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WHERE WAS THIS PALACE THAT HOUSED NBC'S KPO AND KGO?
THREE LETTER CALLS

Radio and television station identification - expressed in a series of three or four letters of the alphabet - goes back to the days of the telegraphy when operators keyed a few characters to identify themselves when contacting or “calling” each other.  When Congress enacted the Radio Act of 1912, all radio operators were required to become licensed by the Federal government and call signs were issued by the Department of Commerce Bureau of Navigation.  

To make a long story short, international agreements determined that the United States would use call signs beginning with the letter K, the letter N and the letter W.*  The government-issued call signs would consist of one of these prefixes followed by two or three additional letters unique to each license

The first license was issued by the Bureau on October 27, 1920.  It assigned a four letter call sign to Westinghouse Electric for its KDKA/Pittsburgh.  But three letter calls became the norm beginning with the second license, issued to another Westinghouse station, WJZ/Newark.   A string of over a hundred three letter call signs followed, many still in use today - WBZ (License #3), WOR (#49), WLW (#62), KLZ  (#67), WKY (#87), KOA (#95), KFI (#137) and WWL (#140), to name just a few.  

Nevertheless, it became obvious that the inventory of three letter calls would eventually run out and the addition of a fourth letter would be required to expand the supply of possible call signs to meet the needs of the growing broadcast and maritime industries. 

Three letters were routinely assigned until April 4, 1922, when License #144 was issued to Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, for WABB. That was the beginning of the end for three letter calls.  The last one in the 1922 flurry of licenses, #255, was issued to WHB/Kansas City on May 10, 1922. **

Listed below are 63 of the 190 stations that were granted three letter call signs in the two years when they were commonly issued.  The stations in each set have two of their three call letters in common.  Some of these stations still exist with their original calls, others have had their identities changed and a few no longer exist.  Can you identify the cities associated with them?  Be warned that this isn't as easy a test as it seems, unless you're familiar with Yakima and Omaha and... 


                                 KEX                KFH               KGO                       
                        KNX                KFI                 KGU
                        KXL                KFZ                KGW   
                                                         
                        KHJ                KID                 KLO                       
                        KMJ               KIT                  KPO               
                        KUJ                KVI                 KXO   
               
                        KMA               KOB                KSD       
                        KOA               KOH                KSL           
                        KYA                KOY               KSO           
       
                        WBT               WEW              WGH                    
                        WBZ               WLW              WGL           
                        WDZ               WOW             WGN  
                 
                        WGR              WHA               WHN               
                        WGY              WHB               WHO               
                        WKY               WHK               WHP               
           
                        WIL                WJR               WJW                       
                        WIP                WOR              WWJ                       
                        WIS                WRR              WWL     

                         
                           WLS               WMC              WOI
                        WSB              WOC               WOL
                        WSM              WRC               WOV


 The stations, in alphabetical order, are listed below the footnotes with their locations.

*  As Thomas H. White explains in his excellent website, www.earlyradiohistory.us, not all of the possible 2,028 three letter combinations beginning with K, N and W were available to private radio operators.  Seventy-eight, (KAA to KCZ), were allocated to Germany until 1929, all 676 combinations beginning with letter N were reserved for government use and 130, (WUA to WVZ and WXA to WZZ), were reserved for use by the U.S. Army.  That left a total of 1,144 three letter combinations - and those had to be shared between land based and maritime operators.   

**  The spring of 1922 was a particularly busy season for the Department of Commerce granting radio licenses - 327 were issued from March 2nd to June 30th,



                            Three Letter Call Sign Stations & Locations
      
KEX Portland OR  KFH Wichita KA  KFI Los Angeles CA   KFZ Spokane WA   KGO San Francisco CA   KGU Honolulu HI  KGW Portland OR  KHJ Los Angeles CA  KID Idaho Falls ID  KIT Yakima WA  KLO Ogden UT  KMA Shenandoah IA  KMJ  Fresno CA  KNX  Los Angeles CA   KOA Denver CO   KOB Albuquerque NM  KOH Reno NV  KOY Phoenix AZ   KPO San Francisco CA  KSD St. Louis MO   KSL Salt Lake City UT  KSO Des Moines IA  KUJ Walla Walla WA  KVI  Seattle WA  KXL Oakland CA  KXO El Centro CA  KYA San Francisco CA

WBT Charlotte NC  WBZ Springfield/Boston MA  WDZ Decatur IL WEW St. Louis MO WGH Newport News VA  WGL Ft Wayne IN WGN Chicago IL  WGR Buffalo NY  WGY Schenectady NY  WHA Madison WI WHB Kansas City MO  WHK Cleveland OH  WHN New York NY  WHO Des Moines IA  WHP Harrisburg PA  WIL St. Louis MO  WIP Philadelphia PA  WIS Columbia SC  WJR Detroit MI  WJW  Cleveland OH  WKY Oklahoma City OK WLS Chicago IL  WLW Cincinnati OH  WMC Memphis TN  WOC Davenport IA  WOI Ames, IA  WOL Washington DC  WOR New York NY   WOV New York NY   WOW Omaha NE   WRC Washington DC  WRR Dallas TX  WSB Atlanta GA  WSM Nashville TN   WWJ Detroit MI  WWL  New Orleans LA


                            Copyright © 2015 Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL   Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com