One gas station near the eight-hundred-foot-tall transmitting tower outside Cincinnati, Ohio, just couldnt turnoff the lights.
The presence of the station in the air could indeed be physically felt.
WLWs 813-foot antenna in Mason, Ohio.
Crosley was a visionary and a brilliant man who involved himself in all manner of products and activities.
He was the one who added shelves to refrigerator doors and push buttons to car radios.
He brought disc brakes to American cars and the first compact car to American consumers.
Crosley entered the radio manufacturing business with the intention of making radios affordable to the masses.
Crosleys foray into radio broadcasting was the next natural step.
WLW made its debut with a modest 50-watts transmitter, but Crosley had bigger visions.
His ultimate goal was to create a super-power broadcasting station that could reach the entire nation.
It took only six months for the station to multiply its power by ten.
In October 1928, WLW received a major boost in powernow transmitting at 50 kilowatts.
Soon WLW began calling itself The Nations Station.
In 1932, he applied for a license to transmit at 500 kW and was granted.
It even had its own cooling pond.
The transmitter was coupled with a new antenna800-foot tall and shaped like a diamond.
For a very brief period, it was one of the world’s tallest structures.
Seeing the potential of high-power transmission, fifteen competing stations filed for 500 kW but none were authorized.
They cried foul and turned up the legal heat on both the WLW and the FRC.
Briefly, during the Second World War, WLWs high-power transmitters were switched on again for war transmission.
The broadcasts from Ohio could be heard as far away as South America and Europe.
WLW is currently owned by iHeartMedia.
