98 Fun Facts About Radio

Which physicist shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Marconi for wireless telegraphy?

Braun invented the cathode-ray tube oscilloscope and a crystal detector; the two laureates never worked together.

Where did Marconi report hearing the letter S sent across the Atlantic from Cornwall on 12 December 1901?

Signal Hill, Newfoundland: on 12 December 1901 Marconi reported hearing three clicks, the Morse letter S, sent from Poldhu in Cornwall; nothing recorded it, so historians have long debated what he heard.

Roughly how long was the kite-supported receiving antenna Marconi used for his 1901 transatlantic test?

The kite hoisted roughly 500 feet of wire into the sky over Signal Hill on 12 December 1901; the transmitting station at Poldhu in Cornwall supplied the power.

Marconi's mother Annie was the granddaughter of the founder of which famous drinks company?

Jameson whiskey: Annie Jameson was a granddaughter of John Jameson, founder of the Dublin distillery; her family's connections helped Marconi find backers in Britain when Italy showed little interest.

Marconi was born in 1874 in which Italian city?

Guglielmo Marconi was born in Bologna on 25 April 1874; as a teenager he was introduced to physicist Augusto Righi of the University of Bologna, who let him use the physics laboratory.

At the hour of Marconi's funeral in 1937, radio transmitters around the world fell silent for how long?

Two minutes: after Marconi died in Rome on 20 July 1937, radio stations around the world observed a two-minute silence in tribute on the day of his funeral.

Marconi was offered free passage on the Titanic but sailed three days earlier on which liner instead?

Lusitania: Marconi had paperwork to finish and preferred that ship's public stenographer, his daughter Degna recalled, so he sailed three days before Titanic left Southampton in April 1912.

Reginald Fessenden's reported Christmas Eve 1906 audio broadcast came from a station in which place?

Brant Rock, Massachusetts: Fessenden's station there used a General Electric alternator built under Ernst Alexanderson to carry voice; he had already sent speech about a mile by radio in 1900.

The SI unit of frequency, used to tune every radio dial, is named after which physicist?

Heinrich Hertz: in 1887 he generated and detected electromagnetic waves in his Karlsruhe laboratory, proving they could travel through the air; the hertz, one cycle per second, honours him.

Whose 1864 presentation first proposed that light and radio waves were both electromagnetic radiation?

James Clerk Maxwell presented 'A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field' to the Royal Society in December 1864, predicting electromagnetic waves moving at light speed; Hertz confirmed them experimentally in 1887.

In which year did the US Supreme Court restore the priority of Tesla, Lodge and Stone's radio patents over Marconi's?

1943: in Marconi Wireless Telegraph Co. of America v. United States, decided on 21 June 1943, the Supreme Court held Marconi's tuning patent invalid because Lodge, Tesla and Stone had anticipated it.

What name did Lee de Forest give the three-element vacuum tube he developed around 1906-1908?

Audion: de Forest added a control grid to Fleming's two-element valve and patented the three-element tube in 1907; the triode became the first practical electronic amplifier, enabling broadcasting and long-distance telephony.

What was the inaugural program of Pittsburgh station KDKA on 2 November 1920?

The station went on air under the temporary 'special amateur' call sign 8ZZ and did not broadcast daily until 1921.

Engineer Frank Conrad's experimental station 8XK inspired which company to launch KDKA?

Westinghouse: its vice-president Harry P. Davis saw a September 1920 department-store advertisement selling receivers to hear Conrad's 8XK concerts and decided the company should run its own station, KDKA.

Titanic's wireless operators Jack Phillips and Harold Bride were on whose payroll?

The Marconi company: Phillips and Bride were employees of the Marconi International Marine Communication Company, not White Star; their job was mostly sending passengers' paid 'marconigrams', with ice warnings in between.

Which distress call were Marconi's ship operators instructed to use from 1904, before SOS took hold?

CQD: a Marconi circular of January 1904 ordered its operators to send CQD for ships in distress; Jack Binns's CQD from the sinking liner Republic in 1909 helped bring rescue to about 1,500 people.

