Radio continues to ‘Roar’

© Mark Ollig

The 1920s. It started a new era referred to as the Roaring Twenties.

In addition to the popularity of new music and fashion, a growing interest in radio, sometimes identified as the “wireless telephone,” continued.

On Oct. 27, 1920, the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Navigation issued the first U.S. commercial broadcasting license recognizing the call sign KDKA (amateur station 8ZZ) in Pittsburg, PA.

The Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company radio station KDKA was authorized to transmit its signal with a power of 100 watts over a wavelength of 360 meters (832.8 kHz).

On Nov. 2, 1920, KDKA broadcast the results of the U.S. presidential election between Warren G. Harding and James M. Cox.

An estimated one thousand people in the surrounding Pittsburgh area listened to the radio broadcast.

KDKA’s election coverage is credited with generating public interest in using radio as a reliable source for receiving the news.

On April 12, 1921, the Pittsburgh Post newspaper reported, “Wireless Journalism Take Boxing Fans to the Ringside.”

The previous day, Pittsburgh Post sports editor Florent Gibson, inside the Motor Square Garden in Pittsburgh, announced a boxing contest from ringside over the telephone to KDKA, which broadcast the event live.

According to the newspaper, 40,000 radio listeners heard Gibson’s description of the boxing match.

Within three months, “wireless journalism” would broadcast a championship boxing match to 350,000 radio listeners in 61 cities.

On July 2, 1921, Jack Dempsey, the world heavyweight boxing champion, fought the world light-heavyweight boxing champion Georges Carpentier at Boyle’s Thirty Acres stadium in Jersey City, NJ.

The contest promoters arranged to broadcast the boxing match over the radio with Julius Hopp, an event organizer with New York’s Madison Square Garden, with the condition that all radio transmitting equipment be kept off the stadium grounds.

In New York, Hopp met with Major Andrew J. White, president of the National Amateur Radio Society.

White, an amateur radio broadcaster and former boxer, earned the title of major while serving during World War One.

Throughout his life, people continued to address him as “Major.”

He agreed to help Hopp with the broadcast and radio transmission facilities.

Major Andrew J. White and Julius Hopp arranged to work with David Sarnoff, who, since 1919, had been in charge of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA).

RCA obtained a special license from the U.S. government for a temporary radio station using the call sign WJY, which was authorized to broadcast the boxing contest.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, then Secretary of the Navy (and future U.S. president), agreed to borrow a Navy 3.5-kilowatt radio transmitter to RCA.

RCA had the Navy radio transmitter shipped to Hoboken, NJ.

J. Owen Smith, an RCA radio engineer, installed the transmitter in a radio shack next to Lackawanna and Western Railways Hoboken station terminal, 2.1 miles from Boyle’s Thirty Acres stadium.

Smith wired the transmitter’s audio output to a nearby 450-foot tall transmission tower used to broadcast the boxing match on the U.S. Navy’s long-wave radio spectrum of 1,600 meters (187.37 kHz), which the good folks of the Navy temporarily agreed not to use.

On June 26, 1921, the Pittsburg Gazette-Times newspaper printed an article saying KDKA would relay the broadcast of the Dempsey-Carpentier boxing contest.

Newspapers wrote about the upcoming July 2 radio broadcast of the championship boxing contest, generating much public interest.

Radio receivers with external loudspeakers were installed in theaters, schools, fire stations, and assembly halls for people to hear the boxing match.

Not long before July 2, an unforeseen problem arose.

American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) refused RCA’s request to install a dedicated telephone line from the ringside broadcast location at Boyle’s Thirty Acres stadium to the RCA (Navy) radio transmitter inside the radio shack at the Lackawanna and Western Railways Hoboken station.  

AT&T and RCA were adversaries battling for recognition and dominance of the national radio market at the time.

Did AT&T believe RCA would jump ahead of them by broadcasting a championship boxing match many compared with the famous July 4, 1910 “Fight of the Century” contest between heavyweight champion Jack Johnson and former champion James J. Jeffries?

Yes, according to those in the radio industry.

