The first person heard on St. Louis radio in 1920, William, along with friend and fellow radio enthusiast Lester A. Benson, built the first transmitter and broadcasted the announcement of the presidential election results from his home. The broadcast was then beamed out over a 2000-mile radius. The technology was so new that an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch described the device as a “wireless telegraph sending apparatus.” He later built transmitters for several other stations.
