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The Radio Map Of North America - 1934 Style
I found this on the SWLing site, which mostly deals with short wave stories. It's an enlarged map of the North American radio dial from 1934 as explained in this story.
You can see a larger version of the thing and you will need to use the "+" sign at the bottom of the page to enlarge it well enough to see it clearly. But it's well worth the effort.
It not only shows the stations available back then in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, but lists them by frequency on the right side. A great blast from the past and a look at what you might have heard if you were DXing in the early days of the medium. Especially noteworthy - there was a station in Newfoundland, VOWR, at 500 on the AM dial. That station still exists, but it's now at 800 kc.
SWLing: RCA Radio Tours Map circa 1934
See the enlarged map here.
- Radiowiz
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Re: The Radio Map Of North America - 1934 Style
Science centre here in Toronto used to have an actual classic 1930's radio designed to demonstrate what radio was like in the 1930's. Yes, it DID include the tones etc that (back in the day) hinted that you are close to or about to pick up a station.
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- MJ Vancouver
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Re: The Radio Map Of North America - 1934 Style
RadioActive wrote:
I found this on the SWLing site, which mostly deals with short wave stories. It's an enlarged map of the North American radio dial from 1934 as explained in this story.
You can see a larger version of the thing and you will need to use the "+" sign at the bottom of the page to enlarge it well enough to see it clearly. But it's well worth the effort.
It not only shows the stations available back then in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, but lists them by frequency on the right side. A great blast from the past and a look at what you might have heard if you were DXing in the early days of the medium. Especially noteworthy - there was a station in Newfoundland, VOWR, at 500 on the AM dial. That station still exists, but it's now at 800 kc.
SWLing: RCA Radio Tours Map circa 1934
See the enlarged map here.
This was evidently during the period London didn’t have its own station, after CJGC merged with Windsor’s station to form CKLW, but before the Free Press re-established it as CFPL.
I also see some stations in Mexico were on frequencies ending in 5, such as 1315. They also had XF- as a prefix in addition to XE- back then; nowadays they use XH and XE.
Also includes Cuba, as well as CBS and NBC network affiliations.
Last edited by MJ Vancouver (August 5, 2021 7:21 pm)
- Tomas Barlow
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Re: The Radio Map Of North America - 1934 Style
Bowmanville had a radio station?
- RadioActive
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Re: The Radio Map Of North America - 1934 Style
Bowmanville had a radio station?
Yes, and what a very weird history it has. It started out as a Toronto radio station in the 20s, but began broadcasting from Bowmanville in 1928 on a series of frequencies. At one time, it even shared the dial with CFRB and CJBC, which wasn't all that unusual in the early days of the medium. Eventually, through a strange series of events, it lost its right to broadcast during the day and was only on at night!
There's more on the short and very odd years on Bowmanville's only radio station here, including how it was taken over by the CBC and became one of the forerunners of what is CBLA-FM Toronto today.
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Thread Starter- fybush
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Re: The Radio Map Of North America - 1934 Style
I'm pretty sure the "500" for VOWR was a typo. It moved around a lot (including a stint at 675 kc), but couldn't have been on 500 - that was an international maritime distress channel!
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Re: The Radio Map Of North America - 1934 Style
It could be a misprint, which is why it stood out to me. But they listed it in numerical order first, which also makes me wonder. Newfoundland was not part of Canada at the time (hence the weird "V" as the first call letter) and who knows if that meant they had to adhere to the same early rules everyone else did.
According to the usually accurate History of Canadian Broadcasting site, VOWR was at 675 AM in 1932 as you noted, which is odd enough. It moved to 900 kc a year later. So you're probably right about the mistake and given it was a U.S. company that put out the list in the 1930s, it's likely their info may not have been entirely accurate.
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