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AM Broadcast or Electrical Recording - What Came 1st?

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  • AM Broadcast or Electrical Recording - What Came 1st?

    Here is a bit of trivia - - - what came first - - - AM Broadcast of records or electrical recording? The surprising answer is that AM broadcasting of records came first, circa 1919 by Frank Conrad from his garage using call letters 8XK*. Initially, he took requests and then played the requested record(s). Then, he started playing records on a regularly scheduled basis on two days of the week (Wed and Sat). This station eventually evolved into KDKA, Pittsburgh, Pa. That station is still on the air and is a clear-air, 50 Kw affair operating on 1020 KHz. One would have thought that electrical recording would have come first on the timeline since to transmit AM in the form of phonograph records as the source, required amplification (pre-amplification as well as power amplification for the RF carrier-modulator). I think that the same setup could have been used (sans the RF carrier system) to create an electrically cut wax record master by simply using an armature assembly (like loudspeakers of that time period) connected mechanically to a "cutter". But, that is not how events played out. Electrical recording commenced around 1924-25, quite a bit later than AM commercial broadcast.

    Craig

    *The Antique Wireless Association Review, Volume 33, 2020, pg 28
    Last edited by Craig Maier; 06-14-2020, 03:28 PM.
    "Who put orange juice in my orange juice?" - - - William Claude Dukenfield

  • #2
    The photo that I saw of the setup appeared to come from an old glass negative and was overexposed. But I looked closely at it. It was a table-top Victrola wind-up job. It did not have the conventional acoustical pick-up pipe. It appeared to me that there were wires going directly from the pickup device over to the modulator frame (rack). I do not know what he used to 'transduce' the signal, but I would suspect it was likely a modified carbon telephone microphone. As a side note - it was Edison who invented the carbon-button microphone for telephony which made the telephone practical (produced a large signal and effectively yielded power amplification). Prior to that, the Bell telephone used the same dynamic earpiece for the dynamic microphone function, which yielded no power amplification of the voice signal, so early telephones only went about around a mile or so.

    Craig
    Last edited by Craig Maier; 06-15-2020, 03:26 PM.
    "Who put orange juice in my orange juice?" - - - William Claude Dukenfield

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    • #3
      Craig I'm curious, what did they have for radio prior to 1919? Recently I have been researching an old radio I own - it turned out to be a 1923 stacked Amrad receiver set. In my search though I ran across many radios as the form of Crystal sets. I saw one pretty cool Westinghouse dual Crystal detector from 1913... I'm guessing just news broadcasts & maybe some live performances?
      Last edited by DJBohn; 10-14-2020, 08:02 PM.

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      • #4
        There was probably some experimental transmissions of music prior to 1919, but apparently not on a commercial scale. People mostly listened to phonographs and mechanical music devices like player pianos, music boxes and the like. Probably more than anything, people created their own music when a group of people got together in a living room someplace (pianos were commonplace items back in those days), and people knew how to sing on-key without Auto-tune.

        Craig
        Last edited by Craig Maier; 10-16-2020, 05:10 PM.
        "Who put orange juice in my orange juice?" - - - William Claude Dukenfield

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        • #5
          In 1906, Reginald Fessenden transmitted music (Christmas day) from Brant Rock in Massachusetts using 75 KHz and 500 Watts from a high speed alternator.. Modulation for AM used a carbon mike in the output circuit (water cooled). Fessenden also invented the Hetrodyne principal along with many other early radio inventions.

          Some ships at sea heard the broadcast and were very surprised.

          Marc

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          • #6
            Interesting - I guess that is where the phrase "where is the Hot Mike" came from!

            Craig
            "Who put orange juice in my orange juice?" - - - William Claude Dukenfield

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