A Little Radio History For You On This National Radio Day

Happy national radio day, friends!

Lucky for you it’s not one of the federal holidays we can take the day off for so we are here and ready to share a bit of radio history for you!

Back in 1920, when Hot Wings was just a wee lad, Westinghouse was one of the leading radio manufacturers and they had an idea for selling more radios by offering programming.

Radio began as a one-to-one method of communication, so this was a fantastic idea.

Dr. Frank Conrad was a Pittsburgh area ham operator with lots of connections and would play records over the airwaves for his friends to enjoy.

This was just the kind of thing Westinghouse wanted, and it asked Conrad to help set up a regularly transmitting station in Pittsburgh and on November 2, 1920, station KDKA was born!

Why November 2nd? Well it was election day, and the power of radio made it so people could get the results of the Harding-Cox presidential race before the newspaper!

KDKA was a huge hit, inspiring other companies to take up broadcasting and, boom, In four years there were 600 commercial stations around the country and now look at us today!

For more history about the awesome thing we get to do every day, click here!