From the toy store to frontier of radio
Breakthrough was at the Emporium in 1922, innovation hasn’t stopped
The children of San Francisco were the first to discover the wonder of radio. The equipment had been stocked in a small corner of local toy departments for years.
But on March 20, 1922, the Emporium department store staff moved one of the radio receivers upstairs, and tuned in to a broadcast of an orchestra playing live across the bay in Oakland. The press and 50 other adult listeners were so amazed, they had to be pulled away from their headsets.
“Half incredulous, but wholly expectant, they adjusted receivers to their ears and listened with unfeigned amazement as the strains of the music sounded in the room as clearly and distinctly as though the musicians had been there in person,” The Chronicle reported in a front-page story. “Everywhere the interest was profound. Radio, so far as San Francisco, has arrived.”
San Francisco was an important town, for both the invention and development of radio. The spirit of innovation and the willingness to embrace technology has many parallels to the city’s startup culture today.
Then, once that technology became widespread, San Francisco found ways to reflect the expressiveness and eclectic nature of its population. Through nearly 100 years of broadcasting, the city has produced more than its share of broadcast legends.
San Francisco’s first radio stations emerged in the 1920s, but the technology had been experimented with locally for more than a decade. The words “radio station” appeared in The Chronicle as early as 1913, when the Navy was searching for a San Francisco site to locate a West Coast radio hub. Stories about military uses for radio technology appeared in The Chronicle throughout World War I.
But radio invention, and even some noncommercial broadcasting, had been happening under the media radar for years.
Charles “Doc” Herrold’s KQW originated in 1909, when the inventor conducted a broadcast between two buildings in downtown San Jose. He received the first radio license in U.S. history, then brought
his “receiving booth” to the Pan-Pacific International Exposition, where stunned visitors heard a live test broadcast from Santa Clara County.
KDKA in Pittsburgh has widely been credited as the first radio station, debuting with scheduled programming on Nov. 2, 1920. But that was disputed by friends of Bay Area resident Lee de Forest. The wireless pioneer, who had proposed to his wife by telegraph in a San Francisco hotel in 1906, may have had a radio station operating in Marin County six months earlier.
“The California theater in this city had broadcasted more than 700 concerts and before the Pittsburgh station was opened, and all the credit to launching radio broadcasting on schedules belongs to de Forest,” Ellery Stone, one of the station’s builders, said in a 1922 Chronicle article.
When the potential of radio reached consumers, it caught on like few cultural sensations before or since. Much like television in the city nearly 30 years later, the hype was fueled by retailers, who started selling radio receivers on the promise of the future.
The March 20, 1922, Emporium experiment resulted in nearly a page of coverage, with a lead story headlined “Kiddies’ ‘Toy’ Now a Marvel for Grownups.”
“Up to a few months ago the radio department in reality was not a department at all, it merely was a side line in the toy department,” The Chronicle article explained. “Virtually the only interest taken in it was when some indulgent father came in to purchase a receiving radio set for his youngster. Radio sets were novelties, playthings for children, nothing more.”
Starting that day, and every day thereafter, The Chronicle printed entire playlists for KZY and KDN, the first two local stations with scheduled programming. (Selections from operas including “Pagliacci” and “Don Giovanni” were included on that first day, along with a foxtrot from the Victor Military Band.)
For the following months, the newspaper was filled with local radio updates and advertisements. The Chronicle’s “Radio Question & Answer” column included news about parts and electrical diagrams for home radio enthusiasts who were trying to hotwire a set on the cheap.
(Sample question: “Radio Editor Chronicle — Do you know of any dealer in San Francisco who has Myers RAC-3 tubes in stock? … We do not know of any dealer carrying them in stock in this city.”)
Four new stations arrived in May 1922, including KPO, which was owned by Hale Bros. department store and broadcast at the Fairmont Hotel. By 1923, there was a station at the Hearst Building (KUO) and the Oakland Tribune (KLX).
Radio stations quickly started to dientertainments