Radio Days

1917

Dartmouth's first amateur radio club is formed.

1923

The radio club builds two windmill radio towers on top of Wilder Hall. Dartmouth ham operators using Morse code are the first to contact Norway by shortwave radio.

1925

WDCH, Dartmouth's first attempt at broadcasting, holds an opening ceremony. President Ernest Martin Hopkins '01 is scheduled to give the inaugural remarks, but the first words on the air are those of a technician posted on the Wilder Hall roof: "Shut the goddam door!"

1930

Electrical appliances other than a lamp are prohibited from dorm rooms. Undaunted, Alden Smith '30 contacts German radio hams with equipment smuggled into his room. A large block of ice falls from the dorm roof, snags his antenna wire, and carries the radio out the window.

1949

"Student-Faculty Quiz" makes its debut. Listeners write in questions to stump a panel of two faculty members and two students. Interest in the show soars when the Chesterfield Cigar Company awards a carton of cigars to anyone whose question stumps the panel.

1951

Dartmouth station WDBS airs "Your Lonesome Gal," a 15 minute radio show hosted by movie bit actress (Tarzan and the Amazons) Jean King.

Broadcasting from Hollywood, King intersperses coos to the lovelorn with words from such sponsors as Bond Street tobacco ("the kinda tobacco for a man a gal likes..."). WDBS removes the show after The Dartmouth calls it "cheap, erotic rhetoric."

1958

WDCR goes on the air as the first college station in the country to operate on a standard AM frequency.

1983

The New York Senate commends WDCR on the station's 25th anniversary.

Written by State Senator Tom Bartosiewicz '69, the commendation states: "WDCR has been an Estuary to that Patrimony of Culture which is so essential to our quality of life."

There is no dead air on the Dartmouth campus.