The Buck Rogers radio show was the first science fiction program on radio. It
was broadcast four times weekly, Monday to Thursday evenings on the CBS
network. It soon gained a listening audience of 58,000 on over 23 stations all
over the country. The program aired for 15 years until 1947. Storylines were
similar to the comic strip with Buck finding himself in the 25th Century. Actors
Matt Crowley, Curtis Arnall, Carl Frank and John Larkin all voiced the lead
role at various times.

The radio series was produced and directed by Carlo De Angelo and later
by Jack Johnstone who later stated that the sound of the rockets was done
by using an air-conditioning vent.

 
Initial Buck Rogers, Matt Crowley

Buck Rogers cast: Adele Ronson as Wilma Deering, Edgar Stehli
as scientist-inventor Dr. Huer and Curtis Arnali portraying Buck
Rogers. 

 

     Roy Rogers (Leonard Franklin Slye) (November 5, 1911 – July 6, 1998)

Roy Rogers and Trigger

Rogers in his teens

                             William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers 

                         (November 4, 1879 – August 15, 1935)

Rogers was a cowboy, vaudeville performer, humorist, social commentator
and motion picture actor. He was one of the world’s best-known celebrities
in the 1920s and 1930s, known as “Oklahoma’s favorite son”.

Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr. (November 4, 1916 – July 17, 2009)

Walter Cronkite was a broadcast journalist, best known as anchorman for
the CBS Evening News for 19 years (1962–1981).

Dr. Frank Conrad (above), assistant chief engineer of Westinghouse Electric, developed the technology that made KDKA Radio possible. He constructed a transmitter and installed it in a garage near his home in 1916. The station was licensed originally as 8XK with a power of 100 watts.

A makeshift studio located in a shack atop one of the Westinghouse Electric buildings in East Pittsburgh. 

On Tuesday, November 2, 1920, election night, four men (pictured above) compiled election returns received via wired-telephone from the newsroom at the Pittsburgh
Post newspaper. It is estimated that between 500 and 1000 listeners heard this
broadcast of the world’s first commercial radio station.

Harold W. Arlin, first full-time KDKA announcer

(Possible reenactment)