Re: radio in '22

[dan.strassberg@att.net]

For many years (I don't know about now), the WLAN calls 
were on an AM 1390 in Lancaster PA. This was long after 
1922, however. In the networking business (local-area 
networks, such as IEEE 802.11b and .11a), the acronym 
WLAN has stood for Wireless Local-Area Network for at 
least the last five years or so.

As Donna Halper will tell you, 1922 was a banner year 
for radio station startups. I'm guessing that, in the 
United States, several hundred stations went on the air 
for the first time in 1922. Only a handful have survived 
and of those, an even smaller number retain their 
original calls. One that I know of is WHAZ in Troy NY. 
The other pioneer station in same market as WHAZ, WGY, 
Schenectady, first went on the air in 1921, I believe.

None of the stations that have survived operates on the 
same frequency as it did in 1922. The "broadcast band" 
in those days consisted initially of just 
one "wavelength," 360 meters, which works out to about 
833 kHz, and crystal oscillators--if they existed at all-
-were so unstable that the stations frequencies drifted 
around by many kilocycles/sec. (The unit of frequency 
wasn't renamed the Hertz until the 1960s.)
--
dan.strassberg@att.net
617-558-4205
eFax 707-215-6367

> I am curious to know if anyone knows of a WLAN?  It
> was a station put on the air in Houlton Maine back in
> September 1922.  According to the book "Broadcasting
> in Maine: The early Years" it was only on the air for
> a few years at best.  The source was a book put out in
> 1990 by the Maine Assoc of Broadcasting. Thanx!