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"Wavescan" is a weekly program for long distance radio hobbyists produced by Dr. Adrian M. Peterson, Coordinator of International Relations for Adventist World Radio. AWR carries the program over many of its stations (including shortwave). Adrian Peterson is a highly regarded DXer and radio historian, and often includes features on radio history in his program. We are reproducing those features below, with Dr. Peterson's permission and assistance.
Wavescan N551, September 15, 2019
Chronohertz Station WWV Celebrates 100 Years: The Very Early Years
The famous American chronohertz station, WWV, in Boulder, Colorado, is now celebrating its centenary; an illustrious one hundred years of continuous radio broadcasting history. In honor of this remarkable achievement, we focus our attention here in Wavescan today on the very early beginnings of this now historic shortwave radio broadcasting station. Let's go right back to the very beginning.
It was on March 3, 1901 that the United States Congress established NBS, the National Bureau of Standards. Its initial purpose was to standardize all weights and measures throughout the United States, and its first location was not in Boulder, Colorado, but rather on Connecticut Avenue North West in Washington, DC.
Three years later (1904), NBS began to give attention to the functions of the newly developing communication medium, wireless in both transmission and reception, and this was under the auspices of Dr. Louis Stratton. During the following year, NBS began to study the various, though yet unknown, factors that affect the transmission of wireless signals; that is, the study of radio signal propagation.
In 1908, the United States Navy entered the picture, and they established a research laboratory that was co-sited with NBS. This new navy laboratory was installed on the Fourth Floor, at the North End of the East Building, and they were particularly interested in the possibility of successful ship communication at sea.
In 1912, the experimental wireless station at NBS in Washington, DC was listed with the self-allocated callsign BS, standing rather obviously for Bureau of Standards. During the following year (1913), the American Army established their own wireless laboratory on the Third Floor of the West Building, and their army-approved callsign was WUQ.
Then six years later again, in October 1918, all three experimental wireless units (Bureau of Standards, Navy and Army), moved into a new building that had just been constructed on the same NBS property on Connecticut Avenue North West in Washington, DC. Three different antenna systems were erected for use by this new combined radio unit:
By this stage, the Department of Commerce in Washington, DC had been entrusted with the overall regulation of the radio scene throughout the United States, and they began issuing their monthly Radio Service Bulletins in January 1915. These newsy bulletins contained, among other items of radio importance, a progressive listing of all new licenses that had been issued, at first for all wireless communication stations, and subsequently for all radio broadcasting stations.
Radio Service Bulletin No. 29 was issued on September 2, 1919, and it was just the second such Bulletin that was issued after the end of World War I in Europe. This Bulletin, No. 29, contained a listing of all new radio licenses that had been issued since June 15, 1919.
The next issue of the Radio Service Bulletin, No. 30, is dated just one month later, October 1, 1919, and it contained a listing of all new radio licenses that had been issued during the past calendar month, since September 2. This issue presents the first listing for the new radio station WWV in Washington, DC, and it also shows the callsign for the navy usage of this radio station as NSJ.
Thus the licenses for the combined usage of the new wireless/radio station at the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, DC, stations WWV and NSJ, were issued sometime between September 2 and October 1, 1919. The radio station WWV accepts the date for its initial license as the definitive date, October 1, 1919, which is the date when the initial listing was first published in the Radio Service Bulletin No. 30 from the Department of Commerce in Washington, DC.
Interestingly, shortwave station WWV, with its sequentially listed callsign, did not begin its long and illustrious career on shortwave, and neither was it broadcasting chronohertz signals during that initial era. Instead, WWV began its 100 year old life span on mediumwave, and as an entertainment radio broadcasting station. This is how it happened.
The first test broadcasts from this new radio station went on the air in May 1920 with 50 watts on the mediumwave channel 600 kHz. WWV is the oldest continuously-operating radio station in the United States, first going on air from Washington, DC approximately six months before the launch of the now equally famous KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Programming over the new WWV during that era was simply a series of music concerts every Friday evening, and its signal could be heard 25 miles from Washington.
On December 15 (1920), WWV began broadcasting on 750 kHz, with the distribution of news reports from the Department of Agriculture in Morse Code. This signal could be heard up to 200 miles distant from Washington. These news broadcasts ended though just four months later, on April 15, 1921.
At the end of 1922, WWV's purpose shifted from program broadcasting to the broadcast of standard frequency signals. These signals were desperately needed by other broadcasting stations because equipment limitations at the time meant that the radio engineers found it difficult to stay on their assigned frequencies.
Radio station WWV began test transmissions with standard frequency broadcasts on January 29, 1923, and frequencies from 200 kHz to 545 kHz were broadcast progressively. These test broadcasts on standard frequencies became officially recognized transmissions three months later, on March 6. The frequencies were now accurate to "better than three-tenths of one percent", it was stated.
At first, the transmitter had to be manually switched from one frequency to the next using a wavemeter, but in the mid-1920s the first quartz resonators that stabilize the frequency generating oscillators were invented, and these greatly improved the accuracy of the WWV frequency broadcasts.
Interestingly, in 1926, when other stations throughout the United States were also on the air as standard frequency stations, NBS announced that their own service was no longer necessary, and that they planned to close the station. However, there was such a flood of protests across the nation that NBS decided to retain the broadcasts from station WWV, and instead they planned to expand its coverage.
Five years later (1931), WWV was moved from its two story location in Washington, DC to a new facility located at nearby College Park in Maryland. An already-standing house was renovated for the installation of a new crystal controlled shortwave transmitter for chronohertz WWV.
Then, after several additional moves over the years, we find the now 100 year old chronohertz station still on the air to this day, though now located at Fort Collins near Boulder, Colorado.
More about WWV, and its many callsigns, next time.