PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION RETURNS BROADCAST ON KDKA
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (JFK+50) On November 2, 1920, radio station KDKA broadcast the presidential election returns on a wavelength of 545 kHz. Announcer Leo Rosenberg, speaking into a "tomato can" microphone, opened the broadcast with these words...
"This is KDKA of the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company. We'd appreciate anyone hearing this broadcast would communicate with us as we are anxious to know how far the broadcast is reaching..."
The radio signal was sent out on a 100 watt transmitter positioned on top of Westinghouse's 9 story K building located in East Pittsburgh.
When the broadcast began at 8 p.m. Eastern time, there were only a hundred listeners, but as Richard Gunderman writes...
"Politics would never be the same."
With the success of KDKA, Westinghouse went on to establish 3 more stations by the end of 1921...WJZ (Newark, NJ), WBZ (Springfield, MA), & KYW (Chicago).
*KDKA, 1020 kHz, is known as the "Pioneer Broadcast Station of the World." It is the first commercially licensed radio station in the United States. Frank Conrad was the man who made the first broadcast on Nov 2 1920 possible. He would claim more than 100 patents.
SOURCES
"KDKA: Broadcasting's Pioneer Station," by Brett Davis, Fall 2010, www.pabook2.libraries.psu.edu/
"100 years ago, the first commercial radio broadcast announced the results of the 1920 election, politics would never be the same," by Richard Gunderman, October 30, 2020, www.theconversation.com/
