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Editor's note:This article is a part of a series reviewing Utah and U.S. history for KSL.com's Historic section.
SALT LAKE CITY — Radio has played an integral part of news and entertainment across Utah for a century now. Currently, there are scores of different stations based all over the state.
Many deliver all sorts of music genres, while others bring news, sports or opinion.
Whatever you listen to, this year marks a rather significant centennial anniversary in Utah's broadcasting history. It was in 1919 that a Utah teenager began construction on what became the nation's first radio station licensed for an educational station. It was the start of a radio boom in the state that exists to this day.
But the history of radio dates well before that. When you think of radio history, Guglielmo Marconi is usually the first name that comes to mind; however, his invention came a few decades after radio waves were first theorized.
As noted by Washington State University, it all started with James Clerk Maxwell, a Scottish physicist, who predicted the existence of radio waves in the 1860s. In 1886, Heinrich Rudolph Hertz, a German physicist, proved that "rapid variations of electric current could be projected into space in the form of radio waves similar to those of heat and light."
Then came Marconi, an Italian inventor. In 1895, he sent and received the first radio signal. Then on Dec. 12, 1901, he sent the first successful wireless transatlantic message by sending a message from England to St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada, according to History.com.
Radio, as we know it in the United States, morphed nearly two decades later. In 1920, KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, became the first established commercial radio station; but amateur radio was alive and well all over the U.S. and Utah before that.
Utah's radio pioneer wasn't even alive when Marconi sent out that wireless message in 1901. Born in October 1902, Ira Kaar was about 14 years old when he obtained a regular amateur radio license in 1916. In 1919, he obtained a Special-Land-Station license, known as a 6ZA, and also began construction on what became KFOO, which was licensed to Latter-Day Saints University — now known as LDS Business College, according to Utah History Encyclopedia.
In a 1986 interview, which a transcription exists in the University of Utah Marriott Library, Kaar recalled learning about radio when he was either 10 or 11. He said he learned how to use it from the clothesline from his boyhood home backyard in Salt Lake City to another clothesline three houses over, and he was able to get a signal.
"In those days, the receiver comprised (of) what was called a coherer, which was a glass tube filled with iron filings with two electrodes at the ends," Kaar said. " It was struck by the tapper of a doorbell. When a signal was received, the iron filings would cling together and pass a current which could operate a telegraph sounder. Then the clapper would strike the coherer and dislodge the iron filings and the thing would be open again for a new signal."
His fascination with science and radio only grew from there. In fact, he said in that 1986 interview that he chose LDS University, which was also a high school back then, because it had the best laboratories of any of the high schools in Salt Lake City, and a good library with books on wireless telegraphy. He read books by Hertz and others. If came across something he didn't understand, he'd ask his teachers.
Kaar recalled radio technology rapidly changed during this time and he kept up with it. He was good enough with radio equipment that he said — in 1917 or 1918 — he received a letter from the U.S. Department of Defense to dismantle a wireless transmitter he constructed for the remainder of World War I. He obliged.
In 1919 and still a high school student, he went to work constructing what became KFOO. Utah's radio landscape was changed forever.
After high school, he helped construct antennas and radiotelephone equipment at Coeur D'Alene National Forest in Idaho. He'd eventually come back to Utah and start the one of the state's first commercial radio stations, KDYL, in May 1922 along with A. L. Fish, the publisher of then-existent Salt Lake Telegram, as noted by Utah History Encyclopedia.
Fish had become interested in the idea after learning about Pittsburgh's radio station, according to Kaar. Fish, Kaar and one of Kaar's professors met at Kaar's home and mapped together a broadcasting plan that would give Salt Lake City its first broadcast news station. Once the ability to broadcast signals was completed, Fish offered his newspaper to formulate broadcast content from the home. Yes, Utah's first commercial news station was broadcast directly from a Salt Lake City home.
"My generous and kindly parents permitted me to revamp the parlor of our home into a studio which was done," Kaar said. "The Telegram news department hired a program director who engaged artists to visit my home and put on programs which were transmitted from my equipment on the second floor."
Other stations quickly caught on. KZN also launched in May 1922 and just days before KDYL. Kaar helped launch KFUT (later named KUTE) in 1923 while still in college. In the first few years, there were 11 total radio stations across the state, but only three survived the first decade. Only KZN, which is now KSL, and KFUR, now KLO in Ogden, still exist. Interestingly enough, Utah History Encyclopedia points out the reason the three survived the 1920s was likely due to partnerships with newspapers at the time.
"Initially, the newspaper owners saw the fledgling stations as little more than devices to promote subscriptions through crystal-set give-aways, but the evolution of broadcasting as a viable financial enterprise of its own led to a genuine symbiotic relationship," wrote authors Tim Larson and Robert Avery.
As for Utah's radio pioneer, Kaar left to work for General Electric in 1925 after graduating college. He died in 1991 at the age of 88. However, his legacy in Utah radio still impacts listeners to this day.
