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Description
Two-page print ad created for the 50th anniversary of KCBS San Jose on April 3, 1959, featuring an image of Ray Newby and Charles "Doc" Herrold. Full text of ad: ...and he had a microphone." Ray Newby (right) in 1959 recalls how he, at the age of 16 and Charles D. Herrold founded a radio station in San Jose, California fifty years ago. Credit to Herrold as the originator of broadcasting is many years overdue. While other experimenters were using their wireless equipment for point-to-point communication, Herrold thought of radio as an entertainment medium for a mass audience. Mr. Newby recounts, "Folks with crystal sets in San Jose and for miles around at first were amazed to hear voices instead of code. We'd go on Wednesday evenings and broadcast voice and music for a half hour. And sometimes we could run longer if the microphone and everything didn't get too hot." That 15-watt station which Herrold started back in 1909 has continued, through KQW, to the present 50,000 watt KCBS in San Francisco. And, Herrold's dream to "broadcast" to a mass audience has become a striking reality. Today, KCBS is heard by eight out of ten Northern California families each week. 1909 The first radio broadcasting station in the world. 1959 The Bay Area's first station in the world of entertainment. (Historical data from "Broadcasting's Golden Anniversary" by Gordon Greb, Assistant Professor, San Jose State College and published in the Journal of Broadcasting University of Southern California, Winter Edition, 1958-59. Reprints on request.)
Type
image
Identifier
DB18B14F-84F6-4E22-9AEC-913743677351 2009-120-5
Subject
KQW (Radio station: San Jose, Calif.) KCBS (Radio station : San Francisco, Calif.) Anniversaries Radio broadcasting--History (LCSH) Herrold, Charles Newby, Ray
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