Chronomedia: 1922

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1922	Chronomedia index Numbers after entries link to the list of references.	links and notes
January 9	Radio station KQV goes on air in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
January 13	Radio station WHA begins operations in Madison, Wisconsin.
February 7	First edition of Reader's Digest is published by DeWitt and Leila Acheson Wallace in a print run of 5,000.
February 14	Under a new government-issued licence that ends the ban on non-military transmissions, the first regular broadcast in Britain is made from 2MT Writtle, Essex by the Marconi Wireless Telegraphy Company. The station transmits until 17 January 1923 and is not incorporated into the BBC network.
February 27	First of four annual US national radio conferences begins, called by Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover on instruction from President Harding that pave the way for the 1927 Radio Act.
February	New radio stations start to trickle out across the USA: WBAP (Fort Worth Texas; 3rd), WLW (Cincinnati, Ohio; 3rd), WBAP (Fort Worth Texas; 5th), WOC (Davenport, Iowa; 18th), WOR (New York; 20th), WHK (Cleveland, Ohio; 21st); KHQ (Spokane, Washington; 28th).
March 10	'Radio Sweeping Country—Million Sets in Use' is the headline in American entertainment trade paper Variety.
March	The trickle of new US radio stations becomes a flood: WWJ (Detroit, Michigan; 3rd), KJR (Seattle, Washington; 9th), KLZ (Denver, Colorado; 10th), WRR (Dallas, Texas; 13th), KGU (Honolulu, Hawaii, 14th), KSD (Saint Louis, Missouri; 14th), WGR (Buffalo, NY; 14th), WKY (Oklahoma City; 16th), WBT (Charlotte, North Carolina; 18th), WIP (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; 20th), KGW (Portland, Oregon; 21st), KMJ (Fresno, California; 23rd), WEW (Saint Louis, Missouri; 23rd), KGY (Olympia, Washington; 30th), WWL (New Orleans, Louisiana; 30th), KFI (Los Angeles, California; 31st).
March	Philo Taylor Farnsworth (1906-1971), a 13-year-old schoolboy in Rigby, Idaho, explains his ideas for electronic television to his chemistry teacher, Justin Tolman, at Rigby High School.
April 10	Prefect of Police in Paris issues an ordinance that use of flammable film stocks in cinemas be banned from 1 January 1925. This is later revealed to be at the behest of Société Pathé Cinéma, which claims to have a monopoly on the manufacture of safety film.	In fact, the edict is not implemented for some years until satisfactory film stocks are available.
April	More US radio stations launch in the first week: WGY (Schenectady, NY; 2nd); WAAB (Baton Rouge, Louisiana; 4th)—first US radio station with four-letter W call-sign—and KOB (Albuquerque, New Mexico; 5th).
April 28	Radio station WOI in Ames, Iowa becomes the first educational radio station to be licensed in the USA.
May 4	F G Kellaway, Postmaster-General, makes the first House of Commons statement on the future of UK broadcasting.
May 4	Radio stations WDZ and KNX go on air in Decatur, Illinois and Los Angeles, California respectively.
May 11	First broadcast of station 2LO in London is made by the 'Demonstration Department' of the Marconi Company from a 100W transmitter on the top floor of Marconi House, Strand.
May 16	First experimental broadcasts from station 2ZY is made by Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company, Trafford Park, Manchester, England.
May 18	Talks begin to form a UK broadcasting syndicate, which will end in formation of the British Broadcasting Company.
May 23	Radio station WJH in Washington DC broadcasts a formal debate on the subject of daylight saving time.
May 23	Walt Disney's first company, Laugh-o-Gram Films is incorporated.
May	By now around 200 radio broadcasting licences have been issued in the USA. [0054]
June 9	Joseph Tykocinski-Tykociner, a research professor at the University of Illinois, demonstrates a sound-on-film system. The track is positioned to the right of the emulsion (seen from the emulsion side) and the film runs at speeds up to 162 feet a minute to capture music. [0025]
June 14	President Warren G Harding's speech at the dedication of the Francis Scott Key Memorial in Baltimore is broadcast by local radio station WEAR, the first time a US president has been broadcast live.
