Iowa Almanac
Iowa Almanac -- Monday, September 23, 2024
Live from the field. More from the Iowa Almanac in a moment. Make plans to attend the annual Camp Courageous Waffle Breakfast and Open House Sunday, September 29th from 8am until noon at the Camp Courageous Main Lodge. Enjoy made-to-order Belgian waffles and pork sausage and tour this unique facility. Train rides, live music, zip-line rides and more. See you for the waffle breakfast and open house Sunday, September 29th at Camp Courageous near Monticello, Iowa. Camp Courageous dot org. Earl Peake was glad to have talented employees working for his Marshall Electric Company. Chauncey Hoover and Merle Easter could invent whatever devices and methods that were needed. That included building, a broadcasting transmitter. Soon, experimental radio broadcasts were coming from the company's building at the corner of sixteenth and main streets in Marshalltown, which was then on the edge of town. Then as now, high school sporting events were popular with audiences, but the only way to put them on the radio was for someone at the game to use a telephone and describe the action to an announcer in the studio, who then spoke into a microphone in a form of hearsay play-by-play. The Marshall Electric staff could hear the crowd cheering at Marshalltown Bobcat football games since Franklin Field was just three blocks away, and that gave them an idea. At Peake's encouragement, Hoover and Easter made a microphone cable that was more than three blocks long, running it out the window of the studio down the street to the field. That was unique, so unique that on September 23rd, 1922, what became KFJB Radio broadcast the first high school football game live from the field in the country. In fact, it was a double header, and central Iowans heard it live. America's first live from the field high school football broadcast from Marshalltown's Franklin Field on this date in 1922. And that's Iowa Almanac for September 23rd. There's more online at IowaAlmanac.com. Until tomorrow, I'm Jeff Stein.