To work around the AT&T obstacle, Major Andrew J. White would telephone the broadcast not directly to the Navy transmitter station but to a Western Union telegraph office in Hoboken, NJ, where they hired a high-speed telegrapher.

As White described the boxing contest, his words would be typed by the telegrapher and transmitted over the Western Union network to the Hoboken Lackawanna and Western Railways railroad station, where J. Owen Smith and the Navy radio transmitter were.

Smith would read the Western Union messages containing White’s words into a microphone broadcasting to 112 radio receiving stations retransmitting the audio to its radio listeners.

Radio listeners heard J. Owen Smith’s voice repeating Major Andrew J. White’s words from ringside.

They also heard a bell gong signaling the start and end of each round. And yes, the steel trip gong (boxing bell) next to the radio microphone was being rung by J. Owen Smith.

It was pretty sneaky if you ask me; however, it did work.

The Dempsey-Carpentier boxing match began Saturday, July 2, 1921, at 3 p.m.

Sitting near ringside, Major Andrew J. White, speaking into a telephone connected to the Western Union Telegraph office, called the action of the boxing match, which Dempsey won with a fourth-round knockout of Carpentier.

Be sure to read next week’s column, “Minnesota welcomes the radio revolution.”

                     Major J. Andrew White announcing  Dempsey-Carpentier boxing

                   match over the telephone at ringside for station WJY
                                                    (July 2, 1921)

The birth of radio's 'Roaring Twenties'

© Mark Ollig

Reginald Fessenden, born in East Bolton, Quebec, was nearly ten years old during the summer of 1876 when he witnessed inventor Alexander Graham Bell give a public demonstration of his new telephone device in Brantford, Ontario, Canada.

Bell impressed the people watching by demonstrating how a person’s voice could be electrically transmitted “long distance” through a telegraph wire from Brantford to a Paris, Ontario, telegraph receiving station some 9.5 miles away.

Citizens in the Brantford telegraph station spoke and even sang and played music into the telephone.

Their audio was transmitted over the telegraph wire.

Bell’s assistant at the telephone receiving end in Paris was listening and replied, saying he heard everything from the folks in Brantford.

Bell proved his invention could be used for voice communication between towns miles apart connected by telegraph wires.

Witnessing Bell’s demonstration inspired the young Reginald Fessenden to dream of the day when the human voice would communicate over long distances without wires.

Years later, Reginald Fessenden was employed with the Edison Machine Works in New York.

He also taught electrical engineering at two universities while continuing his research in wireless communication.

Fessenden’s research led him to experiments with amplitude modulation technology and the development of wireless sound transmission.

He designed and engineered how an audio sound wave could modulate its amplitude with an electrical signal and be oscillated and transmitted as a constant radio frequency.

On Dec. 23, 1900, from his telegraph radio station in Cobb Island, MA, Fessenden, speaking into a microphone, voiced a message wirelessly transmitted through the air to a telegraph radio station one mile away.

“One, two, three, four. Is it snowing where you are, Mr. Thiessen? If it is, telegraph back and let me know.”

Fessenden’s words were electrically transmitted through the air as a radio signal.

Mr. Thiessen, listening with earphones at the telegraph station, could perfectly hear and understand the words Fessenden said.

Reginald Fessenden had successfully demonstrated “radiotelephony” (wireless speech transmission).

I learned Fessenden used power from steam engines to generate the electricity needed for transmitting the audio radio message.

Fessenden later told the story of how Dec. 24, 1906, he accomplished wireless voice communication to radiotelegraph operators stationed aboard ships in the Atlantic Ocean.

From inside his “radio shack” in Brant Rock, MA, Fessenden, using a telegraph, keyed Morse Code “CQ-CQ-CQ” dots and dashes, transmitting the message for getting the attention of any telegraph operators within range.

Inside a ship’s radio room on the Atlantic Ocean, a telegraph operator hears Fessenden’s CQ calls and acknowledges them by keying a coded message through a radio wave spark-gap transmitter.

As the ship’s telegraph operator listened, Fessenden spoke into a microphone wired to an amplifier connected to a 420-foot tall radio tower from where radio signals “carrying” his audio message were transmitted.

