1923 | Communications, Media
Communications, Media
Zenith Radio is founded by Chicago auto-finance entrepreneur Eugene F. McDonald, Jr., 33, who obtains exclusive rights to market products of the Chicago Radio Laboratory founded by former U.S. Navy radio electricians Karl E. Hassel, 27, and R. H. G. Matthews. They constructed a longwave radio receiver for the Chicago Tribune in 1919 and have developed the trademark Z-Nith from the call letters of their amateur radio station 9ZN. The Tribune was able to pick up news dispatches from the Versailles Peace Conference and thus gain a 12- to 24-hour lead over papers using the jammed Atlantic Cable. Major Edwin H. Armstrong has licensed Chicago Radio to produce sets using his patents, McDonald has raised $330,000 to start Zenith, and he also starts the National Association of Broadcasters with himself as president (see Armstrong, 1917; FM, 1940).
London Radio Times begins publication. Circulation will reach 9 million by 1950.
Australia adopts a system under which radio stations can be licensed to broadcast and then sell "listeners in" receiving devices that are set only to their particular stations. Sydney's station 2FC receives the first license July 1; its rival 2SB (later 2BL) is the first to go on the air, starting officially November 23 (see 1924).
Radio Ibérica begins broadcasting from Madrid in September. Spain's first station, it will have counterparts by next year in Barcelona and Seville as well as in Madrid (see 1924).
Germany's first radio station to broadcast to the public on a regular basis airs from Berlin beginning October 23 on 750 kHz at 250 watts. Within a year the country will have nine regional broadcasting companies financed in part by commercials but mostly by a monthly license fee of 2 Reichsmarks levied on every registered listener (see 1926).
Time magazine begins publication March 3 from a 39th Street New York loft office that was earlier the headquarters for Hupfel's Brewery. Based on rewrites of wire service stories with little additional reporting, the 32-page news weekly is put out by China-born missionary's son Henry R. (Robinson) Luce, 24, and his Yale classmate Briton Hadden, who came up with the idea for the magazine while serving in the army, resigned last year from their jobs as reporters for the Baltimore News, wrote the prospectus for their enterprise in a $55-per-month upstairs room at 141 East 17th Street, and have assembled a staff of 33 to help them start a venture that will mushroom into a vast publishing empire. Hadden will die of a streptococcal infection at age 31 in 1929 after having established a distinctive Timestyle by inverting sentences, inventing such words as "socialite," "GOPolitician," "cinemaddict," and "tycoon" (meaning a business magnate), and using the code phrase great and good friend to mean something more than just a good friend (see Fortune, 1930; Newsweek, 1933).
Advertising agency pioneer Francis Wayland Ayer of N. W. Ayer dies at Camden, N.J., March 5 at age 75.
A. C. Nielsen Co. is founded by Chicago-born electrical engineer-market researcher Arthur Charles Nielsen, 26, whose fraternity brothers from the University of Wisconsin School of Engineering have helped him raise $45,000 to start the company, which will develop indexes to provide information on distribution in various industries, including food, drugs, and pharmaceuticals (see television ratings, 1950).
The Gannett Co. is founded by upstate New York publisher Frank E. (Ernest) Gannett, 47, who combines four regional newspapers that include the Rochester Times-Union and Rochester Democrat and Chronicle (see USA Today, 1982).
"Skippy" by New York-born artist-cartoonist Percy (Lee) Crosby, 31, in the humor magazine Life features the adventures of a winsome young boy. It will become a daily comic strip in 1925, distributed by William Randolph Hearst's King Features syndicate.
"Moon Mullins" by Illinois-born New York Daily News comic-strip artist Frank (Henry) Willard, 32, makes its debut June 14, featuring the adventures of a roughneck ne'er-do-well, his kid brother Kayo, Uncle Willie, Aunt Mamie, and Lord and Lady Plushbottom.
Newsprint mogul Frank H. Anson of Abitibi Power and Pulp Co. dies at Toronto November 1 at age 83. His paper mills at Iroquois Falls, Ontario, have grown to be the largest on the continent; they produce more than 50 tons of newsprint per day, and by next year will have the capacity to produce 300 tons (see Thomson, 1932).