June 17	Idea of a radio network, conceived as a public service but which becomes the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), is proposed in a letter from David Sarnoff to E W Rice Jr, Honorary Chairman of the Board, General Electric Company.	Sarnoff quote
mid year	Bell Laboratories has developed a prototype electrical disc recording system, using a condenser microphone designed by E C Went. The Columbia and Victor record companies are keen to adopt the tchnology. [Went later develops the light valve for variable density film sound recording.]
August 3	Radio station WGY (then 2XAG?) in Schenectady, NY broadcasts a drama, The Wolf by Eugene Walter, produced in its studio.
August 16	Radio station WEAF, set up by American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T), begins broadcasts from the top of the Western Electric building in New York.
August 28	Station WEAF, New York, broadcasts a 10-minute advertisement for a real estate company, promoting a group of apartment buildings in Queens for Queensboro Realty Company, which pays $100—the first radio commercial (known at the time as toll broadcasting).
September 1	Station WBAY in New York begins daily news bulletins, The Daily Digest, presented by its editor, George F Thompson.
September 17	Sound-on-film productions using the Tri-Ergon process, developed by Joseph Engl, Joseph Massolle and Hans Vogt in 1919, are shown in Berlin to an invited audience of 1,000 people. The soundtrack is carried on a separate film strip. By 1926, the patents are bought up by Fox and merged with those acquired for the Photophone process, being renamed Movietone. In a single film strip version, this becomes the standard sound system by the early 1930s. A similar system is being developed by Kovalendov in the USSR.
September	During a year in Germany, Lee De Forest demonstrates a sound film system in which both picture and sound are combined on a single film. [0025]
October 5	Radio station WHB begins transmissions in Kansas City, Missouri.
October 7	Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) makes the first royal broadcast from York House via 2LO.
October 7	Two US radio stations, WGY in Schenectady NY and WJZ in Newark NJ, connect by landline to carry coverage by Grantland Rice of the baseball World Series from the Polo Grounds in New York, forming an embryonic 'network'.
October 18	British Broadcasting Company (BBC) is formed by six radio manufacturing companies under a government licence as the sole British radio operator. It takes over existing stations including 2LO (London) and 2ZY (Manchester). Share capital is £100,000 in cumulative ordinary shares with a fixed dividend rate of 7½ per cent. The board of directors comprises Rt Hon Lord Gainford (chairman); Major Basil Binyon (managing director, Radio Communication Company Ltd); John Gray (Chairman, Hotpoint Electric Appliance Company Ltd); Geoffrey C Isaacs (managing director, Marconi's Wirelesss Telegraph Company Ltd); Archibald McKinstry (joint managing director, Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Export Company Ltd); Sir William Noble (director, General Electric Company Ltd); Henry Mark Pease (managing director, Western Electric Company Ltd).
October 27	A system for synchronising moving pictures with audio disc recording, the Audion, is demonstrated by Western Electric's Bell Laboratories to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, meeting at Woolsey Hall, Yale University. The record runs at constant speed, displaying a revolution counter, while the projectionist hand-cranks the film to keep a matching counter in sync.
October 28	Station WEAF in New York broadcasts the first coast-to-coast coverage of college football: University of Chicago v Princeton. The signal is carried by landline from Chicago to New York for transmission.	> 1923
November 1	Licence for receiving wireless telegraphy is introduced in the UK. It costs 10s a year.
November 14	British Broadcasting Company’s London station (2LO on 365m) is officially opened, broadcasting on 369m from Marconi House, Strand.
November 15	BBC’s Manchester station (2ZY on 375m) is opened at Metropolitan-Vickers’ Dickenson Street Electricity Works in Old Trafford, and the Birmingham station (5IT on 420m) opens at General Electric Company’s Witton works. All three BBC stations broadcast the UK general election results. (The Bonar Law Conservative government is elected.)	> 1923
December 3	First Technicolor film using the subtractive colour process is The Toll of the Sea, directed by Chester M Franklin for Metro Pictures and premiered this day at the Rialto Theatre in New York. Two negatives are shot to create two separate positive colour images printed back to back.
