Wednesday, June 7, 2023

Chicago has rolled with radio for 101 years



     Not many Chicagoans recognize the name George Frost. Typical for a city that shrugs off its technological pioneers. I also imagine most people here, even if they know the atom was first split by human agency on that repurposed squash court under the stands at Stagg Field on the University of Chicago campus in 1942, have no idea which human led the effort (sigh, Enrico Fermi, which will be better known when Columbus Drive is finally named after him, perhaps by the centennial in 2042).
     Frost is considered the first person to rig up a car radio, putting one in the door of his Ford Model T, in May 1922, in his capacity as president of the Radio Club at Lane High School.
     Somebody was going to do it — cars were all the rage and radio was all the rage, particularly in Chicago. (Ever wonder why the red wagons manufactured here for years were called Radio Flyers? What is “radio” about a kid’s wagon? The answer: Radio was wildly popular, and Antonio Pasin, the Italian immigrant who founded the company, wanted his wagons to be wildly popular, too. The “Flyer” part of the name was a nod to Charles Lindbergh.)
     That same year, 1930, that Liberty Coaster changed its name to Radio Flyer, another burgeoning Chicago company, destined also to build an empire based on mobility, Motorola, started selling radios specifically designed to go into cars. Founder Paul Galvin said he came up with the company name while shaving, a mashup of “motor” and “Victrola” (double sigh: a kind of early record player). The ST71 cost $110, and to put that in perspective, the average new car cost $600 in 1930, which means putting in that new Motorola gizmo would be like paying $5,000 for a car’s sound system today.
     Those expensive receivers were AM radios. The AM range of the electronic spectrum, from 535 to 1700 kHz, has been popular ever since, as it leads to a stronger signal because the waves don’t skip away out of the Earth’s atmosphere as easily as FM waves. AM reception has an improved signal-to-noise ratio, or less interference.

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18 comments:

  1. Oh how much fun this was to read! Thank you...my crummy cheapo clown car has no CD or cassette player... wtelf?

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  2. No, rename Balbo after Fermi. We shouldn't have a street named after an actual Fascist!

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  3. Never heard of the Muntz Jet. Thanks.

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  4. Radio, itself (not just car radios) is part of Chicago's History. Zenith Radio was born in Chicago prior to Motorola, following a time of lawless "gang wars" across town, replete with vandalism of each others' self-made antennas.
    https://www.madeinchicagomuseum.com/single-post/zenith-radio-corp/

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    1. Yes indeed. Short wave radio was first demonstrated here, by Zenith, as a way for train engines to communicate with their cabooses.

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    2. Zenith used the slogan "the quality goes in before the name goes on"...and began in Chicago in 1918 as a small producer of amateur radio equipment. The name "Zenith" came from ZN'th, a contraction of its founders' ham radio call sign, 9ZN.

      Zenith Radio Company was incorporated in 1923. They became famous for high-quality radios and electronics. Zenith introduced the first portable radio in 1924, and push-button tuning in 1927. It added automobile radios in the 1930s, which sold for about $60. Zenith established one of the first FM stations in the country in 1940--WEFM. It was an FM classical music station for decades, before being sold in the 1970s.

      The first Zenith TV set appeared in 1939, with its first commercial sets sold to the public in 1948. Zenith pioneered the development of high-contrast and flat-face picture tubes, and the stereo system used on analog TV broadcasts in the U.S.and Canada.

      My father, who was an early adapter (we had LP records and a TV by 1950), brought home a Zenith tabletop radio in the mid-50s, one that had both FM and SW (shortwave) bands. There weren't many FM stations in Chicago then, and the ones that existed played what later came to be called "elevator music." So we listened to foreign-language broadcasts from overseas, and transmissions from ships at sea. He soon got bored with it and bought a large "hi-fi" set, with sliding doors, legs, AM-FM radio, and a turntable. I wish he'd passed that Zenith table model on to me.It would probably still work--assuming I could find the right tubes.



