I always love learning new things about radio history and the article linked below taught me a new one – the very first time radio ever delivered an actual election result, it got it 100% wrong.
 
And no, it wasn’t the ones delivered on KDKA, long acknowledged by most as the very first regularly scheduled broadcasting station in history back in 1920. (It celebrates its 100th anniversary this year.)
 
According to a radio historian, the actual first such results came from radio pioneer and legend Lee de Forest, who went on the air in an experimental broadcast in 1916 with the U.S. presidential results, which thankfully almost no one heard because no one had a radio at the time.
 
From the article:
 
"On Nov. 7, 1916, de Forest broadcast the returns of the Woodrow Wilson-Charles Evans Hughes presidential election, four years before KDKA.
 
"De Forest later wrote: “The New York American ran a wire line into our office so as to have the up-to-the-minute reports. I myself served as one of the announcers. At 11 o’clock that night we signed off, after assuring our invisible audience that Hughes had been elected president.”
 
"The next morning, he was horrified to find out that late results from California had in fact reelected Woodrow Wilson for a second term.”
 
Another great lost moment in radio! Thankfully, over a hundred years later, they seemed to have greatly improved on their accuracy.
 
Lee De Forest, Pioneer Broadcaster