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Coe’s Wireless Radio Station
In 1919 Coe went to drastic measures to ensure that all campus clocks
showed the proper time. By January of 1920, a 126 ft aerial was
constructed atop the Main building; another, 109 ft high, was atop the
Science hall. It was in this building, in the physics laboratory, that
Paul Young, a Coe freshman, set up the first wireless station. From
here communication could be made with the Eiffel Tower, the Panama
Canal and Arlington, Virginia, which broadcast daily weather reports
and the exact time to the second.
Paul Young, from Manchester Iowa, was persuaded to enter Coe College as
a freshman, set up the wireless station, and operate it. The
September 19, 1919 Cosmos reported that "Young has a great deal of
experience along this line, having served in this department of the
army and operated on amateur station in Manchester from which he sent
and received messages from all over the United States." It was his
influence and knowledge that made it possible Coe's physics department
to provide such courses as Theory of Radio and Wireless Operation,
teaching students international code and how to work the wireless
apparatus. Just 19 years old, Young served as the lecturer for
these courses and was given a great deal of freedom from Dr. Weld,
chair of the physics department.
In October of 1919 the erection of the wireless station was temporarily
halted when Young fell from the first ledge of the Science Hall,
breaking two ribs and severely straining muscles in his back. The
October 24, 1919 Cosmos reported that "in spite of the accident,
Young's enthusiasm for the new wireless department has not been
lessened." By the end of the month, the fifty foot mast on the
main building and twenty foot mast on the Science Hall were put in
place by Loomis Brothers of Cedar Rapids.
Due to Young's enthusiastic efforts, the college was granted a special
license which permitted "the use of higher power and longer wave
lengths than is usually granted," according to the 16 January 1920
Cosmos. This license is issued "from the government officials in
Chicago who have charge of Radio Stations of the Central States. [It]
gives this station at Coe a decided advantage over other stations,
either amateur or special, in the Central States."
Another advantage was the sheer size of the station. By January of 1920
construction was complete on two masts, which supported the aerial. The
highest, 126 feet above the ground, was atop the Main building and the
other, 109 feet above ground, atop the Science Hall. With a three
kilowatt transformer connecting to the 126 foot aerial, the Coe
wireless station had broadcasting with a wave length of from 200 to 500
meters and a sending radius of from 2000 to 2500 miles, making the
station the most powerful in Iowa and one of the most powerful in the
Midwest. Every Thursday members of the department were able to hear a
concert given by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra through a wireless
telephone receiving apparatus. Music and speeches could be received
from hundreds of miles away.
Students were instructed in proper usage of this equipment through
lectures in the wireless department. More a series of lectures within
the physics department than its own department, Young and Prof. Weld of
the Physics department taught Theory of Radio, which covered
"oscillations and waves, various forms of coupling and control and
ordinary forms of detectors, aerials and other wireless apparatus,"
according to the 1919-1920 Coe College catalogue. This same catalogue
detailed the course Wireless Operation "open to any student -
arrangements may be made with the Operator of the Radio Station for
private instruction in wireless practice including training in sending
and receiving the international code, manipulation of the controls,
etc….fees will be charged and credit given in taught proper usage of
this equipment in his lectures."
Young arranged for a meeting of amateur wireless operators from Iowa
and adjoining states in April of 1921. His purpose was to form a relay
league, which, according to the February 4, 1921 Cosmos, would "provide
some definite plan in regard to the routine of wireless messages. At
present these messages are relayed across the state by any station
which happens to pick them up. The result is, as Mr. Young expressed
it, "a grand mixup." The new organization would collaborate with the
American Relay Radio League. A few days before the meeting, Young fell
ill and was forced to postpone the meeting until May 28. Fifty amateur
radio men attended and were all invited to join the new Iowa Radio
Relay League. Their meeting also included a series of lectures by Prof.
Weld and Prof. Ford of the electrical engineering department of the
University of Iowa. The visitors were also served an elaborate
five-course banquet in Voorhees Hall dining room.
Students interested in radio telegraphy were also involved in another
organization, Alpha Delta Alpha. According to the April 15, 1921 issue
of the Cosmos, this radio fraternity, which began with Coe’s chapter in
late April of 1921, was the "first national wireless organization to be
formed in the country." Other chapters were later located at the
University of Iowa and Iowa State College in Ames. Membership was open
to the commercial radio engineering students.
