History : CBS on the Air Shortwave from Philadelphia

This is a fascinating article by Adrian Petersen on the excellent Radio Heritage Foundation website:

During the radio era before World War 2, there was quite a movement here in the United States, and in other countries throughout the world also, to establish shortwave relay stations in an endeavor to give wider broadcast coverage.

At the time, television was a concept and not a reality, and FM radio was still a distant dream. The mediumwave band was not overcrowded though the mediumwave signal generally gave only local coverage. However, shortwave transmissions could give wide area coverage within the country, and even international coverage on a much wider scale.

Many mediumwave stations in the United States established shortwave relay transmitters during the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s to carry their programming to distant listeners. In fact, it is estimated that there have been somewhere around one hundred shortwave stations on the air in the United States during the past eighty years, and probably more than half of these were active during the pre-war era.

One of the shortwave stations that held a high reputation back during the early years was located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This station was launched on behalf of the co-located mediumwave station WCAU under the callsign W3XAU. And again, even though a casual glance would seem to indicate that this was an amateur radio station, this is not the case.

Station W3XAU was indeed a professional station, relaying the programming from mediumwave WCAU. The X in a prewar callsign indicated an experimental station, either amateur or professional; and in this case, indeed professional...

Full article at http://www.radioheritage.net/Column9.asp


Our thanks to Mike Terry for alerting us to this item