Famous Pittsburgh Inventor (You Probably Haven’t Heard Of) Celebrates 150th Birthday (Pennsylvania)

The National Museum of Broadcasting will be honoring Pittsburgh inventor and broadcasting pioneer Frank Conrad to mark his 150th birthday with a fundraiser.

Frank Conrad isn’t a household name like Thomas Edison or Alexander Graham Bell, and the National Museum of Broadcasting is hoping to change that. 

In honor of Conrad’s 150th birthday, the museum is hosting a fundraiser on May 4 at the newly renovated Wilkinsburg Train Station. The museum aims to open an exhibition hall in a vacant Mellon Bank building in East Pittsburgh. Museum supporters are working to purchase the Mellon building and are seeking investors from local corporations and organizations to help get the project off the ground.

Their goal? Getting students involved in media by housing several recording studios as well as documenting the history of broadcasting, which Conrad and the city of Pittsburgh are foundational parts of. 

Beyond holding more than 200 patents, Conrad’s innovations in radio transmission changed how people thought about the technology and directly led to the formation of KDKA and radio broadcasting.

In his off time from working as an engineer at Westinghouse Electrical and Manufacturing Company, Conrad transmitted signals to other amateur radio enthusiasts out of his garage in Wilkinsburg. At the time, radio was mainly seen as a form of one-to-one communication. But as more and more listeners tuned in, Conrad began holding scheduled broadcasts several nights a week where he would share news and play music from his record collection. 

As he began to run out of records, Conrad made a deal with a local music store — he could play their music if he told listeners where the records could be purchased. This caught the attention of Horne’s, a department store chain based out of Pittsburgh at the time, which ran an ad mentioning an “air concert” caught by their employees on a newly installed wireless receiver. 

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