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    3. In fact WEFM was the first FM station, period!

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    4. Named for Zenith executive Eugene F. McDonald, one of the founders..,

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    5. My father had a great Zenith radio. About the size of an early toaster oven it had terrific sound and lasted forever. He loved Wally Phillips and Franklin Mccormick. When we moved from Rogers Park to Niles in the 50s he still worked at DeVry Tech on Belmont. I'm not sure if that's how he came across the old jukebox, but I know it's how he acquired the amplifier he paired with it to broadcast Christmas music to our whole block. It was little bigger than a wooden case of Coca-Cola and just as heavy with a dozen or so vacuum tubes amid the dusty wiring. I didn't hear sound quality equal to it until I came back from Japan with stereo components purchased through the Navy Exchange. He would take me to work occasionally, at o'dark thirty, as he managed the cafeteria. I would wander the halls and classrooms marveling at the electronics. I remember a self driving "car" that would follow a line of white adhesive tape using an electric eye. At an open house one time they had closed circuit TV set up so you could see yourself on it, a big deal for an eight year old in 1958! In the early 70s, driving at night in the desert east of San Diego and around Reno I would hear WLS on car radios. That was a nice reminder of sweet home Chicago.

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  5. The ancient history of Chicago radio is fascinating, at least for us radio nerds. My family has a handwritten letter from my great-great-uncle to my grandmother dated July 9, 1923 where he tells of an upcoming radio broadcast "at Edgewater Beach". He listened at his farm near South Bend IN. A little googling reveals the broadcast to be WJAZ which sorta morphed into WGN (see Wikipedia and also https://www.edgewaterhistory.org/ehs/content/v27-4-radio-broadcasting-edgewater-beach-hotel-part-1-webh-am ).

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  6. It might be worth pointing out that one reason conservatives are eager to preserve AM radio in cars is because it's the home of the festering cesspool of hate and lies that is right-wing talk radio. So much for the government not picking winners and losers.

    In your picture, the partially deflated basketball that proclaims "Never Flat" is a nice touch. That must have given kids an early lesson in truth in advertising.

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  7. Be careful of tying Lindbergh to the Flyer wagons. You’ll be starting a rush to remove his name since he was an admirer of Hitler! Come to think of it…..

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  8. I have great memories of am radio. I've always been a night owl, and during summer vacation from school when I was a teenager, I would read, sometimes all night, while listening to Sid McCoy play jazz from midnight to 5am, WCFL 1000 am on your radio dial! Sometimes I would change the channel to hear Franklin McCormick's torch hour from 2 to 3am. And will never forget the wonderful Larry Lujack on WLS. I always hoped Lujack got his wish for when he died: at the moment before he died, he wanted someone to shove a cinnamon roll in his mouth. Still makes me laugh.

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    1. One of the good things my old man passed on to me was his love for all things Frank. And there were plenty of sad Sinatra ballads on WGN in the wee small hours of the morning. When I finally got the chance to do some "parking" on those dark Evanston streets along the lake, I pushed the button for 720 AM. The lady next to me probably thought I was nuts--"And now, one of the more quiet hours of the night... This...is the Torch Hour..." (cue the sad Sinatra tune) For many of us, Sixties AM radio wasn't all rock and roll.

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    2. nice "driveway moments" so to speak :)

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    3. KJR (AM) 950 Seattle WA April 1964 – Sept. 1966
      WMEX (AM) 1510 Boston Sept. 1966 – Dec. 1966
      WCFL (AM) 1000 Chicago 1967...four months; all-nights
      WLS (AM) 890 Chicago Aug. 1967 – July 1972
      WCFL (AM) 1000 Chicago July 3, 1972 – March 16, 1976
      WLS (AM) 890, WLS-FM 94.7 Chicago Sept. 16, 1976 – Aug. 28, 1987
      WUBT 103.5 Chicago May 25, 2000 – Jan. 10, 2001
      WRLL 1690 Chicago Sept. 8, 2003 – Aug. 15, 2006

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