Which country was the first to adopt the SOS distress signal, in 1905?

Germany: German radio regulations effective 1 April 1905 introduced the SOS signal; the 1906 Berlin International Radiotelegraph Convention made it a worldwide standard from 1 July 1908.

Which Morse code pattern is the SOS distress signal?

SOS is sent as three dots, three dashes, three dots, run together as one continuous signal; it was chosen in 1905 for being unmistakable, not as an abbreviation of any phrase.

Interference that hampered Titanic's distress calls prompted which piece of US legislation?

The Radio Act of 1912, signed that August, required federal licences for every transmitter and pushed amateurs below 200 metres so their chatter could not swamp ship distress traffic.

WEAF's first sponsored program in August 1922, often called the first radio commercial, promoted what?

Apartments in Queens: the Queensboro Corporation paid for about ten minutes on WEAF on 28 August 1922 to pitch its Hawthorne Court apartments in Jackson Heights, closer to an infomercial than a jingle.

Who was appointed the first general manager of the British Broadcasting Company in December 1922?

John Reith, a Scottish engineer and son of a Free Church minister, took the post in December 1922 and set the mission to inform, educate and entertain that the BBC adopted.

On what date did the BBC become a public corporation under royal charter?

1 January 1927: the British Broadcasting Company gave way to the British Broadcasting Corporation under royal charter, with the newly knighted John Reith as first director-general and the motto 'Nation shall speak peace unto Nation'.

During the 1926 General Strike, supporters of the strikers nicknamed the BBC what?

With newspapers halted, the BBC suddenly became the nation's main news source, and Reith himself announced the strike's end by reciting Blake's 'Jerusalem'.

The 1988 Christmas Radio Times sold roughly how many copies, a British magazine record?

The exact tally was 11,220,666, certified by Guinness as the biggest-selling edition of any British magazine ever.

Which opera star sang two arias in Marconi's pioneering broadcast from Chelmsford on 15 June 1920?

Nellie Melba sang from the Marconi works at Chelmsford on 15 June 1920 in a concert sponsored by the Daily Mail; listeners reported hearing her across much of Europe.

Which American engineer developed FM radio and the superheterodyne receiver?

Edwin Armstrong patented the superheterodyne receiver in 1920 and demonstrated wide-band FM in 1935; he held 42 patents and let the US military use them free of charge during the Second World War.

Armstrong developed wide-band FM in secret in the basement of a building at which university?

Columbia University: Armstrong worked in the basement laboratory of Philosophy Hall, where he had long been Michael Pupin's assistant, and was granted his core wide-band FM patents on 26 December 1933.

In 1948 Armstrong sued which corporation and its network NBC for infringing his FM patents?

RCA: Armstrong filed suit against RCA and NBC in July 1948 for infringing his FM patents; the case drained his fortune, and after his death in 1954 his widow Marion settled with RCA for about $1 million.

In which country was Armstrong serving in WWI when he developed the superheterodyne?

France: Armstrong was a US Army Signal Corps officer in Paris in 1918 when he devised the superheterodyne, which mixes the incoming signal with a locally generated one to produce a fixed intermediate frequency.

What does the 'AM' in AM radio stand for?

Amplitude modulation varies the strength of a fixed-frequency carrier wave in step with the audio; it was the first method used for voice broadcasting and is the system of the medium-wave, longwave and shortwave bands.

AM signals can travel long distances at night by bouncing off which layer of the atmosphere?

The ionosphere: after sunset its absorbing D layer fades, so medium-wave signals reflect off the higher layers and a distant AM station can appear on the dial after dark, then vanish at sunrise.

FM broadcast stations are usually assigned to which part of the radio spectrum?

Very high frequency (VHF): the FM broadcast band sits at 87.5 to 108 MHz in VHF Band II, where signals travel roughly line-of-sight, which is why FM fades behind hills.

Hans Idzerda's station PCGG began regular FM entertainment broadcasts in November 1919 from which city?

The program aired four nights a week until 1924, when the company behind it ran into money trouble.

