HomeMy WebLinkAboutDean Bolton Creates a Radio Signal in 1912 Transcript, WTAW First 100 YearsProject HOLD
WTAW Interview
Tom Turbiville | WTAW Radio Host
Daniel Hayes | Transcriber
00:00:01 Dick Bolin (DB)
College Station, Texas, April 24th, 1947.
00:00:04 Speaker 2
Now let's go to the bonfire signed where WTAW's Tom Turbi-?
00:00:07 Speaker 3
-WTAW election night coverage. All 8 voting centers in Brazos County have been counted-
[Unintelligible sports broadcaster and crowd of screaming fans]
00:00:14 Speaker 4
Today on WTAW, we're joining with businesses from across the Brazos Valley , to support our-
00:00:20 Speaker 5
16.20 WTAW.
00:00:22 Tom Turbiville (TT)
This is WTAW, The First 100 Years. I'm Tom Turb iville. Now this series certainly does
celebrate this 100th year of this radio station, but to understand what happened in October of
1922, well you have to rewind a decade to 1912. That's when Dean Frank C. Bolton, you have
the namesake of Bolton Hall, which today appropriately houses the Department of
Communications at A&M. More on that in a moment.
But in 1912, Dean Bolton started what a decade later would become WTAW, but it was in that
year, 1912, that Bolton inaugurated radio activities as simply a lab experiment to teach electrical
engineering students how to build the equipment that would create a radio signal, amplify it,
send it out to whoever had the radio receiver to listen. Now fast forward 16 years to November
1928, and now with the WTAW call letters. The programming was nearly as diverse then as it is
now, except that they only broadcast for a 20-minute span between noon and 1 p.m., and
occasionally in the evening. That 20 minutes allowed 10 minutes to talk about farming and
homemaking, and then 10 minutes for questions and answers. The evening programming
happened just one night a week. It included such things as the 100-piece Aggie Band, as well as
some A&M Home Southwest Conference sporting events. Oh, and speaking of 1912, that was
the year that the building was constructed on campus. And in 1939, renamed Bolton Hall. This is
WTAW, the first 100 years.