WRNY was an American AM radio station in New York City that began operating in 1925. It was started by Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing Company to promote his radio and science magazines. Starting in August 1928, WRNY was one of the first stations to make regularly scheduled experimental television broadcasts. Experimenter Publishing went bankrupt in early 1929 and the station was purchased by the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company to promote aviation. WRNY was deleted in 1934, as part of a consolidation on its shared frequency by surviving station WHN (now WEPN).
History
Origin
Hugo Gernsback was born in Luxembourg and studied electrical engineering in Germany. In 1904 at age 20, Gernsback emigrated to the United States to sell his automotive battery design and to start a mail order radio and electrical components business. The Electro Importing Company catalog soon grew into a magazine, Modern Electrics. The Experimenter Publishing Company was started in 1915 and by the early 1920s was publishing Radio News, Science and Invention, and Practical Electrics magazines. Gernsback included fiction stories in his magazines, and in 1926 launched the first magazine devoted to scientific fiction, Amazing Stories. Experimenter Publishing also published numerous technical and general interest books.
Organized radio broadcasting began in the early 1920s, and by 1925 there were over 500 stations in the United States. In addition to radio equipment manufacturers who established stations to help sell receivers, many publishers started stations. In mid-1925 Experimenter Publishing was granted a license for a New York City station broadcasting on 1160 kHz"New Stations", Radio Service Bulletin, July 1, 1925, page 3. with the specially requested call sign of WRNY, "signifying Radio News, New York or Roosevelt, New York"."Station WRNY Radio News", Radio News, June 1925, page 2320. The station's state-of-the-art studio was in a hotel room on the 18th floor of the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City, with its 500–watt transmitter located on the hotel roof. The first broadcast was on June 12, 1925. The opening speaker was former Senator Chauncey Depew, followed by the self-described "Father of Radio", Lee de Forest. The evening concluded with two hours of live musical entertainment. Experimenter Publishing used the radio station and the magazines to promote each other. Radio interviews with scientists or other radio notables were reprinted in the magazines, and projects and articles from Gernsback's magazines were discussed on WRNY. The station call letters also appeared on each magazine cover.
By 1927 there were over fifty radio stations and 1.5 million radio sets in the New York metropolitan area. There were so many stations it was common for stations to share the same frequency at different times during the day. At this time radio was regulated by the Department of Commerce, as authorized by the Radio Act of 1912. However, this act did not mention broadcasting, and it was not clear how much control the federal government actually had over station power and frequency assignments. Following a series of court decisions that ruled that the U.S. government had only limited authority, in August 1926 Acting Attorney General William J. Donovan issued a statement concurring with court rulings that stations were currently free to adopt powers and frequencies of their own choosing. "Federal Regulation of Radio Broadcasting" (July 8, 1926) by Acting Attorney General William J. Donovan, Official Opinions of the Attorneys General of the United States, Volume 35, 1929, pages 126-132.
The following November, taking advantage of the temporary regulatory lapse, WRNY relocated its transmitter from the Roosevelt Hotel to Coytesville, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from Manhattan,"WRNY Changes Transmitter Location", Science and Invention, December 1926, page 717. and began transmitting on 800 kHz. However, early radio receivers were not very selective and there were frequent disputes over interference between stations transmitting on nearby frequencies. Radio station WHN, on 830 kHz, complained that WRNY was now interfering with its signal, and labeled WRNY as a "pirate" broadcaster.
In 1927 the Federal Radio Commission (FRC) was established, with the authority to fully regulate broadcast station operations. A new frequency allocation that went into effect on June 15, 1927, assigned WRNY to 970 kHz, sharing this frequency with WPCH."Broadcasting Stations by Wave Lengths" (Effective June 15, 1927), Radio Service Bulletin, May 31, 1927, page 11. Later in 1927 these two stations were reassigned to 920 kHz."Alterations and Corrections", Radio Service Bulletin, November 30, 1927, page 9. Effective November 11, 1928, under the provisions of the FRC's General Order 40, WRNY was moved to 1010 kHz, sharing this assignment with three other New York City-area stations: WHN, WPAP and WQAO."Broadcasting Stations, by Wave Lengths, Effective November 11, 1928", Commercial and Government Radio Stations of the United States (June 30, 1928, edition), page 173.
Bankruptcy
By 1927 the expenses exceeded the income of the Experimenter Publishing Company. The printer and paper supplier were each owed over $150,000. The radio station had advertising revenue but it did not cover large investment in the new transmitter facility in New Jersey and the television equipment. WRNY lost $42,000 in 1927 and $39,000 in 1928. The actual amounts from the court records were $41,733.73 and $39,409.05
On February 20, 1929, an involuntary petition in bankruptcy was filed against the Experimenter Publishing Company. The total liabilities were estimated at $600,000 and assets at $182,000. A federal bankruptcy judge appointed the Irving Trust Company as receiver. Irving Trust kept the magazines and radio station operating but removed Hugo Gernsback and his brother Sidney from the company. The bankruptcy was not contested and the magazines and radio stations were sold. The bankruptcy proceedings were enthusiastically covered in the news and gossip columns of the New York City press.