In August 1920, an early radio entertainment broadcast aired which composer's opera live from Buenos Aires?

Wagner: on 27 August 1920 Enrique Susini and friends broadcast Parsifal from the Teatro Coliseo in Buenos Aires, heard by only about twenty homes in the city that had receivers.

Orson Welles's 1938 radio play The War of the Worlds, which panicked listeners, aired on the eve of which holiday?

Halloween was the hook: the Mercury Theatre on the Air broadcast went out live on CBS on October 30, 1938, and the uproar finally won the unsponsored show a sponsor.

In the 1938 broadcast, where do the first Martians land?

Grovers Mill, New Jersey: Koch picked the hamlet near Princeton by dropping a pencil on a road map; the script moved Wells's story from Victorian England to 1938 America, told as news bulletins.

Who wrote the radio adaptation of H. G. Wells's novel for the 1938 broadcast?

Howard Koch wrote the script in about a week for Welles's Mercury Theatre on the Air; he later shared the Academy Award for the Casablanca screenplay with Julius and Philip Epstein.

How old was Welles when the Martian-invasion broadcast made him famous?

23: Welles was born on 6 May 1915, so he was 23 on 30 October 1938; he faced reporters the next morning to apologise, and no punitive action followed.

Which radio series opened with 'Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men'?

The Shadow: the line, answered by 'The Shadow knows!' and a sinister laugh, opened the Mutual network series from 1937; announcer Frank Readick delivered it even after Orson Welles took the title role.

The term 'fireside chat' was coined by an executive at which network before Roosevelt's May 1933 address?

CBS: Harry Butcher, the network's Washington manager, wrote 'fireside chat' into a press release for the 7 May 1933 address; announcer Robert Trout said he was simply the first to say it on air.

Roosevelt's first fireside chat, on 12 March 1933, addressed which crisis?

The banking collapse: eight days after his inauguration, with every bank shut by a national holiday, Roosevelt explained how they would reopen; within two weeks Americans returned more than half the cash they had hoarded.

Roosevelt had a removable dental bridge made for his broadcasts to eliminate what?

A whistle through a gap in his teeth: Roosevelt had a removable bridge made so air would not whistle through the gap into the microphone; he also kept about 80 percent of his vocabulary to the thousand commonest English words.

A 1947 Hooper survey found what share of Americans were radio listeners?

82%: the C. E. Hooper survey of 1947 found 82 out of every 100 Americans were radio listeners, when families gathered round the set for comedies, mystery serials, quiz shows and soap operas.

The Lone Ranger premiered on 31 January 1933 on which Detroit radio station?

WXYZ: station owner George W. Trendle and writer Fran Striker created the masked rider for the Detroit station; the show ran for 2,956 radio episodes and spawned books, comics and a television series.

The Lone Ranger's galloping radio theme was lifted from the William Tell Overture by which Italian opera composer?

Rossini: the 'March of the Swiss Soldiers' finale of his 1829 William Tell Overture became inseparable from the masked rider; Liszt's Les Préludes was among the other classical pieces used as bridge music.

Amos 'n' Andy, one of radio's first hit comedies, originated in 1928 at which Chicago station?

WMAQ: Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll launched Amos 'n' Andy there on 19 March 1928 after leaving WGN's Sam 'n' Henry; the two white creators voiced the Black characters for the entire 1928-1960 radio run.

Airing Herbert Morrison's 1937 airship-disaster report broke which NBC rule?

It never played recorded material: NBC's policy barred recordings, but Morrison's discs from Lakehurst were aired the next day, 7 May 1937; 62 of the 97 people aboard survived the fire.

The words 'Oh, the humanity' were uttered by a radio reporter watching which airship burn?

Hindenburg: Herbert Morrison of Chicago's WLS was recording the German airship's arrival at Lakehurst, New Jersey, on 6 May 1937 when it burst into flames; 36 people died.

What was Edward R. Murrow's signature opening line in his CBS reports during the Blitz?

This is London: Murrow opened each Blitz report with the phrase, pausing after 'This'; his old speech teacher Ida Lou Anderson had suggested the distinctive delivery.

