Professor Fred W. Friendly May 15, 1972
(c) Ralph J. Begleiter, 1972
Leon Samuel became interested in wireless broadcasting in 1919 and 1920. At home, he fiddled with the latest versions of then very primitive wireless receivers. Perhaps as early as 1920, Leon saw the value to the store of having an Outlet Company broadcasting station. It would be a public "first" which would attract attention and prestige to the Outlet Store. The store could benefit from increased sales that would result.
The Samuels brothers, both prominent community members, belonged to a political "club" in which former Governor James Higgins, who had served a one year term in 1907, was also a member. The group probably served as a kind of advisory council to then Governor Beeckman. The manager of a Providence theater, Edward Fay, and a young electronics experimenter,
Thomas P. Giblin, were also present at some meetings of the group.
Here the Samuels brothers became intrigued by the radio feats of
Giblin, who had already broadcast recorded music over his experimental radio station on an upper floor of his home since 1919.
In the course of his experimentation,
Giblin received financial help from Leon Samuels, v/ho grew closer to the broadcaster than did his brother Joseph.
Giblin, who claims to have invented in 1917 the concentrated inductance coil, used in tuning radio receivers, secured an experimental broadcast license from the U.S. Secretary of Commerce in 1919, According to his aunt, Teresa Donnelly,
Giblin would string a microphone wire from his house on Sprague Street in Providence next door to hers and broadcast her piano-playing on his station when he wasn't using Victrola records.
Giblin's broadcasts were heard three nights a week for about two hours a night. The next year, in 1920,
Giblin built a more powerful transmitter for his company,
Standard Radio and Electric, in Pawtucket. This 150-watt transmitter was licensed as 1XAD by the federal government, and its operator claimed it was heard in Florida, Montreal and along the Mississippi (not unusual because of the lack of other stations using the airwaves at the time).
All this impressed Leon Samuels, and in 1922, he convinced Joseph to allow him to go ahead with
Giblin's proposal to install a radio station at the Outlet Store as a public relations gimmick.
In April, 1922, the word was out in Providence that the Outlet would be setting up a powerful radio station. Radio, by then, had become a national craze, and the Providence Journal gave the news much attention.
Giblin began moving the 1XAD equipment to the fifth floor of the Outlet Store building and by August the bugs were being worked out of the studio and transmitter set up.
There was another radio station being born in the summer of 1922 in Providence,
WEAN, owned by the Shepard Stores, Outlet s biggest competitor. Those who remember today recall anxious tension as the two stations competed for the honor of being first in Providence.
WEAN won, going on the air in June.
It turns out
Thomas Giblin had an ulterior motive for setting up the Outlet Store radio station. He had begun to turn out radio receivers for public sale, and suddenly, in the late fall of 1922, Outlet Store advertising in the Providence papers featured
Giblin "RadioEar" sets in the store's radio department on the first floor.
Leon Samuels did not personally manage the installation of the station; he was too busy helping his brother run the store. But he did follow its progress closely, and it was he who would be remembered as the father of the station.
The man who, together with
Giblin, supervised the station's beginnings, was
Ray C. Blanchard, who was hired by the Samuels brothers in 1922 to help set up and operate the store's radio set department.
Blanchard had a record of radio operation while he was in the navy, and apparently the Samuels brothers felt it would be enough to have him and
Giblin do everything necessary to the operation of the department and the station. They were the only staff when the station went on the air.
Blanchard and two Commerce department inspectors, Walter Butterworth and Charles Kolster, went to Boston in August to apply for call letters for the new station. They came back with WJAR.
Blanchard recalled, "We didn't like the damn call letters, but we had to take them." The station's first license, as WJAR, was dated August 2, 1922, and was slated to expire November 1 the same year. (All radio station licenses were issued for three-month periods in the early 1920's.)
The station was authorized to broadcast on a frequency of 360 meters as were all stations, and at a power of 200 watts there were no limits on the hours of operation. The license was made out to J. Samuels & Brother, Inc., the company which then owned the Outlet Store.
In the event ships at sea were broadcasting emergency messages, WJAR's license required it to monitor them and go off the air itself to permit emergency communicators to use the frequency.
WJAR, The Outlet Company Station, went on the air September 6, 1922. The first voice was that of
Blanchard, who introduced Governor Emery J. San Souci. The Governor, using the opportunity to make a political speech, sounded a law-and-order note:
"At no time in the history of the United States have the executives of both state and nation been faced with more serious problems than confront them today, and instead of reckless criticism, every assistance of law-abiding citizens should be extended wholeheartedly to their elective representatives regardless of political considerations in their efforts to promote the welfare of the general public."
Blanchard then introduced the other dignitaries who came to the WJAR studio to celebrate the opening: Providence Mayor Joseph Gainer (who talked about the glories of his city), the Samuels brothers, and former Governor Higgins.
The opening program featured a humorist, Rev. Dr. Willard Scott, who was imported from Brookline, Massachusetts, as well as several soloists and the Providence Biltmore Hotel Orchestra under the direction of I. Nagel. The original plan went awry when the Outlet received a telegram from the Victor Phonograph Company, which refused to allow vocalist Lucy Isabelle Marsh to sing over the radio. Miss Marsh was under contract to Victor.
The Evening Bulletin reported the opening night this way:
"Flashing timely messages from Rhode Island s Governor, the Mayor of Providence, and the mayors of surrounding cities, interspersed with attractive entertainment numbers, to the Eastern United States radio world, the powerful broadcasting station at the Outlet Company swung into action last night, inaugurating a radio service that will ultimately provide two programmes a week."
A diary kept by Mortimer Burbank, an assistant to the Outlet's advertising manager, noted with disappointment the cancellation of Miss Marsh's performance at the last minute, but otherwise noted little about the opening. The Outlet station opened as purely a publicity gimmick for the store, not as a first step towards a distinct broadcasting operation.
WJAR's first studio was located precisely where the station's studios stood in 1972. The fact that the position of the radio studios had not changed for fifty years by 1972.
The studio itself was draped with heavy pearl velour. The ceiling, of draped Satin, hung low into the room in an effort to prevent echoes and reverberation. A small upright player piano was soon replaced by an Ampico grand. A Victrola stood in one corner, between matching flowered sofa and armchair.
The only indication that the room was a studio was the megaphone like contraption hung delicately from a wooden stand, which was the first microphone. Those who performed on WJAR in its earliest days remember having to sing very loudly in order that the microphone would pick up their voices.
There were three rooms used for WJAR broadcasting: The studio, an "operating room" containing controls and the transmitter, and a power room containing equipment to supply the transmitter with electricity. Only the studio was actually inside the Outlet Store, on the fifth floor across from the offices of the Samuels brothers. The other rooms were built directly above the studio on the roof of the building, adjacent to the antenna.
The remains of WJAR's history were still in evidence in 1972. In 1972, on the roof, there was still a steel brace which held the primary pole of the radio antenna. As far as can be determined, the first- antenna stretched from the northwest corner of the roof (above the store executives' offices, which are also in precisely the same place as they were in 1922) to the southwest corner, in a line directly over elevator shafts which were able to support the weight of the first and later antennas.
The fact, that the Outlet Store was proud of its radio station as a mark of prestige is indicated by the fact that a picture of the store, with WJAR's antenna perched conspicuously atop the roof, was used on Outlet company stationery until well into the 1940's and 1950's even though the antenna was removed from the roof in 1935.
WJAR Phamplet, 1923
WJAR Phamplet, 1923
Courtesy Of the
http://www.ontheshortwaves.com/
