Frank Conrad’s mind always veered towards engineering precision. In his youth, he built a radio just to receive time signals from the Arlington, Virginia Naval Observatory, to settle a bet on the accuracy of a watch. As Westinghouse corporation’s chief engineer, he constructed a low-watt radio transmitter in his garage, playing music records and talking with other amateur radio owners. Once he got tired of playing his own, he made an arrangement with the local music store: if they would provide him with music, he would give them on-air promotions. This was the birth of his radio station.

On this day, November 2, in 1920, Conrad’s KDKA radio, with a 100-watt transmitter upgraded from his previous 75-watt, made its first commercial broadcast (and the first news broadcast over the radio).

“This is KDKA, of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,” went the first official broadcast of KDKA. “We shall now broadcast the election returns.” Westinghouse, to drive up interest in their radio receivers, added to the programming mix live in-house musical performances, along with remote broadcasts of a church choir. The first remote news broadcast came in the coverage of President Herbert Hoover’s speech in Pittsburgh, ten miles away from the station.