(Left) What every well-dressed 1934 Plymouth needed - a WDRC license plate frame!

(Right) Kate Smith newspaper ad: October 1, 1935.

January 10, 1936 - Daytime power was increased to 5,000 watts.

March, 1936 - New England sustained $100 million damage in a series of deadly floods. WDRC provided coverage by candlelight when heat and lights went out in downtown Hartford. Click for a photo of 1936 flood coverage.

1936 - Doolittle received permission to operate W1XSL, one of twelve "Apex" AM high frequency stations on an experimental basis. It was built on the west peak of Meriden Mountain and operated at 40,300kc (40.3mc) with 1kw of power.

May 16, 1936 - WDRC moved from 11 Asylum Street to new studios in the 16th floor penthouse of the Hartford Trust Company (later Connecticut Bank & Trust) building at 750 Main Street in Hartford.

September 1936 - WDRC featured Joseph Blume and his Famous Blue Room Ensemble. Click on ad (right) for a larger view. Blume's son, Jerry, would be a staff announcer from 1959-63.

September 14, 1937 - Bloomfield renumbered Blue Hills Avenue so WDRC's transmitter property became #869.

January 26, 1938 - W1XSL changed its name to W1XPW.

mid 1938 - WDRC operated daily from 7:00AM to 1:00AM. It's slogan was "The Advertising Test Station in the Advertising Test City."

For a display of WDRC logos over the decades click on the image to the right.

The Advertising Test Station in
the Advertising Test City

October 30, 1938 - The station aired what became one of the most infamous broadcasts of all time - The Mercury Theater's production of War of the Worlds on CBS. Directed by, and starring, Orson Welles, the hour-long drama about an imaginary invasion of New Jersey by Martians genuinely terrified the nation.

The front page of the next morning's Hartford Courant detailed the extent of the local reaction but never mentioned WDRC by name. The article merely said: "Upon learning from a local broadcasting company that it was a play, [a Courant telephone operator] repeatedly explained it to callers, but in many cases so frenzied was the hysteria, she was unable to convince them it was fictional and not real."

Click to read more about War of the Worlds.

January 9, 1939 - The FCC granted WDRC's application to use a 100 watt transmitter developed by Dr. Edwin H. Armstrong to conduct tests of ultra high frequency modulation. The authorization included tests from 86,000 to 400,000 k.c. and frequency width up to 200 k.c.

May 13, 1939 - At a cost of $20,000, Doolittle put America's first commercial FM station on the air at 2:39PM, as experimental station W1XPW. It was on the air from 3PM-12M, airing classical music, and later simulcasting WDRC. All FM promotion and production was supervised by announcer Bob Provan (right).

Click for photos of Meriden Mountain

October 1939 - W1XPW began operating on a regular schedule at 43.4 MHz. The transmitter and 90 foot steel mast were atop Meriden Mountain (elevation 1,000 feet).

November 27, 1939 - The Federal Communications Commission approved an AM power increase to 5,000 watts day and night; construction on a multi-tower directional array began.

late 1939 - Announcer Jack Zaiman read a sportscast over W1XPW. It was relayed, without wires, to FM stations in Albany, then to Schenectady, then back to Hartford, all without static. No one heard the broadcast except for the engineers at each station because there were few FM sets in use.