WGI (defunct)

WGI was an early radio broadcasting station, licensed to the American Radio and Research Corporation (AMRAD) of Medford Hillside, Massachusetts. WGI received its initial broadcasting license on February 7, 1922. However, the station had previously made regular broadcasts under an experimental license as 1XE, which were the first organized broadcasts in the Boston area.

WGI was widely known as "The AMRAD station", and initially gained national prominence for its innovative programs. However, AMRAD soon faced severe financial problems that curtailed the station's operations. In early 1925 the call letters briefly changed to WARC, but within a few weeks the station suspended operations when the parent company filed for bankruptcy. WARC would continue to be listed on the government rosters of active stations for two more years, but it never actually resumed broadcasting before being formally deleted in early 1927.

Harold J. Power (born 1893) traced his interest in radio (then called "wireless telegraphy") to school lessons in 1904 about Guglielmo Marconi. He built his first crude coherer radio receiver at his home in Everett, Massachusetts when only 10 years old. At the age of 16, he became a commercial operator aboard the steamship Yale making the Boston to New York run. In order to earn money to attend Tufts College near Boston, he arranged with the local high school to teach a year-long evening radio course, with the provision that he would not be paid unless at least one of his students went on to qualify as a commercial operator. He continued to teach while attending college, and also worked as a shipboard operator during the summers, in order to fund his education. While at Tufts he helped form the Tufts College Wireless Society, serving as its president. The club built a high-powered spark amateur radio station with the call sign 1JJ at Paige Hall.

Power graduated from Tufts with a degree in engineering in 1914. The next year he and several fellow Tufts graduates founded the American Radio and Research Corporation (AMRAD), which was described as dedicated to improving existing receiver design and advancing radio technology. The new company was headquartered in a small building on the Tufts Medford Hillside campus. A tall radio tower under construction at the site suffered an embarrassing collapse onto the adjacent train tracks; it was replaced by a shorter structure.

During the first two decades of radio development, transmissions were primarily made by spark-gap transmitters, which were only capable of sending Morse code dots-and-dashes. Power recognized the importance of the recent invention of vacuum tube transmitters, which could be used for audio transmissions. He also came up with an imaginative demonstration to a key investor for his new company. Power had previously worked as a radio operator on the Morgan family's steam yacht Corsair. On March 18, 1916, as the Philadelphia approached the United States from a European voyage, he contacted the ship and over a three hour period transmitted a concert to showcase his radiotelephone transmitter for banker J. P. Morgan, Jr., who was the son of the late famed millionaire John Pierpont Morgan. The younger Morgan was duly impressed, and became AMRAD's primary sponsor.

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