DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now settle in, because this story's got engineers, a telegraph key, and a football game that ended in a tie — and somehow still managed to change history. At least Texas history.
Well, believed-to change Texas history. That's important. We'll get there.
The year is 1920, and a group of Texas A&M electrical engineering students — David J. Finn among them — had themselves an idea. They were going to broadcast a football game at Oklahoma A&M via ham radio.
Bold. Ambitious. The kind of plan that sounds great right up until it doesn't work.
And it didn't work. So they fell back to a telephone backup, relaying game updates to fans gathered in the Texas A&M stock judging pavilion. Not exactly prime-time broadcasting, but you work with what you've got.
Now, a lesser group of students might've called it a day. These ones called it a rehearsal. The following year, students at campus wireless station 5XB set their sights higher — a live, play-by-play broadcast of the conference championship game against the University of Texas.
William A. Tolson and other students took on the technical difficulties standing in their way. They ran lines from the Kyle Field press box all the way to a transmitter at Bolton Hall.
They borrowed equipment from the Corps of Cadets Signal Corps. And just in case — because these were engineers, and engineers do not leave things to chance — they installed three redundant systems. Two connected to the power plant, and a battery backup.
Three systems. For a football game. I respect it.
But here's the part I love. Harry M. Saunders and the coaching staff sat down and devised a whole system of abbreviations to describe the action and speed up transmission.
Take this one: T-B-A-4-5-Y. That meant Texas ball on the Aggie 45 yard line. The whole game, boiled down to symbols flying through the air.
November 24, 1921 — game day. And the broadcast? Flawless.
Saunders himself was at the telegraph key. Down in Austin, at station 5XU, Franklin K. Matejka was relaying those messages to Longhorn fans seconds after each play.
And all across Texas, amateur radio operators were tuned in, following the action. Now, about that game. The final score was zero to zero.
A scoreless tie. Not exactly the ending you'd draw up, but Texas A&M became conference champion all the same. The broadcast had done its job without a single hiccup.
The following year, station 5XB became WTAW, and several of those students went on to distinguished careers in engineering, broadcast technology, and related fields. Now here's the thing — and this is where I said we'd get back to it. By days, that broadcast missed being the first of its kind in the entire United States.
By days. But it is believed to be the first in Texas. First in Texas, on a flawless November afternoon, over three redundant systems, in abbreviations that turned a football game into a kind of code.
Not bad for a group of students who, the year before, had to fall back on a telephone.
What the marker says
In 1920, David J. Finn and other Texas A&M electrical engineering students attempted to broadcast the football game at Oklahoma A&M via ham radio. When the plan failed they used a telephone backup, relaying game updates to fans gathered in the Texas A&M stock judging pavilion. The following year, students at campus wireless station 5XB planned to transmit live play-by-play accounts of the conference championship against the University of Texas. William A. Tolson and other students overcame technical difficulties to make the broadcast possible. They ran lines from the Kyle Field press box to a transmitter at Bolton Hall and borrowed equipment from the Corps of Cadets Signal Corps. They installed three redundant systems: two connected to the power plant and a battery backup. Harry M. Saunders and the coaching staff devised abbreviations to describe the action and improve transmission speed. "TB A 45Y," for example, signified "Texas ball on the Aggie 45 yard line." On game day, November 24, 1921, the broadcast was flawless with Saunders at the telegraph key. At station 5XU in Austin, Franklin K. Matejka relayed messages to Longhorn fans seconds after each play. Amateur radio operators across Texas also followed the action. The game ended in a scoreless tie, but A&M became conference champion. The following year, 5XB became WTAW, and several of the students went on to distinguished careers in engineering, broadcast technology and related fields. By days, the experiment missed being the first such achievement in the U.S., but it is believed to be the first in Texas. Ingenuity and innovation resulted in a pioneering broadcasting accomplishment. (2005)