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After 38 years of service,
Aggies sold station in 1957
By BETH CALHOUN
Focus Editor
,ourtesy University Archives
W.A. “Doc” Tolson sits by the equipment he and his cohorts used to broadcast the 1919
A&M-UT football game.
Photo by Lynn Blanco
WTAW disc jockey Jim Miller sits by the equipment he uses today. The station now broad
casts AM and FM.
TB-A-45-Y . . . T-FP-8-Y-L.
These initials and numbers
weren’t secret forumlas or new
recipes for Turkey Day dinner,
but code letters for the first play-
by-play football game ever put
on the radio airways.
The game was the Aggies
hosting Texas at Kyle Field on
Thanksgiving Day, November,
1919. And the abbreviations
meant Texas ball on the 45-
yard-line; Texas attempts a for
ward pass that is thrown for an
8-yard loss.
That football broadcast was
the beginning of what is now
WTAW, a local radio station.
W.A. “Doc” Tolson, ’23, and
a partner, B. Lewis Wilson, ’17,
collected parts for the original
transmitter in a lab in the elec
trical engineering building soon
after World War I.
“Dr. F. C. Bolton (then pro
fessor of electrical engineering)
was guilty of permitting, nay,
even encouraging, me to be
come so innoculated with the
germs of radio that my case was
practically hopeless,” Tolson
wrote some years ago.
Wilson, then a lab technician
in the department, helped Tol
son to “procure by night” most
of the parts necessary to build
the transmitter.
“Our first step in building the
Rock Crusher transmitter was
to steal from Professor O.B.
Wooten’s testing laboratory a
high-voltage transformer, which
had been built by the students in
the two-year course for electri
cians,” Tolson wrote.
The transmitter’s condenser
consisted of about 100 glass
plates from the campus photo
studio and a copper lined box
from a laboratory. A suitable rot
ary spark gap turned out to be a
difficult item to find.
“In Professor W.G. James’
office was an object which
made our mouths water. It was
an electric fan with a beautiful
overgrown motor. However, the
progress of science was some
what delayed by the adament
refusal of Prof. James to allow
his fan to be placed in winter
storage until the weather got
cool,” Tolson wrote. “If my
memory does not play me
tricks, fate intervened in favor of
science.
“It seems that the fan
accidentally fell out of the win
dow, where it had been care
lessly placed by someone.
When the fan was retrieved
from the sidewalk, it was found
that the blades were hopelessly
damaged. There was no
reason, however, why the motor
could not serve a useful pur
pose as the prime mover for a
rotary spark gap.”
Harry M. Saunders, ’22, Har
ley C. “Dutch” Dillingham, '22,
and other students also joined
the experimenters.
Bolton fought for and secured
a transmitter license for the sta
tion which carried the call letters
5YA, Tolson wrote. The “Y” at
that time designated an educa
tional institution. Later the letter
“X” was used to designate an
experimental station and the
call letters were changed to
5XB.
Tolson and his cohorts had
been operating 5YA as a typical
ham relay station. But they re
ceived so many requests from
stations throughout the south
west that they agreed to get on
the air after the Thanksgiving
game and give them the score.
“Then the idea began to grow
that it would be swell to give
them a play-by-play account of
the game,” Tolson recalled.
But since Morse Code was
too slow to allow them to follow
the game, they consulted with
an assistant of Coach D.X. Bi
ble, and made up a list of the
aforementioned abbreviations.
Saunders was chosen to
send the broadcast from Kyle
Field, which went smoothly.
“He was by far our best oper
ator,” Tolson wrote, “since he
had considerable experience
with the A.P. (Associated
Press).”
The radio setup became a
part of campus life, and it had to
be regulated as other campus
activities. A mircophone was
hung out the window each
morning when reville was play
ed, indicating that the station
was “signing on.”
It was authorized to broad
cast only until 4 p.m. in order not
to interfere with Aggie study
hours.
For many years it was the ori
gination point for state-wide
agricultural programs put on by
the Agricultural Extension Ser
vice. The education programs
were transcribed there for distri
bution.
But on May 19,1957, “Radio
station WTAW, College Station,
is being offered for sale to the
highest bidder by the A&M Col
lege of Texas,” the Bryan Daily
Eagte sported.
The reasons given at that
time for selling the station was
that Texas A&M lawyers feared
a new federal tax regulation
would cause the state to pay
taxes on the station.
The studios that were origin
ally built in the electrical en
gineering building, first moved
to the YMCA and later to the
System Administration Build
ing, had to be moved by the pur
chaser within 90 days, the arti
cle stated.
And on June 20, 1957, The
Battalion reported that a high
bid of $35,257 was received
and Hardy C. Harvey and R.E.
Lee Glasgow were the new
owners.
Then in 1961, Radio Bryan
Incorporated purchased the
station.
Since that time, the story has
been one of progress. WTAW
has been the starting point for
many careers over the years.
A.J. Wynn, voted number
one country D.J. in the nation for
several years, was such an
attraction that people would line
outside the studio and watch
him at the mike as they listened
to him over their car radios.
Today, WTAW broadcasts
both AM and FM programs.
That’s a long way from the ori-
gianl broadcast that was consi
dered as only a stunt by the
Aggies involved.
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