William Erwin Antony

So many radio engineers languish in obscurity despite their sometimes massive contributions to radio history. William Erwin Antony is one of those men.

He founded and/or was the engineer for 25 radio stations in the Shreveport Louisiana area. This includes KWKH, WAAG, WGAQ, KGDX, WMAU, KFHF, KGGH, KTSL, KWEA and even early experimental stations like 4CK and 5ZS. WAAG eventually became KFDX the first church-operated radio station in the world.

NOTE: KWEA-AM is named for him = William Erwin Antony. Founded in 1928 they were on 1410 intially, and moved to 1210 later that year. That license was killed in 1936.

He built the actual transmitter and antenna (the Telsine) for very first TV station in the entire south.The picture and the audio channels were licensed separately as W9XX and W5XA respectively. nice article about that station here. The first image he transmitted was a still picture of a cartoon character known as krazy kat. Some info on that here.

After all of that, he helped create the radio detonators used for the atomic bombs that went off over Hiroshima and Nagasak in the year 1945.