By Dave Jensen, W7DGJ

What I like most about researching and writing on innovation are those stories where someone doesn't quite fit into the usual mold of "inventor." Today's innovation is much more formulaic than in the past. Many organizations doing innovative work -- in any discipline, whether it's radio or medicine -- are populated by those with advanced college degrees who are following very practical development paths.

In many industries, we know that today's device will be replaced by an improved model a year from now, so there is constant innovation taking place. (We could have forecasted the ICOM IC-7300 Mk2 several years ago.) Historical examples of that in radio, however, included inventors who started by a seat-of-their-pants approach and ended up making great strides in their field of expertise. I'm featuring one of those, engineer Frank Conrad, today in this column. Frank was just 16 years old and an engineering "hobbyist" when he went to work for the Westinghouse Electric Company in Pennsylvania. Frank's impact on our area of interest lies at the juncture of Amateur Radio with Radio Broadcasting, as he was influential in both of these sectors. 

However, Conrad isn't mentioned often in the literature about amateur radio -- even though he was a successful and active ham radio enthusiast. In the world of commercial radio, however, Frank is referred to as the "Father of Broadcasting." Thanks to ExplorePAHistory.com for the photo above. Here's Frank's story . . . 

Early Signs of Genius

Frank Conrad probably wouldn't favor the use of the term "genius" in his biosketch. Nope -- he was just an enthusiast, a hobbyist at first like so many other young men of that era. When he went to work for one of the largest industrial companies in America, Frank started at the bottom of the ladder as you'd expect. No one gave him a special head start, and no one was there to push him along. He was the son of a railroad mechanic in a blue collar home in Pittsburgh. School just didn't suit him, and he left after the seventh grade, keeping up that incredible thirst for knowledge that many would remember later.

Frank had an uncanny memory and was a voracious reader. I found several comments about his ability to absorb what he read and recall it later. He also took away a lesson from every experience he had at Westinghouse, which meant that he moved up quickly. Even though he started as a simple technician for others at the bench, he used his developing skills in electrical engineering to come up with new ideas regularly. He took one of those to the boss and was moved to the R&D labs and given more freedom. By age 24, he had his first patent; this was for a watt meter, something still in use today to measure electricity in homes and businesses. In all, Frank Conrad pulled together a portfolio consisting of 200 patents (177 in the USA) across a variety of fields. These included vacuum tubes, transmitter and receiver designs, electric clocks, antennas, and even automotive ignition systems. After work Frank would go to his two-story garage and his shack, where his call sign was 8XK. (See above -- his station was the cover story of QST's first 100-page edition in September 1920.) The fellow loved experimenting with new designs, new antennas and microphones.

Special Permission to Remain on the Air During WWI

In April of 1917 all amateur stations were ordered off the air as America entered WWI -- this included Frank and 8XK. However, due to the fact that Westinghouse had government contracts to develop radio for the war effort, Frank was issued a special call sign (3WE) as one of the very few allowed to remain on the air, as he was doing development work for the SCR-69 transmitter and SCR-70 receiver used by the Army Signal Corps. While much of what he did was in Morse code, as vacuum tube technology came into use he began to experiment with microphones. All the while, Frank was engaged in idea generation and patenting new gadgets for Westinghouse. One of those was a wind-powered generator that would attach to the wing of an airplane, providing power for an airborne radio.

When amateurs were back on the air again in late 1919, Frank used his new interests in radiotelephone work in a unique way. He was in his shack working on some fine-tuning and he needed to get a signal on the air to make an adjustment. So, he put the mic up next to a phonograph player and let it rip; the music played over the air and he didn't think much about it. After a few positive comments from listeners however, he saw that this practice could be fun and he began a regular schedule of music for a couple of hours each day over the air. He worked out a deal with a local music shop to get all the latest releases for his broadcasts in exchange for a bit of promotion. He also found some "live" musicians to play for his developing audience, and once rigged a landline wire from a mic on his living room piano to the shack in order to have a live piano concerto.

The "Invention" of Broadcast Radio

The response from the radio-listening public was noted as 'generally positive' by Frank's employer, Westinghouse. However, it should be noted that he also had a number of amateur operators telling him to "shut off that blankety-blank music and keep it off the air." (Probably much like you'd hear on 7200 if someone started playing records after a whiskey or two.) Just remember, this is before the idea of "broadcasting" had even taken hold. Frank became known as the first broadcaster because he didn't listen to those operators. Instead, he made it a formal schedule, as C.P. Davis, Westinghouse VP watched with interest.

And then something very interesting happened.

The Joseph Horne Department Store in Pittsburgh caught wind of the regular music being broadcast from Frank's station and published a historic newspaper advertisement on September 23 and September 29, 1920 (now considered the start of commercial radio). They offered a "ready-made, plug and play radio receiver" for $10.00, specifically noting that it would receive the "concerts" broadcast by station 8XK. They set up these radios in the basement of their store and the response was terrific. While $10 was much more back then than it is today, it still caught fire and Horne's sold a lot of radios.

Soon, Mr. Davis in the senior management of Westinghouse decided it was time to formalize what Frank Conrad had started over his garage. A modest investment was approved and Frank Conrad was asked to build the country's first commercial radio station, 8ZZ, right at the Westinghouse headquarters building.  At about the same time, Westinghouse rolled out and sold the  "RA-DA two-piece radio set," which combined the RA receiver with the DA detector amplifier. Thousands of this two piece set were sold at a cost of about $70 in the first two years. It was certainly a major upgrade from the inexpensive $10 "plug and play" set that Horne had been selling so successfully.

In Conclusion

Conrad was a self-taught engineer with a 7th grade education. And yet, during his career, he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Science from the University of Pittsburgh and was the recipient of numerous awards including the Edison Medal. Station 8ZZ (later KDKA) became famous overnight when shortly after Conrad's build finished, the station broadcast the results of the Harding-Cox presidential election. Radio was never the same, and within four years there were 600 commercial stations around the country.

In 1924 his pioneering work with shortwave at Westinghouse proved that high-frequency signals could bounce off the ionosphere to travel globally. Conrad demonstrated to RCA's David Sarnoff that low-powered shortwave signals from Pittsburgh could be connected to London, using a simple radio with a curtain rod as an antenna. This breakthrough directly enabled the first international radio relays and also network broadcasts, which earned Frank Conrad that AIEE Edison Medal in 1930.

Frank Conrad became a silent key in 1941.

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