Radio Broadcast (May-Oct 1922)

34 RADIO BROADCAST commercial prosperity of the nation and to the intelligence, well-being, and enjoyment of its inhabitants. In these matters the radio business might be like unto these others. What are its commercial possibilities? How large is it destined to be? It is theoretically possible for every family and every office to have a radio receiving set. Practically, if the radio receivers are looked upon as necessary conveniences, receivers might become nearly universal. If they are considered valuable chiefly as a means of providing amusement or educational information, they will be much less numerous. The maximum — taking the automobile standard — would be about ten million. The lower figure — taking the phonograph standard— would be about six million. If the average investment for each receiving set were only ^50, the total investment for the lower number would be $300,000,000. If the country should become saturated with these six million receivers in a period of five years, that would mean $60,000,000 of new business for each year. These are the roughest kind of figures upon a very general hypothesis, but they serve to show the possibilities — perhaps not the probabilities, but the possibilities of this new addition to American industry. These possibilities and probabilities are admittedly guesswork, even by those whose financial interests are the greatest, and the records of the business so far are too meagre to do much except to stir the imagination. To reach anything like these figures, both present sending and receiving apparatus needs improvement, regulation must be both wise and effective, and a skillful direction of broadcasting must be built up on a solid commercial foundation which does not now exist. In 1919, the selling of radio telephone receiving sets to the public did not exist as a commercial business. There were more than ten thousand sending and receiving sets for radio telegraph work and there were radio telephone receivers in existence, but not in general public use. Nor was there any demand for them, for no stations were broadcasting entertainment or information to the general public. It is quite likely that the war affected the radio telephone in two ways — hastened its mechanical development and delayed its commercial development. Experiments carried out in 191 5 by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, and subsequently, when voices at Arlington, Va., were heard in Paris, France, illustrated its possibilities in a striking way. After our entrance in the war our engineers were concerned with the military application of the radio telephone, such as communication between airplanes and the ground, the development of submarine chaser radio telephone sets and miscellaneous sets for field use. These activities resulted naturally in improvements in the apparatus, and likely enough laid some of the ground work for the present interest through the wide contact of men in service with radio telephony. Still, broadcasting to the general public was entirely undeveloped, and that was the situation during two years following the war. The Navy had, of course, used the radio telephone widely during the war, and after the war some messages were broadcasted, but the matter sent out did not start the public buying receivers. In 1915 the American Radio & Research Corporation, of Medford Hillside, Mass, did some broadcasting but not on a regular schedule. , In 1920, however, the Westinghouse Company opened a broadcasting station, at East Pittsburgh, Pa. The programmes of this station and the next one started at Newark were arranged for public consumption and the public was so advised, the station at Newark having the very effective exploitation of the Newark Call, the first newspaper to publish the radio section which is now becoming very common. The East Pittsburgh station was opened November 5, 1920. In the fall of 1920, then, the public first had reason to buy radio telephone receiving sets, and it began to buy. The East Pittsburgh station of the Westinghouse Co. unquestionably began the present sensational developments. The public bought all the equipment that was for sale and from that time to this the manufacturers have never been able to catch up with the demand. The manufacturers of radio receivers and accessories are much in the situation that munition makers were when the war broke. They are suddenly confronted with a tremendous and imperative demand for apparatus. It is a matter of several months at best to arrange for the quantity production of radio receiving apparatus if the type to be manufactured were settled, but the types are no more settled than were the types of airplanes in the war. The