I can only imagine the telegraph operator’s reaction when he heard a human voice in his earphones.

Fessenden gave a brief speech and then introduced a special Christmas concert for all those listening.

He turned on an Edison phonograph with a recording cylinder that played a holiday song for two minutes into the microphone.

Fessenden then reached for his violin and played the song “O, Holy Night.”

He ended the radio broadcast by wishing everyone a “Merry Christmas.”

The radio operators on ships up and down the Atlantic seaboard and in wireless land-based telegraph stations miles away in Virginia who heard Fessenden’s Christmas concert broadcast were reportedly astonished.

I found a Nov. 7, 1907 article from the Connecticut Waterbury Democrat titled “Telephoning Without Wire.”

It referenced Reginald Fessenden’s “. . . telephoning without the aid of wires. His latest and most successful test has been to carry on a conversation over a distance of 10 miles.”

On May 10, 1910, the Minneapolis Wireless Association was founded by a group of local amateur radio hobbyists to generate public interest in using wireless radio communications as a broadcast medium.

A Minneapolis Journal article from May 12, 1910, reported a meeting where George W. Almour, the chief wireless operator on the battleship Connecticut, addressed the Minneapolis Wireless Association.

Almour discussed building and operating a “wireless station” in Minneapolis, connecting local business establishments with radio communications.

In March 1920, the University of Minnesota obtained an experimental license for a radio transmitter and operated a radio station on campus using call letters 9X1.

On Jan. 13, 1922, the University of Minnesota radio station 9X1 was granted a full license to operate under the call sign WLB.

St. Olaf College (WCAL) in Northfield, MN, and Dunwoody Industrial Institute (WCAS) in Minneapolis also began broadcasting over its student-operated radio stations.

During the early 1920s, radio listeners were using crystal sets.

These crystal radio receivers contained a piece of galena crystal, a natural semiconductor, and a thin wire or “cat’s whisker” detector used with a tuning coil that filtered out a radio frequency signal (broadcast) a listener wanted to hear.

The crystal-set radio itself requires no power. Instead, its antenna wire receives an oscillating radio wave electrically transmitted by the radio station’s tower, which provides power to the crystal set’s earphone for hearing a radio broadcast.

A crystal-set radio uses high-impedance earphones so the listener can hear the audio produced by the sound wave vibrations. Sometimes, a radio broadcast from miles away could be listened to.

Radio’s “Roaring Twenties” had begun.

Be sure to read next week’s column, “Radio continues to ‘Roar.’”

Fessenden's 420-foot tall radio tower 

Reginald Fessenden stands the tallest
 in the middle with his colleagues

The first to break the sound barrier

© Mark Ollig

On Tuesday, Oct. 14, 1947, 75 years ago today, US Air Force Capt. Charles E. “Chuck” Yeager became the first test pilot to travel faster than the speed of sound.

The aircraft Yeager flew that day was a rocket-powered jet called the Bell X-1.

Bell Aircraft Corporation of Buffalo, New York, manufactured the transonic and supersonic Bell X-1 experimental jet.

The 31-foot-long aircraft weighing 7,000 pounds uses an XLR11-RM3 rocket engine containing four chamber tubes manufactured by Reaction Motors in New Jersey.

The Bell X-1’s 600-gallon propellent fuel tanks hold 5,020 pounds of liquid oxygen and a combination of alcohol and water; when this mixture is ignited and pressurized with nitrogen through the rocket engine, it generates a powerful thrust of up to 6,000 pounds.

The stream-lined single-seat Bell X-1 rocket plane is designed with thin close-fitting mid-wings spanning 28 feet and a fuselage modeled after a .50-caliber machine-gun bullet – suggesting it was “a bullet with wings.”

The international orange-painted rocket plane is nicknamed “Glamorous Glennis” (after Yeager’s first wife, Glennis Dickhouse, who passed away in 1990).

Captain Charles Yeager made several test flights in the Bell X-1, reaching just under the speed of sound (Mach 1) on Oct. 10, 1947.

In the early morning of Oct. 14, 1947, the Bell X-1 was fully-fueled and positioned using heavy-duty fabric cable straps inside the cargo bomb bay hold of the underbelly of a B-29 Superfortress heavy bomber.

