Special thanks to Ray Robinson and Jeff White for sharing a recent feature from the Wavescan program from Adventist World Radio
This is a follow-up to The Zenith Story Part 1, published 16 April 2024 at:
Jeff: Three weeks ago here in Wavescan, we started the story of the Zenith Radio Corporation, taken largely from a brochure issued by the company in 1955 that had been sent to us by listener Vince Koepke. Today Ray Robinson continues that story, picking it up now in the early 1920’s.
Ray: Thanks, Jeff. The founders of the company, R.H.G. Mathews of Chicago and Karl Hassel of Sharpsville, PA, had been joined by E.F. McDonald Jr. of Syracuse, NY, whose financial backing and business know-how added impetus to the rapidly growing volume of business. In 1922 the factory was moved to larger quarters at 48th and Kedzie on the north side of Chicago.
Radio Learns to Sell
But, part of the company activities had also gone back to the old radio shack near the Edgewater Beach Hotel. Mathews, Hassel and the engineers built a broadcast transmitter and installed it there under the call letters WJAZ. Studios were in the hotel itself, and QSL cards began to come in from listeners all over the nation.
1923 was an exciting year. Commander McDonald organized and became the first president of the National Association of Broadcasters. At this time nobody had a very clear idea of how radio broadcasting could be financed, but thoughtful Americans did not relish the idea of a government monopoly such as grew up in most foreign countries. McDonald provided and demonstrated the answer.
The publisher of a radio magazine for amateurs had greatly increased his print order one month in anticipation of absorbing another magazine. The merger fell through, and he was left with a staggering surplus of unsold magazines. McDonald asked him if he would donate $1,000 to the National Association of Broadcasters if they could sell these magazines over the air. He agreed.
Magazines were distributed to the few cities which at that time had broadcasting stations, and whose owners dared try this unorthodox scheme. Some broadcasters refused to participate. For three nights announcers on participating stations, including Zenith's own station WJAZ, read selected articles from the magazine, and told listeners that copies could be obtained from newsstands. The issue sold out, 100%. The publisher was delighted and continued the arrangement.
So far as can be determined, that was the first regular merchandising program conducted over a group of stations. It launched the system of sponsored broadcasting which gave Americans the least restrictive and most innovative broadcast service in the world.
North With Macmillian
It was also in 1923 that McDonald persuaded Commander Donald B. MacMillan, the Arctic explorer, to take radio with him to the Arctic. When MacMillan sailed that summer, his ship, the Bowdoin, was equipped with Zenith shortwave transmitting and receiving equipment. For the benefit of the expedition, WJAZ set up special news programs, and transmitted messages from friends and families of men in the expedition.
Broadcasts from WJAZ were picked up directly by the Bowdoin. Return messages came by shortwave, frequently relayed by cooperative youngsters from all parts of the country, who covered phenomenal distances with their low-powered shortwave equipment. This demonstration of shortwave efficiency did not go unnoticed at Zenith, although at that time most radio interests believed that shortwave had no commercial value.
Zenith sold this WJAZ transmitter to the Edgewater Beach Hotel in 1924, but this did not mean the end of Zenith’s broadcasting activities.
The company retained the call letters WJAZ, and constructed in a truck what was probably the first mobile radio broadcasting station. The truck was first used to locate a new station site in Mt. Prospect, IL, 20 miles northwest of downtown Chicago. In 1925 the truck went all over the nation for the purpose of publicizing both Zenith and the new, highly efficient art of broadcasting. One broadcast was made from the summit of Pikes Peak in Colorado.
In 1924, for the fourth time in five years, the company was compelled to find larger quarters. This time it moved to a four-story building at 3620 South Iron Street in Chicago. Hassel invented a new receiver with greatly simplified tuning which did not infringe on Armstrong patents.
Zenith Radio Corporation then became a manufacturer in its own right, and marketed the receiver under the name Super-Zenith. It was an outstanding commercial success.