The Nazi propaganda broadcasts of 'Lord Haw-Haw' opened with which phrase?

Germany calling: Joyce's nasal 'Jairmany calling' opened the Reichsrundfunk's English broadcasts; William Joyce, the best-known Lord Haw-Haw, was hanged for treason at Wandsworth on 3 January 1946.

Which US president fully pardoned Iva Toguri, the DJ branded 'Tokyo Rose'?

Gerald Ford granted the full pardon on 19 January 1977, his last full day in office; Toguri had been only the seventh person convicted of treason in US history, and key witnesses later admitted they had lied.

Which US government-funded international broadcaster began in 1942 to counter Axis propaganda?

Voice of America first went on air on 1 February 1942 with a German-language programme promising 'the news may be good or bad, we shall tell you the truth'; it grew to broadcast in more than 40 languages.

Radio Free Europe was funded covertly until 1972 by which US agency?

The CIA bankrolled Radio Free Europe from its 1950 launch, behind the 'Crusade for Freedom' fundraising front, until the link was exposed and Congress took over funding in 1971-72; Soviet jamming ceased in November 1988.

In 1995 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty moved its headquarters from Munich to which city?

Prague: President Václav Havel offered the former Czechoslovak Federal Assembly building beside Wenceslas Square for a token rent, and RFE/RL moved in from Munich in 1995.

Which two companies jointly produced the Regency TR-1, the first commercial transistor radio, in 1954?

Texas Instruments and I.D.E.A.: TI supplied the transistors and Industrial Development Engineering Associates of Indianapolis built the set, announced in October 1954, after RCA, GE and Philco had all passed on the project.

What did the Regency TR-1 pocket radio cost when it went on sale in 1954?

$49.95 for the set, with the battery extra; roughly 150,000 were sold, and low manufacturing yields on its four germanium transistors kept the price high.

Sony's TR-63 pocket radio of 1957 popularised which power cell?

The nine-volt: the TR-63 ran on a compact 9 V battery that became standard for pocket radios; launched as the smallest transistor radio yet made, it sold in lemon, green, red and black.

Paul Galvin coined 'Motorola' by combining 'motor' with the suffix from which product?

Victrola: Galvin fused 'motor' with the '-ola' of the Victor Talking Machine Company's Victrola phonograph to name the 5T71 car radio, which went on sale in 1930 for well over $100.

Ronan O'Rahilly launched Radio Caroline in 1964 after failing to get airplay for which artist?

Georgie Fame: O'Rahilly managed the singer and could not get his record played by Radio Luxembourg, which then pushed mainly major-label releases, or by the monopoly BBC, so he put a station on a ship.

Radio Caroline's first broadcasting vessel, the MV Caroline, was formerly a Danish what?

Passenger ferry: the ship had sailed as the Danish ferry Fredericia before O'Rahilly bought her; she was refitted at Greenore, the Irish port owned by his father, and re-registered in Panama.

In which year did the UK's Marine Broadcasting Offences Act outlaw supplying offshore pirate stations?

1967: the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act took effect on 15 August 1967, making it illegal for British citizens to supply, advertise on or work for the offshore stations; most closed, but Radio Caroline carried on.

Todd Storz is credited with inventing the Top 40 format at station KOWH in which city?

Omaha: Storz and his father Robert bought KOWH in Omaha in 1949 and turned it into the first Top 40 station, then spread the format through stations such as WTIX New Orleans and WHB Kansas City.

Watching patrons repeatedly choose the same songs on what reportedly gave Storz the Top 40 idea?

A bar jukebox: Storz noticed customers in a bar played the same few records over and over, and even the waitress chose them at closing time, so he built KOWH's rotation around the hits.

Which disc jockey popularised the phrase 'rock and roll' on mainstream radio in the early 1950s?

Alan Freed used 'rock and roll' on his Moondog show at Cleveland's WJW from 1951; the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted him in its first class in 1986 for bringing white and Black kids to the same music.

Which host testified in the 1960 payola hearings but escaped punishment, partly by divesting his music holdings?