Young continued to take the station to a new level with the
instillation of the largest radiophone transmitter in the state of
Iowa. September 30, 1921, the Cosmos reported that "the radiophone
transmitter will have a talking radius of from five hundred to nine
hundred miles and will be a valuable adjunct to the Coe station. The
station now has a transmitting radius of 2500 miles, and sends out
numerous stories concerning Coe and other local happenings to college
and newspaper stations throughout the country." Messages were now being
received from Paris, Wales, Norway, Germany and Pearl Harbor and all
new equipment was being installed by students in instrument designing
who study commercial radio engineering.
All these technical developments were quite exciting, but it was the
headline in the December 16, 1921 Cosmos that had students
amazed: "Radio Promises New Miracle; Coe and Iowa Students May
Soon Dance To Same Music" According to the article, "It will soon
be possible for Coe students attending an all-college party at Voorhees
Quadrangle, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and students present at a dance in the
University of Iowa, Iowa City, same state, to simultaneously fox trot
to the same music played by a single orchestra. . . . within a short
time it will be a common occurrence for students to sit in chapel on
many evenings and listen to grand opera as sung in some theatre in New
York City! After the reader has recovered his breath, he will ask if
these things are possible. They are even probably if plans of the local
radio department mature, and if the reader be a student he can help
bring these modern scientific miracles to within the proof of his own
senses by contributing fifty cents toward a 'loud speaker.' "
This "loud speaker" was to be put into connection with the wireless
telephone in the Science hall, taking the sounds as they come into the
station and amplifying them to the desired volume. The Cosmos editors
envisioned the following scenario: "Thus music played by an orchestra
for a dance at the University of Iowa will be relayed out into the
night, caught up by the wireless telephone receiver in the Science
Hall, and sent by wire into the Voorhees Hall dining room to be
amplified by the ‘loud speaker' and Coe students can go merrily
tripping their contemporaries in the university town." This new
addition to the station gave students ideas, such as placing a man in
the gymnasium and having him report the results of a game, play by
play, in order to increase enthusiasm for Coe athletics across the
state of Iowa.
Although Coe was home to the most powerful radio station in the state,
instructional courses were no longer offered when Young departed from
Coe in 1922. In a memo to President Nussbaum concerning deceased
alumni, Phyllis Lindsay wrote "Dr. Young claimed he was thrown out of
Coe by the Business Manager, and he had nursed a bitterness about it
ever since." Young never graduated from Coe but received his B.A. from
the University of Northern Iowa in 1927. Since Young was no longer
instructing at Coe, radio courses were discontinued in the fall of
1922. When Professor Weld of the physics department was asked to
comment on the situation in the Cosmos (April 14, 1922), he responded:
"The station was erected in 1919 as an advertising feature only, and
there was never any intention on the part of the faculty to offer
instruction in wireless operation. . . . Now that Mr. Young is leaving
Coe there is no reason for continuing this instruction, as Coe is not a
technical school."
Following Young's departure, the management of the station was assumed
by Harvey Misenheimer, a freshman in 1922 from Galveston, Texas.
Misenheimer came to Coe with more than five years of experience in
government radio work; he attended wireless school at Harvard and spent
three years in the navy as wireless operator on ocean-plying ships.
The station was in poor condition when Misenheimer arrived. One of
the aerials was badly damaged in a storm and the transmitting apparatus
was "in much want of repair" (Cosmos, September 15, 1922). The station
also had difficulty securing a government license, as the one issued to
Young had expired. The station was soon sending out bulletins about the
college and receiving time, news and weather updates from other
stations. The Coe station was now, however, used primarily in
instruction of physics classes and electronics.
The station operated under the call letters WKAA. Misenheimer explained
the purpose of the station to the Cosmos March 1, 1923. "Coe's wireless
station transmits only in code and it is not equipped for so called
'broadcasting,' nor is it the purpose of the station to entertain the
public... the primary purpose of the station...is to correspond, by
means of wireless, with other colleges and universities equipped to
exchange code messages with Coe."
As Coe's transmissions were no longer of interest to radio fans,
students directed their ears to WJAM and other Cedar Rapids local
stations. The radio fraternity, Alpha Delta Alpha, changed from a radio
fraternity to a technological fraternity in December of 1922 in order
to include men who were studying engineering and physics. In the late
20's it was later changed to a social fraternity.
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