KDKA Launches Commercial Radio Broadcasting
- Date
- 2 November 1920
- Category
- Science, technology & invention
- Region
- United States
- Era
- Modern
- Significance
On 2 November 1920, Westinghouse station KDKA in Pittsburgh transmitted returns from the Harding-Cox presidential election, an event widely cited as the first scheduled broadcast by a licensed commercial radio station.
Operating from a rooftop shack with a 100-watt transmitter, the station aimed to create consumer demand for the radio receivers Westinghouse manufactured. The broadcast inaugurated radio as a medium of mass communication rather than point-to-point signalling. Within two years hundreds of stations were licensed across the United States, and the model spread internationally, with public and commercial broadcasters founded across Europe and beyond during the 1920s. Radio rapidly became a fixture of domestic life, delivering news, music, drama, sport, advertising, and political address simultaneously to dispersed audiences. It created shared national experiences, accelerated the formation of mass consumer culture, and gave governments and advertisers a powerful new instrument for shaping public opinion. The technologies, programming formats, and commercial financing pioneered in this period established the template for the broadcast age that television would later inherit.
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Empires active in 2 November 1920
- Empire of Japan1868 CE – 1947 CE
- French Colonial Empire (Second)1830 CE – 1962 CE
- British Empire1583 CE – 1997 CE
- Spanish Empire1492 CE – 1976 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE – 1999 CE
- Solomonic dynasty1270 CE – 1974 CE
Related science, technology & invention events
- The Wright Brothers' Powered Flight17 December 1903
- Edison's Electric Light and Central Power1879 (Pearl Street 1882)
- Bell Patents the Telephone1876
- AC Triumph and Niagara Falls Power1893-1896
- Morse Opens the Electric Telegraph24 May 1844
- Formulation of quantum mechanics1925–1927
Also relevant
Further reading
The wider story
A Little History of Science
Warm, jargon-free tour of discovery from Babylonian stargazers to the genome.
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