Dick Clark told the House subcommittee in April 1960 that he had never taken payola and had sold his stakes in 33 music companies, and ABC kept him on; the uncooperative Alan Freed was fired.

Wolfman Jack found fame on border blaster XERF, located across the Rio Grande from which Texas town?

Del Rio: XERF broadcast from Ciudad Acuña, just across the Rio Grande, with 250,000 watts, five times the US limit, and its night-time signal reached much of North America.

Wolfman Jack played himself in which 1973 George Lucas film?

American Graffiti: Wolfman Jack plays the DJ whose show ties the night together; Lucas gave him a fraction of a point of the profits, which paid him a steady income for the rest of his life.

Casey Kasem's American Top 40 first aired on which US holiday in 1970?

Independence Day: the first American Top 40 countdown aired the weekend of 4 July 1970 on seven stations; Kasem hosted until 1988, when Shadoe Stevens took over.

NPR's very first broadcast, on 20 April 1971, covered what?

Senate hearings on the Vietnam War: NPR's first broadcast was live coverage of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on 20 April 1971; All Things Considered followed on 3 May 1971.

Who was the first host of NPR's Morning Edition when it premiered in 1979?

Bob Edwards hosted Morning Edition from its first broadcast on 5 November 1979 until 2004, nearly 25 years; he had previously co-hosted All Things Considered.

The FCC approved the Sirius-XM merger in July 2008, how many months after it was proposed?

17: the merger was announced on 19 February 2007 and the FCC cleared it on 25 July 2008; the combined company started with about 18.5 million subscribers in a deal valued at $3.3 billion.

In which year did Howard Stern leave terrestrial radio for Sirius satellite radio?

2006: Stern's first Sirius show aired on 9 January 2006; that day he and agent Don Buchwald collected 34.3 million Sirius shares, worth about $218 million, for beating subscriber targets.

Where does the word 'ham' for an amateur radio operator come from?

A 19th-century jibe at clumsy telegraphers: professional wire operators called a ham-fisted Morse sender a 'ham', the insult spilled over to amateurs, who eventually wore it with pride; the three-surnames acronym story is a myth.

FCC rules require a US ham to give their call sign at least how often?

Every 10 minutes: FCC Part 97 requires a US amateur station to transmit its call sign at least once every ten minutes during a contact and again at the end of it.

What is unusual about how a crystal radio set produces sound?

It runs entirely on the energy of the incoming radio wave, which is why it can only drive an earphone, not a loudspeaker.

The Grand Ole Opry has been broadcast since 1925 on which Nashville station?

It started as a 'Barn Dance' in the fifth-floor studio of an insurance company and took its current name in 1927.

The FCC was created in 1934, absorbing the licensing duties of which earlier body?

The 1927 Radio Act had given that predecessor the power to assign frequencies and power levels, and some stations lost their licences.

In what year did the FCC abolish the fairness doctrine?

1987: the FCC voted 4-0 on 4 August 1987 to abolish the doctrine, which dated from 1949; its repeal is often linked to the boom in political talk radio that followed.

Rush Limbaugh's show went into national syndication in which year?

1988: Limbaugh's show went into national syndication from New York's WABC on 1 August 1988, a year after the fairness doctrine's repeal; former ABC Radio chief Ed McLaughlin's EFM Media syndicated it.

Russia marks Radio Day on 7 May because of whose 1895 demonstration of a coherer-based lightning detector?

Alexander Popov demonstrated his coherer-based lightning detector to the Russian Physical and Chemical Society on 7 May 1895 (25 April, old style); he had adapted the coherer from Lodge's published lectures.

In which year was Marconi's Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company registered in London?

1897: the Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company was registered in London on 20 July 1897, a year after Marconi filed his first wireless patent; it was renamed Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company in 1900.

Marconi's first regular transatlantic radio-telegraph service in 1907 linked Clifden in Ireland with which station?

Glace Bay, Nova Scotia: the Clifden station in Connemara opened a public transatlantic telegraph service with Marconi's Glace Bay station on 17 October 1907, though reliable communication took years more to achieve.

