1920 | Communications, Media
Communications, Media
AT&T chairman Theodore N. Vail dies at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins Hospital April 16 at age 74, having spread telephone communication throughout much of Argentina and Europe as well as the United States.
International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) is founded by Puerto Rican sugar broker Sosthenes Behn, 38, and his brother Hernand, 40, to run telephone and telegraph operations in Cuba and Puerto Rico (see Tropical Radio Telegraph, 1910). Born in the Virgin Islands of Danish-French parents, the Behn brothers have acquired a small San Juan telephone business in settlement of a bad debt (see 1928).
Marconi Radio transmits a concert by the Australian soprano Nellie Melba from New York City May 19. The Radio Argentina Society broadcasts a performance of the 1882 Wagner opera Parsifal from Buenos Aires August 27 and follows it over the next 19 days with broadcasts of other operas. The navy ministry sent Enrique Susini to France during the Great War to investigate the effects of poison gas in the trenches; he smuggled in some vacuum tubes when he returned last year, began experimenting with radio technology, and has turned a former circus site into a theater. By 1924 there will be five radio stations in Buenos Aires plus some in other parts of the country.
David Sarnoff proposes a plan for making $75 radio music boxes (see RCA, 1919); at least a million could be sold in 3 years, he predicts (see NBC, 1926). Pittsburgh's Joseph Horne Co. department store advertises radios for $10 and up September 29; a buyer can purchase a ready-made receiver in a box with headphones and tuning knobs.
The world's first radio broadcasting station goes on the air November 2 to give results of the Harding-Cox election. Westinghouse engineer Frank Conrad, 46, has set up KDKA at East Pittsburgh, announcer Leo Rosenberg climbs into a wooden shack on the roof of the local Westinghouse plant, picks up a converted telephone mouthpiece, and says, "We shall now broadcast the election returns," but only about 5,000 Americans have radio receivers, mostly "cats-whisker" crystal sets (see radio advertising, 1922).
Chicago Tribune editor Col. Robert R. McCormick quits his law firm and takes over as publisher of the paper he has edited since 1910. Now 40, the barrel-chested six-foot-four publisher will build circulation from 200,000 to 892,000 (1.4 million on Sundays), make the Tribune number one in America (in terms of advertising revenue), boost what he calls "Chicagoland," and establish a radio station with the call letters WGN (for "world's greatest newspaper"). McCormick's political views will reflect those of his mother, Kate, who called Woodrow Wilson a "villain" and will tell an interviewer, "I hate the Jews, I hate the British, I hate the French. God damn them all."
"Winnie Winkle the Breadwinner" by cartoonist Martin M. (Michael) Branner, 31, begins in September in the 15-month-old New York Daily News, becoming the first career-girl comic strip. Wage earners are still called "breadwinners" despite diminishing U.S. consumption of bread and other baked goods.
Congress enacts legislation enabling the Post Office to accept first class mail not stamped with adhesive stamps (see 1847).
Pitney-Bowes Postage Meter Co. is founded to produce a meter acceptable to the U.S. Post Office. Arthur H. Pitney, 49, is a former Chicago wallpaper company employee who saw the firm's postage stamps being stolen by office workers and developed an early postage meter in 1901 (he received a patent in 1902); English-born Walter H. Bowes, 38, is a former Addressograph salesman who has been selling a high-speed postmarking and stamp-canceling machine to the Post Office (whose officials have rejected a postage meter Bowes proposed because it did not completely protect government stamp revenues). Bowes teams up with Pitney, whose self-locking meter does protect stamp revenues, and the new American Postage Meter Co. takes over the Universal Stamping Machine plant at Stamford, Conn.. It produces meters that rent for $10 per month, and the first metered letter is posted December 10.