This is an IHeart podcast.

Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosity's, A production of IHeart Radio and grim and mild.

Our world is full of the unexplainable. And if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosity's.

Radio technology. radio technology has always been complicated, but we still use it every day.

Wi-Fi operates on radio frequencies, which means that you're probably listening to this podcast right now because of radio. You probably can't explain how it works, but don't worry,

I'm not going to ask you to. But I am going to tell you to feel grateful, because while today we may

have our own high-functioning radio transmitters in the form of Wi-Fi routers, a hundred years ago,

a radio transmitter was a rare, expensive, and dangerous piece of equipment that few people had

in their homes. And it took a boxing match, of all things, to change that. In 1921, Jay Andrew

White was a 31-year-old Radio Corporation of America employee who had served in the Army Signal

Corps in World War I. This meant that he was a radio expert,

which was still a new technology at the time. And because of this, he was approached by promoters

from Madison Square Garden, who had the crazy idea to transmit the upcoming fight between

world boxing champions Jack Dempsey and George Carpontier. They wanted to transmit to different

radios all over New England and as far

away as Ohio, and charge people a fee to listen at various local theaters. And White jumped at the

chance to make this happen. You see, at the time, radio was the domain of hobbyists and the government,

and he knew that this would prove that the technology deserved a wider

place in society. Working with the team, he set about creating the infrastructure to make the

broadcast possible. The fight would take place in July at a makeshift arena in New Jersey,

and as such, there was no antenna or transmitter available at the actual site of the fight.

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