Growth of Radio

Radio Record, Volume II, Issue 9, 14 September 1928, Page 11

Growth of Radio

Wonderful Record of U.S.A. FR EMARKABLE statistics have been issued by the Department of Commerce of the United States of America to show how the wireless industry has grown in that country since the first broadcasting station was opened there about eight years ago. The first broadeasting station in America, and probably in the world, was the station KDKA of the Westinghouse Company at Pittsburg. This station was responsibile for the discovery, in quite an accidental manner, of the remarkable possibilities of wireless broadcasting. The station was opened in 1920 for general experiments in wireless telephony. The object of the experiments was to develop wireless telephony as a rival to the land line for ordinary commercial communication, but while tests were being held it was resolved, as a matter of convenience, to transmit gramophone music. AS soon as these transmissions began it was discovered that the number of amateur stations within range of its transmissions increased remarkably, and it then became evident that most of the new stations had been erected solely to pick up the musical transmissions. Programmes were promptly improved, and a regular service was instituted; and it wa- not long before the opening of this service was followed by the construction of wireless telephone stations in ractically every other large centre in the United States. When KDKA began its experimental service the value of wireless apparatus sold annually in America was less than £400,000. In 1927 equipment sold was valuea at more than £100,000,000. At the same time about 10,000,000 of the 28,000,000 homes in the United States were provided with receiving sets, while the number of broadcast listeners in America was estimated at 40000,000. Nearly 500,000 persons are now employed in the American wireless industry. The number of broadcasting stations operating in the United States at present is estimated at nearly 700.