At 8 a.m., the B-29 took off from Muroc Air Force Base (now Edwards Air Force Base near Rodgers/Muroc Dry Lake, CA), with 24-year-old Capt. Charles Yeager aboard.

After reaching the 23,000-foot drop altitude, Yeager, wearing a pressure suit, is lowered via a sliding ladder into the cockpit of the Bell X-1.

A brief synchronized timing interval occurs between the crew in the cockpit of the B-29 and Capt. Yeager before he and the Bell X-1 are released into the sky.

“Five, four, three, two, one, drop!”

The Bell X-1 is air-launched from the bomb bay cargo hold of the B-29 and descends into the sky.

Seconds later, the Bell X-1 is clear of the B-29, and Capt. Yeager flips the four switches that ignite the powerful rocket engine.

Thrust from the rocket engine quickly accelerates the Bell X-1 past the B-29, as Capt. Yeager soars his aircraft into the sky and then levels off after reaching 56,000 feet.

Air Force crews use station radar on the ground to track the location of the Bell X-1, and radio-receiving equipment collects the aircraft’s flight data telemetry.

Yeager throttles the Bell X-1 rocket engine for more thrust and travels well over 700 miles per hour, reaching Mach 1, the speed of sound given the aircraft’s location, altitude, and weather environment above the California Mojave Desert.

As the sound barrier is broken, the people on the ground hear a loud “sonic boom” shockwave as they look up into the sky to find the Bell X-1 piloted by Capt. Yeager.

Yeager noticed on the instrumentation panel that the Mach needle indicator had pegged. He was flying faster than the speed of sound – past Mach 1.

“Hey, Ridley. That Machmeter is acting screwy. It just went off the scale on me!” radioed Capt. Yeager to Jack Ridley, the flight engineer aboard the B-29, still in the air.

For 18 seconds, Yeager traveled at supersonic speed in his Bell X-1, breaking the sound barrier and making history.

Capt. Yeager then slowed the Bell X-1 out of supersonic, lowered the aircraft’s altitude, and safely landed.

Yeager had flown the Bell X-1 at a recorded speed close to Mach 1.07.

In 2002, at the age of 79, General Chuck Yeager piloted a North American X-15 hypersonic rocket-powered aircraft to nearly 1,000 mph (Mach 1.35).

Yeager still had, as portrayed in the 1983 movie, “The Right Stuff.”

On Oct. 14, 2012, 65 years from the day when he became the first to travel faster than the speed of sound, Gen. Chuck Yeager, at age 89, again broke the sound barrier.

This time, he was a passenger aboard a US Air Force F-15 Eagle fighter jet traveling above the California Mojave Desert.

During World War II, Capt. Charles Yeager was a fighter pilot who flew 64 combat missions in a single-seat P-51 Mustang fighter-bomber aircraft.

“Living to a ripe old age is not an end in itself. The trick is to enjoy the years remaining,” Yeager wrote in his 1985 book, “Yeager: An Autobiography.”

Retired Air Force Brigadier General Charles “Chuck” Elwood Yeager was born on Feb. 13, 1923, in Myra, WV, and died on Dec. 7, 2020, in Los Angeles, CA, at the age of 97 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington DC.

The Bell X-1 rocket-powered aircraft is displayed at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.

You can watch a US Air Force video on Capt. Charles Yeager’s history-making achievement at https://bit.ly/3elTy6A.

If Gen. Chuck Yeager was here today on the 75th anniversary, there is no doubt he would have taken another ride and broken the sound barrier again.

Captain Charles "Chuck" Yeager being congratulated
after breaking the sound barrier
(Oct. 14, 1947)

Keep those ‘shields up’ against cyberattacks

© Mark Ollig

October is US Cybersecurity Awareness Month, reminding us to safeguard our computing devices from malicious cyber activity.

"See Yourself in Cyber” is this year’s theme from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

Cyber is short for “cyberspace,” a term first used in 1982 by author William Gibson in his story “Burning Chrome,” where he wrote about “widespread, interconnected digital technology.”