The final bids were accepted at a hearing on April 3, 1929. Two publishers, Bernarr Macfadden and B. A. MacKinnon were the leading bidders. MacKinnon prevailed and paid $500,000 for the magazines. The radio stations were sold in a separate auction. Attorneys for newspaper publisher William R. Hearst and Curtiss Aircraft president C. M. Keys got into a bidding war for the radio stations. When the bid reached $100,000, a recess was called to allow one attorney to try to reach Hearst in California. He was unsuccessful and the Curtiss Aircraft bid won.
Aviation Radio The day after the bankruptcy auction, the Aviation Radio Station, Inc. was formed to take over the WRNY radio stations. C. M. Keys, president of the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company, provided the financial backing for the new company. Chester Cuthell, the attorney who was at the auction, was the president and Walter Lemmon was the general manager. The goal of the station was to promote aviation. The Federal Radio Commission had to approve station license transfer and any changes to the station. Mr. Cuthell asked the commission for more frequencies as he said that he and his partners had up to $2,000,000 to spend on the stations. The commission approved the license transfers and improvements to the existing stations.
In August 1929 Aviation Radio moved the studios from the Roosevelt Hotel to 27 West Fifty-Seventh Street. They also installed a new 1,000 watt transmitter with automatic frequency control and new speech amplifiers at the Coytesville transmitter site. These upgrades improved the station's range and sound quality. The short wave station, 2XAL, increased its power to 15,000 watts. The radio station's format was changed; the jazz music was prohibited and replaced with presentations devoted to aviation and aviators. On a show about women aviators, Amelia Earhart recounted her recent transcontinental flight. The station gave hourly weather reports of aviators. A typical schedule in late 1929 under the timesharing agreement on 1010 kHz had WRNY starting at 10:00 AM, WHN following at 1:30 PM, WPAP at 7:00 PM, and finally WRNY closing out the broadcast day from 9:30 PM to midnight. WQAO, owned by the Calvary Baptist Church, broadcast three programs on Sunday and one on Wednesday.
Deletion The owner of WHN, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, bought out WRNY and WQAO-WPAP in early 1933, which allowed WHN to begin fulltime operation on 1010 kHz.WHN Gets Full Time", Broadcasting, February 15, 1933, page 12. WRNY and WQAO-WPAP were formally deleted in January 1934."Deletions From List", Radio Service Bulletin, January 15, 1934, page 4."Radio Stations Merge", Newburgh (New York) News, January 10, 1934, page 13.
Shortwave transmissions The early AM band radio transmitters used around New York City were typically 500 or 1,000 watts. To serve a larger area, beginning in the mid-1920s a few stations added a shortwave transmitter. In 1927, WRNY started experimental shortwave station 2XAL (later W2XAL) on 9.7 MHz. This 500–watt station could be heard throughout the world, and in September 1928 Hugo Gernsback wrote about a listener in New South Wales, Australia.
Television broadcasts
Hugo Gernsback first wrote about television in the December 1909 issue of Modern Electrics and regularly reported technical advances in his magazines. By 1925 mechanical scanning television systems were becoming available, with resolutions of up to 60 scan lines. Vladimir K. Zworykin and Philo Farnsworth were developing electronic scanning systems that were the precursors of modern television but these would not be available for another decade.
WRNY was second to broadcast television pictures to the general public, after W3XK in Washington, D.C., and was preceded by several attempts to broadcast television pictures. In 1927 AT&T had demonstrated a system that sent television images and sound over telephone lines. The General Electric Research Laboratory in Schenectady, New York was sending experimental television over their shortwave radio station in early 1928. General Electric Television Demonstration. Westinghouse had a system that would broadcast motion pictures. Westinghouse Television Movie Demonstration on KDKA. Several other laboratories were also conducting experiments and demonstrations.
The television camera used a spinning disk, commonly known as a Nipkow disk, which had a spiral of holes used to sweep a narrow beam of light across the subject. The reflected light was picked up by a photoelectric cell whose electrical output would vary with the intensity of the light. This system was often called a "flying spot scanner". The early photoelectric cells were not very sensitive, so three or four would be used with the subject in a darkened booth. Another reason for multiple cells is even pickup of reflected light from the subject. The cell array includes cells in a window formation: One or more cells above, below and on each side of the subject.
The television receiver used the output of the photoelectric cell to control the brightness of a neon lamp. When the photoelectric cell detected a bright spot, the neon lamp's intensity was increased. The receiver also had a scanning disk with the same hole-pattern as the camera, and it spun at the same speed. The result was a small neon orange image (two inch (5 cm) diagonal) of the remote subject.