Frank Conrad (1874 – 1941) was a radio broadcasting pioneer who worked as the Assistant Chief Engineer for the Westinghouse Electric Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He began what are considered the first regular radio broadcasts from his Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, garage in 1920, and is responsible for the founding of the first licensed broadcast station in the world: KDKA.
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Early life
Frank was born May 4, 1874 in Pittsburgh as the son of a railroad mechanic. He quit school in the 7th grade, never returning to formal schooling again, and went to work for Westinghouse at age 16. At 23 he began working in the Westinghouse Testing Department, where he developed such inventions as the watt/hour meter. Conrad was awarded more than 200 patents throughout his life .
Early radio experiments
Conrad first became interested in radio in 1912 when, in order to settle a bet on the accuracy of a watch, Conrad built a radio in order to hear time signals from the Arlington, Virginia Naval Observatory. He then constructed, in his garage, a new transmitter, licensed in 1916 as 8XK, whose signal could be heard throughout the Pittsburgh area. In response to popular demand, Conrad began broadcasting for two hours each Wednesday and Saturday night. When all civilian amateur radio operations ceased in 1917, Conrad began using his radio for military purposes during World War I. Conrad resumed his amateur radio broadcasts in October 1919. Most of the content of these early broadcasts was music: Conrad's sons were talented musicians and Conrad played numerous songs from his record collection. He soon ran out of records, however, and struck a deal with a local music store: if the store would supply him with records, he would give the store on-air promotions. This exchange is arguably the first broadcast commercial in airwave history. There are also reports of football scores reported, as well as some talk programming. The vice-president of Westinghouse soon saw an ad in the newspaper for a toy store advertising radio sets that could receive Conrad's broadcasts. He saw the potential for mass communication that radio offered, and Westinghouse began manufacturing radio receivers.
KDKA
Westinghouse applied for a callsign in mid-October, 1920. The callsign arrived just in time for the November 2, 1920, election, and the radio station KDKA was born. The original station was a shack on top of a Westinghouse building in East Pittsburgh. Conrad was not there to witness the historical broadcast, however; worried that the station might go down, he was sitting in his Wilkinsburg garage with his own transmitter as a backup.
Later life
After the great success of KDKA, Conrad turned his attention to the world of shortwave radio. He received numerous awards for his pioneering work, most notably the Edison Medal from the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, now IEEE, in 1930. In 1928, Frank Conrad demonstrated a movie-film-to-television converter at Westinghouse. He retired from Westinghouse in 1940, and died while on vacation, December 11, 1941, four days after Pearl Harbor.
References
- Frank Conrad by J.E. Brittain, Proceedings of the IEEE, June 2007, pp. 1378-1380.
- accessyear=2005 Westinghouse Radio Station KDKA, 1920. IEEE milestones.
- AM 1020 KDKA. A History of KDKA. Retrieved on April 18, 2005.
External links
| Awards | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Charles F. Scott (engineer) |
AIEE Edison Medal 1930 |
Succeeded by Elwin W. Rice |
