 different patents from

England, America, and even Germany. He also received the Edison Medal from the American

Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1930. Eleven years later, in 1941, he retired to Miami,

Florida. But Before he even made his way to the sunshine state, he became ill. Only five weeks

into his Miami retirement, Conrad passed away from a heart attack on December 11, 1941 at

exactly 1:10 a.m.

I chose to write about Frank Conrad and the evolution of KDKA because his inventions

changed the face of radio. Radio technology has drastically evolved, but it still plays a role in

society. I am an avid fan of Rider’s very own 107.7 the Bronc, and recently the Bronc won

“…Best Student Station of the Year, according to the New Jersey Broadcasters Association,”

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(The Bronc). Without Conrad’s inventions, there may not have been a student radio station. To

this day, modern radio stations still play music and have similar formats to Conrad’s station.

Radio has become a staple of my daily routine, and it has changed the face of electronic

history. Conrad’s technological contributions have molded the audio landscape, and placed

radios in countless homes throughout the nation. His discovery regarding short-waves enabled

international radio to evolve in new ways and produced a more effective radio transmission

system. Although radio has made a transition to the Internet, such as Spotify and Pandora, all of

these technologies began from the same place and started out the same way. Arguably, without

the likes of KDKA and its predecessors, there would not be a Q-102 or even Pandora.

What began as a small little broadcast inside of a garage quickly became the start of a

radio empire, and it is fascinating to look back and see how far radio has come in the past

century. If Conrad was alive today and saw the state of radio technology, I am sure he would be

proud to learn about Sirius XM radio. The content and programming of radio may have changed,

but the ability of millions of listeners to all sing along to the same songs at the same point in time

is still something worth being impressed by. Conrad engineered an empire and his legacy still

stands even today. It is fascinating how one inventive mind transformed the ways in which

people consume audio media.

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Works Cited

The Bronc, 107.7 WRRC. "We are officially The Best Student Station Of The Year according to

the New Jersey Broadcasters Association. We are so honored to have received this award.

A special thank you to General Manager John Mozes, our sponsors, the Rider

Community, our hard working staff, and all who support us each day. This would not be

possible if it weren't for you. Thank you, and please tune in to 107.7 The Bronc ?#NJBA?

?#BestStudentStation? ?#NJBA69thConference? ?#CollegeRadio? ?#1077TheBronc?."

23 June 2016, 1:31 p.m. Facebook update. <https://www.facebook.com/1077thebronc>.

"Development of Radiophone Broadcasting." Earlyradiohistory.us. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 June

2016. <http://earlyradiohistory.us/1922dev.htm>.

Dreazen, Yochi J. "Strong Signal: Pittsburgh's KDKA Tells Story of how Radio has Survived ---

Changing Continually, Station Battled TV, Tapes, CDs; Now, a Satellite Threat --- Mr.

Conrad's Garage Sessions." Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition ed.May 15 2001.

ProQuest. Web. 20 June 2016 .

"Frank Conrad". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2016. Web. 20 Jun. 2016

<http://www.britannica.com/biography/Frank-Conrad>.

"Frank Conrad Historical Marker." Explorepahistory.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 June 2016.

<http://explorepahistory.com/hmarker.php?markerId=1-A-3A4>.

"Frank Conrad, KDKA Founder, Dies in Miami." Pittsburgh Press [Pittsburgh] 11 Dec. 1941: n.

pag. Rpt. in Google News. N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. Print.

Gross, Lynne S. "Chapter 5: Radio and Audio." Electronic Media: An Introduction. 11th ed.

New York: McGraw, 2013. 117-19. Print.

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"Leaders in the March of Business." Nation's Business (pre-1986) 11 1940: 50.ProQuest. Web.

26 June 2016 .

McCoy, Adrian, and Maria Sciullo. "The Rise and Fall of AM Radio." McClatchy - Tribune

Business News Oct 13 2013. ProQuest. Web. 26 June 2016 .

Pfaltz, Albert. "KDKA: Radios New 500 Horsepower Voice." Antiqueradios.com. Antique

Radios, Apr. 1931. Web. 26 June 2016.

<http://www.antiqueradios.com/features/kdka.html>.

Powell, Casey. "Conrad, Frank." Pabook2.libraries.psu.edu. Pennsylvania State University,

2006. Web. 20 June 2016.

<http://pabook2.libraries.psu.edu/palitmap/bios/Conrad__Frank.html>.