Vigo County Historical Society

Radio had early start in Valley

On July 13, the Vigo County Historical Society will present "Wabash Valley Radio On the Air."

The show will be a review of never-to-be-forgotten happenings on local and national radio and will be at Hulman Civic Center with a pre-show at 7:30 and the show on stage at 8:30.

This week’s Historical Treasure article recalls some memories of radio beginnings.

The radio industry was emerging rapidly into the nation’s economy in the 1920s as the laboratories of General Electric, Western Electric and smaller companies were competing to perfect radio as well as to reduce its cost.

Robert A. Morton (The Youth’s Companion, Feb. 4, 1925) wrote" "From the commercial standpoint radio is racing along with the automobile and threatening to catch up with it. . ."

By then earphones had been replaced with loudspeakers using outside aerials. Morton commented, "Today a new hotel or apartment building without a radio connection in each room would be considered an architectural mistake."

The new superstations had extended broadcasting from the Atlantic to the Pacific; one of President Calvin Coolidge’s messages was broadcast from the White House to the nation. Radio was no longer a luxury; by 1926 it was a necessity of modern life.

Radio also had its beginning in Vigo County that year. On Dec. 2, Rose Polytechnic Institute applied to the Department of Commerce to operate a radio broadcasting station on campus. It was authorized by the Federal Radio Commission, a newly created agency, and granted a construction permit April 21, 1927.

At a 1981 meeting of the Hoosier Chapter, Morse Telegraph Club, the late Dr. Herman Moench of the Rose-Hulman Institute credited Carl Stahl of the Stahl Urban and Co. on Ohio Street as the moving force to establish the station at Rose Polytechnic and recalled that a radio listeners’ club had been active in the city since 1922.

Moench, a Rose Poly freshman at the time helped to build the station and he remembered a man with expertise from Martinsville, Ill., coming to the campus to finalize the hook-up.

WPRI went on the air June 15, 1927. It became a commercial station when the Wabash Broadcasting Association purchased it from the institute March 21, 1928 and the call letters were changed to WBOW. Local broadcasting now had a place in the Wabash Valley.