December 5	Kansas City radio station WDAF begins late-night broadcasts on six nights a week at 23:30-01:00 by the Coon-Sanders Novelty Orchestra [right] from the Plantation Grill at the Hotel Muehlebach. The 'clear channel' broadcasts can be heard throughout the USA and even in Hawaii. The band, which changes its name to the Coon-Sanders Original Nighthawks Orchestra, soon begins asking listeners to send in requests which are played immediately on air, making it probably the first radio request programme. The programme is renamed Nighthawk Frolics and a fan club (probably the first specifically for a radio act) is formed; it recruits 37,000 members within two years.	Click on picture to hear an extract
December 14	John Reith is appointed General Manager of the BBC. The BBC staff totals four.	> 1923 November 14
December 15	British Broadcasting Company is officially registered.
December 22	During the American Radio Exposition, WEAF broadcasts a double wedding ceremony at the Grand Central Palace before an audience of 4,000. Each couple is given $100.
December 23	First daily news bulletin, the first ‘talk’ and the first orchestral concert are broadcast by the BBC.	> 1923 January 27
December 24	BBC’s Newcastle-upon-Tyne station (5NO on 400m) is opened at the CWS Building, Blandford Street, the transmitter being at 24 Eldon Square.
December 27	The first week's takings at the newly-opened 1,022-seat Majestic Cinema, Macclesfield—one of five in the Cheshire town—are £276 5s 5d and the profit £222 19s 7d. Ticket prices are 6d, 9d, 1s and, in the balcony, 1s 9d. This suggests over 7,000 admissions during the week.
December 31	So far the General Post Office has issued 35,774 wireless receiving licences.
December	Pathé Baby projector, using 9.5mm non-flammable film, is introduced in France.
December	Goskino is created to exercise a film distribution monopoly in the Soviet Union that will earn revenue from imported films to finance Soviet production.
December	Columbia Gramophone Manufacturing Company, with serious financial problems in the USA, sells its profitable UK operation Columbia Graphophone Company to its European general manager Louis Sterling and his financial backers.	See also 1923, 1925
•	Shoreham film studio in Sussex is destroyed by fire.
•	British film producer Alliance Company collapses.
•	A C & R C Bromhead buy out the French parent’s shareholding in the Gaumont Company in the UK, making it wholly British.
•	Universal opens a distribution branch in France. Metro signs an exclusive distribution agreement with Louis Aubert, Goldwyn signs with Gaumont.
•	British Super Films is founded by Sir William Jury and G B Samuelson, the latter selling his Worton Hall Studios to the new business.
•	League of Nations forms a Committee on Intellectual Co-operation. It commissions a report from Julien Luchaire, France's Inspector General of Public Education, on 'Relation of the Cinematograph to Intellectual Life'. It leads to the Paris Congress in 1926. [0038]
•	Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association (MPPDA) is formed, partly in response to public concern over Hollywood scandals but also to protect US film interests overseas through its Foreign Department. Will H Hays [right], former Postmaster General in President Harding’s cabinet, is its first president; hence it is generally known as The Hays Office.
•	Mitchell ‘Standard’ studio film camera is introduced.
•	Plasticon anaglyphic 3-D film process is demonstrated.
•	The Power of Love, made by Perfect Pictures in the US, makes the first use of stereoscopy in movies.
•	VGIK, the Soviet film school, is founded.
•	The first commercial radio station is licensed in Canada.
•	As the radio audience grows, the sales of gramophones slow after the post-war boom.
•	Live broadcast is made by former cricketer Len Watt from the Sydney Cricket Ground, describing a match between two New South Wales teams.
•	In Stockholm, tests of radio transmission by the Telecommunications Administration use the Theatrophone feed from the Opera House as a source of some programming.
•	First feature film made in Colombia: La Maria, directed by Alfredo del Diestro.
•	Victor Talking Machine Company issues the first country music record: Eck Robertson and Harry Gilliland performing Sally Goodin and Arkansas Traveler, recorded in New York.
•	Daily Mail Trust buys 49 per cent of Lord Beaverbrook’s shareholding in the Daily Express newspaper.
•	Coca-Cola is bottled for the first time; hitherto it has been sold only in glasses from soda fountains.

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