Early Play-By-Play Radio Broadcast of a College Football Game - Texas Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

Without squabbling about the details of the beginning of the radio, by 1920 it was still a young technology and still crude and unwieldily in its operation. The fact that this plan to broadcast a football game got the support it did is amazing. World War 1 had just ended only two years before, so the leftover equipment from Bolton Hall, where electrical engineering was taught, must have had a few transmitters suitable for civilian radio transmission with the proper adjustment made to it. Since A&M had been designated an Army Training Base and had been teaching the Signal Corps electrical engineering courses during the war, it makes sense that creative minds ventured to test out this new technology of wireless radio transmission. What better venue to test it on than the Turkey Day home game against their major rival!
Another consideration is that the two students credited in this historical marker as well as a marker on Bolton Hall, states that William A. Tolson and Harry M. Saunders were the primary figures involved in the wireless broadcast for that day. The information on Bolton Hall's sign states Tolson was in the Class of '23 and Saunders was in the Class of '22. Assuming they were bright students and graduated in 4 years, then Tolson would be a Freshman and Saunders a Sophomore in Nov. 1920! Yet these two were the public face (or voice) of this project. Now wonder Texas A&M has become such a successful institution of higher learning when they attract this caliber of student.
Another interesting caveat is that station 5XB that broadcast out of Bolton Hall may not have been the first radio station to air a wireless radio program, but it was the first to broadcast a sporting event's play-by-play. By the end of 1920, the radio stations were required to be licensed and were given new call signs in the manner we know them today, either beginning with K or W followed by three other alphanumerics. X5B became WTAW in 1922.

WTAW radio station was the 5XB station:
(visit link)

Marker Number: 13065 Marker Text: In 1920, David J. Finn and other Texas A&M electrical engineering students attempted to broadcast the football game at Oklahoma A&M via ham radio. When the plan failed they used a telephone backup, relaying game updates to fans gathered in the Texas A&M stock judging pavilion. The following year, students at campus wireless station 5XB planned to transmit live play-by-play accounts of the conference championship against the University of Texas. William A. Tolson and other students overcame technical difficulties to make the broadcast possible. They ran lines from the Kyle Field press box to a transmitter at Bolton Hall and borrowed equipment from the Corps of Cadets Signal Corps. They installed three redundant systems: two connected to the power plant and a battery backup. Harry M. Saunders and the coaching staff devised abbreviations to describe the action and improve transmission speed. "TB A 45Y," for example, signified "Texas ball on the Aggie 45 yard line." On game day, November 24, 1921, the broadcast was flawless with Saunders at the telegraph key. At station 5XU in Austin, Franklin K. Matejka relayed messages to Longhorn fans seconds after each play. Amateur radio operators across Texas also followed the action. The game ended in a scoreless tie, but A&M became conference champion. The following year, 5XB became WTAW, and several of the students went on to distinguished careers in engineering, broadcast technology and related fields. By days, the experiment missed being the first such achievement in the U.S., but it is believed to be the first in Texas. Ingenuity and innovation resulted in a pioneering broadcasting accomplishment. (2005)

Visit Instructions:
Please include a picture in your log. You and your GPS receiver do not need to be in the picture. We encourage additional information about your visit (comments about the surrounding area, how you ended up near the marker, etc.) in the log.

Recent Visits/Logs:

Date Logged Log   01/26/2019 WayBetterFinder visited it