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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 N707, September 11, 2022

Seattle: The Background Story

The city of Seattle is the largest city in the American western state of Washington. It lies on the eastern side of Puget Sound, and it is just one hundred miles from the international border with Canada. The original inhabitants were Duwamish Indians, whose ancestors had migrated across the Bering Sea from Siberia, and by the time of the first European visitors, they had established 17 villages in the area.

The first European visitor to the area was Englishman Captain George Vancouver who commanded a Royal Navy expedition to chart the western coast of North America in May 1792. More than half a century later, in September 1851, two different parties, led by David Denny and Luther Collins, settled in the area that subsequently became Seattle.

Two years later (1853), the small community gave the name Seattle to their settlement, in honor of a local Duwamish chieftain. The total population of Seattle and its extended metropolitan areas these days is around four million.

Seattle lays claim to installing the first gasoline/petrol pump in the world, in 1907, though St. Louis, Missouri also claims a similar event two years earlier, in 1905. The Seattle claim honors John McLean, who was Sales Manager in Washington state for the Standard Oil Company of California.

He purchased a small property adjacent to the Standard main depot, and with engineer Henry Harris they constructed a pipe from the main storage tank to a 30-gallon, six-foot-high galvanized tank. On the tank was a glass gauge, and a valve with a hose, so that the gasoline could be pumped directly into the vehicles.

However, perhaps the two best known symbols representing Seattle would be their Space Needle, which was erected in 1962, and the massive Boeing aircraft factories that had their earliest beginnings in Seattle in 1926. The Space Needle was commemorated by an official American postage stamp 60 years ago; and numerous airmail postage stamps have been issued, some of which might be construed as Boeing related.

The Space Needle was constructed in 1962 as a tangible symbol for the Seattle World's Fair, which attracted ten million visitors from all around the world. The Space Needle is an observation tower standing 600 feet tall, and the design of the monument represents both a giant balloon tethered to the ground and a surrealistic flying saucer. The tower was designed and constructed to be strong enough to endure wind speeds up to 200 mph, and an earthquake rated at a massive 9 on the Richter Scale.

Many countries in the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia staged major exhibits in the 1962 World's Fair in Seattle, including little San Marino, a small independent country in the center of Italy. This little enclave of only 24 square miles, with a population of just 30,000, obtains 10% of its government revenue from the worldwide sale of its postage stamps. However, philately is not as popular these days as it was back then.

The Seattle Center Monorail was also constructed for use at the 1962 World's Fair, and it is still in use to this day. The monorail, with its twin lines Red and Blue, connects downtown Seattle with Seattle Center, a distance of almost one mile. These trains run in both directions simultaneously, departing from each terminal about every ten minutes for a journey that lasts just two minutes, and they convey some two million passengers each year.

The Boeing aircraft factories are noted best for their passenger/cargo airliners that are identified with three digit numbers beginning and ending with 7, such as 707, 717, 727, etc. And, by the way, did you notice that the serial number for this edition of Wavescan, is NWS707! During the past half century, Boeing has assembled and delivered 20,000 aircraft in this 7x7 series.

Their largest assembly factory is at Everett, a 20 mile distant northern suburb of Seattle, and it occupies 100 acres, the largest building in the world. They employ 200,000 workers, and fully assembled aircraft are conveyed to Paine Field, the main passenger airport for Seattle, for test flights and then the ultimate delivery to their new owners.

William Dubilier: The Forgotten Radio Inventor

William Dubilier was born in New York City in 1888, and at the age of 15 (1903) he read in the local newspaper that the famous wireless inventor Guglielmo Marconi was in the United States, presenting a series of lectures regarding the development of Morse Code wireless communication. During the following year (1904), another wireless inventor, Lee de Forest, installed wireless equipment at the World's Fair in St. Louis, Missouri, another wireless event with which Dubilier became familiar. The de Forest Morse Code equipment was installed on a glass-enclosed platform on an ornate, specially built 300 ft. tall wireless tower.

Soon after those two highly significant events in the development of wireless communication, William Dubilier left high school, simply because his parents were unable to afford the payments for his continuing education. Instead, Dubilier took up schooling in electrical engineering, and he paid for this tuition by taking part-time employment with the Continental Wireless Telegraph and Telephone Company.

In 1908 now at the age of 20, Dubilier formed his own wireless company, which he called the Commercial Wireless Telegraph and Telephone Company. He experimented with voice transmissions by wireless, for which he developed a new type of capacitor using crystal sheets of transparent mica. He manufactured a radio transmitter which was installed in a wooden box measuring just one foot cube, and also a radio receiver at about the same size.
Other earlier wireless experimenters had displayed their wireless equipment at a World's Fair somewhere in the United States, and William Dubilier adopted the same opportunity. He traversed the American continent from New York, and installed his transmitter equipment at one end in the Manufacturer's Hall at the Seattle World's Fair, which opened on June 21, 1909. The receiver was on display at the other end of the same Hall, and at times also elsewhere in the Fair grounds. The newspaper coverage was exuberant, praising the clarity of the radio transmission of speech and recorded and live music.

After the Fair closed in October (1909), Dubilier visited the Luna Amusement Park, where he discovered that a venturesome entrepreneur had set up his own radio receiver, and he was charging people 10 cents to listen to the Dubilier music on his receiver headphones.

During the 1910 annual summer Potlatch Celebrations, Dubilier demonstrated an improved version of his radio equipment, and once more the newspaper coverage was exuberant in their praise. The equipment was quite small, just a one foot cube, and not the size of a dining room table like the equipment other inventors were displaying.

In October (1910), Dubilier constructed a 320 feet tall wooden tower on the outskirts of Seattle, the largest wooden tower in the world at the time they said, and he broadcast speech and music that was heard clearly in Tacoma, some 30 miles distant. Again, newspaper praise was exuberant.

Two years later, Dubilier repeated his broadcast activities during the summer Potlach Celebrations, and this time the exuberant news coverage even went nationwide. The newspapers were commenting on the clear quality of reproduction for both voice and music.

At that stage, Dubilier announced plans to establish a factory in Seattle for the manufacture and sale of his radio transmitters and receivers. However, he was unable to raise sufficient funding, and the intended project collapsed.

In 1922, the 34 year old William Dubilier left Seattle and returned to his New York City, where he established a factory to manufacture capacitors. That venture was indeed highly successful, and ten years later again his factory was merged with Cornell Radio. By 1966, Dubilier held a total of 350 radio related patents. He died in 1969, aged 81.

Why was his venture to manufacture compact transmitters and receivers with a quality superior to other manufacturers not successful? All we can say, it must be the fact that he was in the wrong location at the time. Perhaps if he had been further south, or perhaps closer to the east coast rather than to the west coast, he could have achieved greater success.

These days, though, William Dubilier is never included in the list of pioneer wireless and radio inventors. Many are the names that are heralded widely as the heroes whose inventions have been developed into what we now know and accept as radio. He is a forgotten pioneer.

We express our appreciation to radio broadcaster Monsignor Dr. Tom Roberts for suggesting that we present the fascinating story of radio broadcasting in Seattle, in Washington state in the United States of America. In this edition of Wavescan we have presented just the first two topics in the Seattle wireless/radio story. Further episodes in this mini-series are already in the planning stages.