DJ Laurence Cockaday

Laurence Cockaday, about 1931

Laurence Marsham Cockaday, what a name. (Sometimes it was written incorrectly as Lawrence.) That poor guy must have been picked on as a kid. He was born in 1894 in Greenville, NJ. So he would have been about 28 in 1922 and 37 in the image above where he looks oddly nervous. Cockaday was an engineer but also a writer, teacher and inventor. But there is one event in his history which raised his profile to the national level. He was a key person behind a 1922 live radio concert broadcast which was heard by likely more than a million people, helping to popularize the medium. More here.

We have mostly general biographical information on Cockaday. Around 1917 he was an electrical engineer for the New York Interborough Railroad (IRT). A 1923 issue of Popular Radio states that Cocakday instructed in radio theory on the U.S. Training ship Granite State in 1918. He filed his first patent in 1919.  In 1921 he was involved in the broadcast of a Jack Dempsey title fight [SOURCE]. That prefigures his later, more notable broadcast.

By 1922 he was one of the three founders of Popular Radio Magazine with E.E. Free and K. Banning. At the same time the L. M. Cockaday & Company sold radio components out of his Bronx apartment at 2674 Bailey Ave. It was renamed Superadio Corp. around 1921. [SOURCE] Then he went on to authorized Silver-Marshall and Precision Coil to make is radios like the LC-26 and LC-27.  Rich Post (kb8tad) wrote a feature on Lafayette Radio in 2012 which mentions Cockaday. [SOURCE] More here.

I also discovered that in adition to his magazine articles, Cockaday authored several books: Radio-Telephony For Everyone (1922) and 23 Lessons in Radio (1931) Radio Experimenters' Handbook (1932) and two others he co-authored Short-Wave Handbook with Walter Holze (1933) and How To Build Your Radio Receiver with Kendall Banning (1924).  The latter two there were reprinted in the 1990s by Lindsay Publications. He also wrote many pamphlets on the assembly, operation, and repair of his own and other makes of radios.

K. Banning, L.M. Cockaday with QSL cards

Cockaday even appears in the Library of Congress (LOC) photography catalog in four images [SOURCE] These images are poorly labeled. Three identify some of people and a rough date of between 1920 and 1925. He poses with Banning (above) and or Dr. Edward Elway Free. One however specifically states August 1922, and that it's of the first live radio broadcast of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra from the stadium of the College of the City of New York. 

The image titled "Radio At Stadium" taken in contest with the one from 1922 it can only be from the same event at Lewisohn Stadium. It's clean doric-style columns are very identifiable. Built in 1913 it hosted thousands of free concerts. (It's a damn shame they let it rot) The New York Philharmonic left the venue for Lincoln Center in 1964 and the building  was demolished in 1973. The New York Philharmonic website repeats the 1922 claim but without a precise date. [SOURCE]

"In 1922 the Philharmonic was one of the first symphony orchestras to broadcast a concert over the radio, and in 1930 became the first American orchestra to broadcast regularly coast-to-coast. Many of these radio broadcasts still exist in the Archives today and are available to visitors."

These images in the Library of Congress (LOC)  all appear to be from the George Grantham Bain Collection. I've also found other Bain collection images of Cockaday which seem to be missing from the LOC. They may have been omitted deliberately, or just mislabeled. 

Radio At Stadium

The New York Times lists regular broadcasts from Lewisohn in 1926 [SOURCE] on WJZ and WRC. But it also notes that Willem Van Hoogstraten has been the main conductor  since 1922 which corroborates his presence on that first 1922 broadcast. The book The Mighty Music Box also states August but not a date. The book On The Spot Reporting does as well. Many websites cite the date of the broadcast as occurring on August 12, 1922 over WJZ in New York, with Hoogstraten conducting but cites no source. The book History of Radio to 1926 by Gleason Archer gives the date as August 24th. Presumably there are conflicting sources. However, they are all wrong and/or incomplete. 

As Free, Banning and Cockaday were all editors at Popular Radio you might expect good coverage of their own event.  [SOURCE] Well, let me tell you... The feature article was huge. It was in the October 1922 issue and stretched from page 130 to 137 and even includes diagrams of the telephone exchange system. (below)

Telephone exchange for WJZ broadcast

The feature specifically states that the concerts were broadcast for five evenings, starting Friday, August 11th, skipping Sunday then resuming on Monday the 13th, continuing Tuesday 14th, through Wednesday the 16th, of 1922. Using a single Westinghouse microphone set up by Harry Hiller and William Frazier they picked up the audio and piped it to WJZ across the river in New Jersey who broadcast it on 833 kHz. WJZ had only signed on in September of 1921, so this was only weeks before it's first anniversary. Supposedly more than a million people tuned in. 

Cockaday and Banning, 1924

On Nov. 14th, 1924 he gave a lecture at the Annual Detroit Radio Show. By 1927 Cockaday sat on the advisory board for WGL. [SOURCE] He was the Technical Editor of the New York Herald Tribune around 1930.  The Journal of the Acoustic Society of America lists him as a member in 1935 with the address 461 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY; this may not have been a real residential address. That same address is used by many publications, labs and businesses. Today it's a Brooklyn parking lot.

In 1935 the book Making a Living In Radio by Zeh Bouck, Cockaday was listed as the Editor of Radio News. A 1938 issue of Radio & Television gives his Ham calls as W2JCY.  Those calls appear to have been assigned in 1936. The Radio Amateur Callbook put it in bold print with the address 547 Second Ave. Pelham, NY. But it also lists his old calls as 2AAK, 2AE, 2OG, and 2XK. The last reference to his W2JCY call sign was in 1966, [SOURCE] though the Radio Amateur Callbook puts it in the hands of Murray Goldberg by 1953. Cockada may have give up ham radio as early as 1941. I don't see entries between those dates. His 2OG calls go back to at least 1913 at the address 227 Audubon Pl, Brooklyn, NY.

From 1930 to at least 1937 Cockaday taught at New York University. One source reports that he enlisted in the US Navy in 1940, but Radio magazine calls him a Lieutenant Commander in 1937 as does the 1925 Yearbook of American Military Engineers. A U.S. Naval Academy register lists him as a Captain in 1947 in the department of Electrical Engineering. He retired with that title in 1957. There the record stops: no DXing, no teaching, no lecturing, no new patents, no writings. Cockaday died in 1986 in Rockville, MD. In a 1924 article by Don Herold he was asked "What do you like best about radio, Mr. Çockaday?" He responded "The bedtime stories..."