Then, the cyberspace environment comprised the computers and electronic devices used within a network’s digital infrastructure accessible via wired and wireless communication links.

Cyberspace was later used to describe where people interacted with others (usually via text) on computer bulletin board systems (BBS) traditionally operated by computer hobbyists.

BBSs were theme-based for social, business, educational, hobbyist, or gaming use.

In those early days, an online BBS was dial-up; your computer accessed it by dialing a telephone number.

CompuServe, Prodigy, and America Online were large commercial BBSs that charged for their services.

In 1989, British scientist Tim Berners-Lee began working on what would be known as the World Wide Web at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland.

On Dec. 25, 1990, Berners-Lee finished programming the original World Wide Web server and client software on his NeXTcube computer.

On Aug. 6, 1991, Berners-Lee completed programming the world’s first working website.

One month later, Paul Kunz from Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), located at Stanford University in Menlo, CA, visited Tim Berners-Lee at CERN.

Kunz was impressed with the World Wide Web project and how people could use web pages.

He was permitted to take a copy of Berners-Lee’s software program back to Stanford University.

On Dec. 12, 1991, the first website in the United States was operational at SLAC in Menlo Park, CA.

The website’s resources were available to particle research physicists at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.

As the 1990s progressed, the internet experienced a transformational paradigm shift with the addition of the World Wide Web.

Software programmers created improved graphical user interface web browsers and easy-to-use colorful websites with audio, video, and clickable hypertext links.

Individuals and businesses added more websites to the internet, and folks used the word cyberspace to describe the internet and the web.

As the web became a global phenomenon, basic international agreements regarding its and the internet’s technological standards were being observed by many countries.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which began in 1990, works to protect cyberspace as a virtual location for sharing knowledge, ideas, culture, and community.

Most countries observe the freedom of internet access for their citizens to view content, create, and actively participate on websites and social media platforms; however, some enact strict control over access to the internet and its content.

When looking back at cybersecurity, I wonder if computer coders from the mid-1940s discussed the possibility of malicious interference with the program instructions used on the first electronic digital computers, like the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC).

Any nefarious attacks on an ENIAC program instruction code could only be accomplished by someone with direct physical access to the computer’s rotary switches and electrical plugboard wiring cables terminated into specific patch panel sockets.

By the late 1940s, computing pioneer John Von Neumann became concerned about those who would alter electronic computer operating program instructions for malicious reasons.

In 1971, computer programmer Bob Thomas created “Creeper,” an experimental software program.

Thomas downloaded Creeper into the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), the predecessor of today’s modern internet.

As Creeper journeyed through the ARPANET, it would type the message “I’m the creeper, catch me if you can” on teletype printers connected to the DEC PDP-10 mainframe computers linked to the network.

Creeper was not a malicious software program and caused no damage: it was just a nuisance. However, it did prove an embedded software program could target and “infect” specific devices on a computer network. In this case, the computer infection was the text message typed on the teletype printers.

ARPANET laid the groundwork for future cybersecurity practices with its classified research projects, including one by Ray Tomlinson (inventor of email).

Tomlinson wrote the software program Reaper, whose sole purpose was to spread throughout ARPANET, embed itself in, and delete the Creeper program.

Reaper was the first antivirus to spread by attaching itself to an existing software program (Creeper) and the first disruptive program (malicious software) known as malware, which disrupts or changes a program’s intended purpose.

For 2022, the CISA lists four action steps to protect us against cyberattacks:

• Think before you click: If a link looks a little off, think before you click. It could be an attempt to get sensitive information or install a malware program without your knowledge.

• Update your software: Act upon seeing a software update notification. Better yet, turn on the automatic updates for your computer and smart devices.

• Use strong passwords: Use long, unique, and randomly generated passwords.

• Enable multi-factor authentication: Protects your online accounts, making them double-password protected. As a result, you are significantly less likely to get hacked.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency website is https://www.cisa.gov.

Not many folks say “cyberspace” these days, but it is still out there.

During this 18th anniversary of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, let us keep those, as Captain Kirk would say, “shields up” against computer cyberattacks.