The same year saw introduction of the first portable radio, a suitcase-like affair with built-in loop antenna and horn-type loudspeaker that sold for $200. Such was the measure of radio’s progress that little more than ten years later, Zenith was building and selling a better portable for just one tenth the cost – $19.95.
Shortwave for the Navy
1925 was another exciting year in which Zenith made notable commercial progress and exerted a profound influence on the future of communications and the development of American broadcasting.
At that time radio equipment on naval and merchant vessels the world over primarily used longwave. This covered good distance at night, but during the day even powerful stations were out of touch with other ships and with shore stations more than a few hundred miles away. Nevertheless, the experts disdained shortwave radio, which had been assigned to amateurs as a plaything.
This was the year the U.S. Fleet had scheduled a goodwill tour to New Zealand, Tasmania and Australia. It was also the year that Commander McDonald was scheduled to go north on the MacMillan-National Geographic Arctic Expedition.
McDonald persuaded Admiral Ridley McLean to put shortwave radio to the test by commissioning a young amateur, Fred Schnell (who later served in the US Navy during World War II as a Captain), and sending him along on the cruise aboard the U.S.S. Seattle, flagship of the fleet. That settled, McDonald turned his attention toward the new MacMillan expedition. He selected the S.S. Peary, a sturdy 160 foot ship, and equipped it with Zenith shortwave transmitting and receiving gear.
When the MacMillan-National Geographic Expedition headed north in the spring of 1925, McDonald was skipper of the Peary, and second in command of the expedition, in charge of the naval aviation personnel that had been assigned to the expedition by President Coolidge.
When the expedition sailed, it left behind the heavy, longwave transmitting and receiving equipment that had been supplied by the Navy, for the simple reason that this gear could not provide long distance communication during the continuous daylight of the Arctic summer.
But as they neared Nova Scotia they were overhauled by a fast destroyer. They pulled into Sydney, and ordered to install the useless equipment as protection for the naval personnel on the expedition. This longwave radio gear did not send or receive a single message while in the Arctic. It couldn’t span the long distances involved during the 24-hour Arctic daylight.
Shortwave, however, soon gave dramatic proof of its value. Putting in at Disko Island to refuel, McDonald was told by the local Danish governor that permission would have to be received from the Danish Minister in Washington. He regretted that their longwave radio transmitter could not get a message out in daylight, and so could do nothing about it until night fell. This was in June, and night would not come until September.
McDonald needed coal, so he turned to his shortwave rig, and enlisted the services of an amateur radio operator near Washington. Four hours later he had his permission from the Danish Minister.
In the meantime the U.S. Navy Fleet was on its way across the Pacific. With his shortwave “pin box radio” Schnell kept direct contact with American amateurs long after the Fleet’s high-powered, longwave equipment had lost daytime contact. He also communicated directly with the Peary, as it sailed north toward Greenland.
The MacMillan expedition reached Etah, Greenland, only eleven degrees from the North Pole, while the U.S.S. Seattle was off the coast of Tasmania, 12,000 miles away. The Fleet’s longwave equipment couldn’t even maintain direct contact with the American continent at that great distance. But Schnell communicated directly by shortwave, not only with American amateurs, but with the MacMillan Expedition as well. McDonald clinched the demonstration by putting a group of Eskimo singers before the mike, and sending their voices to Admiral Coontz on the Seattle, almost exactly half the world away. That was the start of practical use of shortwave radio by the U.S. Navy. The navies and merchant marines of the world soon followed.
And, it’s interesting to note that ALL of radio’s expansion into new channels since that date — international communications, ship to shore, VHF and UHF television, radar, satellite communications, cell phones, etc.— has been in this once “useless” wave band of 200 meters and less.
So, that’s the end of part 2 of the Zenith Radio story. When we pick it up again next time, we’ll look at the development of the company from the mid-1920’s up through the depression era years of the early 1930’s. Back to you, Jeff.
(AWR)