American Radio and Research Corporation
1915 - 1928
American Radio & Research Corporation (AMRAD) was incorporated in 1915. It was founded by Harold J. Power, a Tufts University graduate backed by J. Pierpont Morgan. In 1915 AMRAD constructed a wireless station and laboratory on the Tufts University Campus, in a building later to be named North Hall. The location, in Somerville, Massachusetts, may have been the site of the first radio broadcast in Massachusetts.
In 1917 AMRAD, operating as station 1XE, began broadcasting regularly. A 1922 Popular Science article lists AMRAD as a station transmitting news, concerts, and music and Sunday sermons.
The company was also making radio receivers for the U.S. Government in the run-up to U.S. involvement in World War I. When the U.S. formally entered the war in 1917, all amateur radio stations were shut down, but Power continued to make receivers for the U.S. Navy.
AMRAD became bankrupt in 1925 and its station went off the air around that year. However, it continuted to manufacture until it was acquired in 1928 by the Crosley Radio Corporation.
For more information, see broadcast historian Donna L. Halper's history of AMRAD, on "The Rise and Fall of WGI, the First Station in Massachusetts," The Archives @ BostonRadio.org, http://www.bostonradio.org/essays/wgi.html