Imagine a world in which the only long-distance communications were coded telegraph or the very expensive, one-to-one medium of long-distance telephone. No music from another town was ever heard unless the orchestra came to your town; no lecturer’s opinions were given unless he found a local podium. All news from parts unknown was written and printed in the newspapers, sometimes days later. And then suddenly, there was radio, and the world changed overnight.
On Feb. 20, 1926, WGY Radio, broadcast from Schenectady, celebrated its fourth year on the air. The Christian Science Monitor wrote, “Many advances have been made in the science of radio but WGY has never lagged behind . . . It was WGY that radiocast for the first time in this or any other country on 50,000 watts; it was WGY that conducted a series of experiments using alternately horizontal and vertical radiation; it was WGY that perfected successful 250-mile radio relay on 560-meter wavelength.” In the radio-crazy days of the ’20s, it’s likely the average reader actually had some familiarity with all those terms and what they meant. But the accomplishments weren’t just technical:
“From the time of its formal opening four years ago, WGY avoided the inclusion of ‘mechanical’ numbers, that is, selections produced by photograph or player piano. The Department of Commerce recognized the studio-produced program by creating a special class, known as Class B, in which were included only those stations which did not depend upon mechanical music.”
The article noted that from the start Martin Rice, manager of radiocasting for General Electric, saw the need for programming that originated outside the radio studio, and in the first year WGY began development of remote stations connected to the studio by wire. “Public halls, churches and theaters in Schenectady were first brought into the studio by wires; then Albany was covered in a similar way, and a short time later a pair of wires spanned the 150 miles to New York.” This meant that in those early days, Schenectady-based actors, singers, musicians, lecturers and more were being heard throughout the region. With connections to WFBL in Syracuse, WHAM in Rochester and WMAK in Buffalo, “practically the whole State becomes the studio of WGY and anything originating in any city in the system is made available for radiocasting.”
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