Regular entertainment broadcasts began in the UK in 1922 from Marconi station 2MT in which village?

Writtle: 2MT went on air from an ex-army hut at the Marconi Company's site in the village near Chelmsford on 14 February 1922, with engineer Peter Eckersley as its irreverent presenter.

Telefunken was founded in Berlin in 1903 as a joint venture between AEG and which company?

Siemens & Halske: Kaiser Wilhelm II pushed the two rival firms to pool their radio patents in Telefunken in 1903; the company went on to build the long-wave stations at Nauen and at Sayville, New York.

What 1926 product let radios draw power from the grid instead of batteries?

The battery eliminator plugged into the mains to replace the costly 'B' batteries from 1926; filaments went on needing an 'A' battery until indirectly heated tubes allowed fully mains-powered sets such as RCA's Radiola 17 in 1927.

Richard H. Ranger of RCA invented which method of sending maps and photographs by radio in 1924?

Radiofax: Ranger's wireless photoradiogram sent a photograph of President Coolidge from New York to London on 29 November 1924; radio facsimile served newspapers and weather services for decades before fading late in the century.

The 1910 Wireless Ship Act required radio on large ships travelling between ports how far apart?

200 miles: the Act of 24 June 1910 required any ocean-going vessel carrying 50 or more people between ports at least 200 miles apart to carry a radio and operator; it set no distress priority and assigned no frequencies.

Armstrong's experimental FM station W2XMN broadcast from which New Jersey town?

Alpine: Armstrong built W2XMN on the Palisades at Alpine, New Jersey, with a tower more than 400 feet tall, and it began scheduled wide-band FM broadcasts in 1939.

World Radio Day marks the 1946 founding of United Nations Radio on which date?

13 February marks the day in 1946 when the United Nations established United Nations Radio.

In 1933 Bell Labs engineer Karl Jansky announced radio waves coming from which constellation?

Sagittarius: Jansky found the hiss peaked when his rotating antenna, built on Model-T Ford wheels and nicknamed the merry-go-round, pointed toward the centre of the Milky Way in Sagittarius; he announced it in 1933.

When BBC Radio 1 launched in 1967, which song, that week's number 2, was the first complete record played?

"Flowers in the Rain" by The Move got the honour because the number 1, Engelbert Humperdinck's ballad, was judged wrong for the new station's sound.

On A Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor's best-known segment brought the 'News from' which fictional Minnesota town?

Lake Wobegon, 'where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average'; Keillor hosted the show from its 1974 debut in Saint Paul until 2016.

Car Talk began in 1977 when only one invited mechanic showed up at which Boston station?

WBUR: Tom Magliozzi was the only one of several invited mechanics to turn up for a 1977 panel on WBUR, did well enough to be asked back, and brought his brother Ray; NPR took the show national in 1987.

How many short tones make up the BBC's Greenwich Time Signal, the 'pips', each hour?

Six: five short pips followed by a longer sixth whose start marks the hour; they have aired since 5 February 1924 and were generated by the Royal Greenwich Observatory until the BBC took over in 1990.

Castaways on BBC radio's Desert Island Discs are automatically given the Bible and which other book before choosing a third?

Shakespeare's complete works come free with the island; castaways then pick eight recordings, a third book and one luxury item, a format Roy Plomley devised in 1942.

Charles 'Doc' Herrold made scheduled entertainment broadcasts from 1912 in which city?

San Jose: Herrold ran his station from the Garden City Bank building and was broadcasting scheduled music programmes by 1912; licensed as KQW in 1921, it became San Francisco's KCBS in 1949.

On 1 January 1997 the US EAS took over from which earlier nationwide alerting scheme?

Emergency Broadcast System: the EBS, itself the 1963 successor to CONELRAD, gave way to the Emergency Alert System on 1 January 1997, whose digital header tones encode the alert type and target area.

OSCAR 1, the first amateur radio satellite, launched in 1961, beamed which two-letter Morse message?

It rode into orbit as ballast on a spy-satellite launch and transmitted for three weeks; HI also signals laughter in amateur telegraphy.