He was awarded 177 U.S. patents, and at least 42 in the United Kingdom and at least 9 in Germany[3] Conrad first became interested in radio in 1913, the result of a bet with a co-worker over whose watch was more accurate.

In April 1917, due to the entrance of the United States into World War One, all civilian radio stations were ordered silenced, including 8XK.

In conjunction with his wartime work Conrad was authorized to operate a radio transmitter from his home, using the call sign 3WE, for communication with a second station located at the Westinghouse plant in East Pittsburgh.

Although his station would not be formally relicensed until January 21, 1921,[9] Conrad resumed experimenting, again using the 8XK call sign,[10] and now also testing vacuum-tube radiotelephone equipment.

After he exhausted this resource, he struck a deal with the local Brunswick Shop: in exchange for the store supplying him with recently released records, he would provide on-air acknowledgements.

His idea was that the company could start selling its own radio receivers to the general public, with the free daily entertainment offered by a broadcasting station stimulating sales.

The American Radio Relay League had already set up a program for various amateur stations to distribute voting results on election day, November 2, and in the Pittsburgh area 8XK had been scheduled to be the local participant.

[18] Westinghouse's election night broadcast was successfully conducted over station 8ZZ (soon to become KDKA) in East Pittsburgh, with Conrad maintaining a watch at his Wilkinsburg garage, ready to have 8XK take over if 8ZZ had experienced problems.

[20] Conrad ended his entertainment broadcasts soon after the establishment of KDKA, although 8XK was one of the primary participants in the February 1921 "Washington's Birthday Relay", in which amateur stations received and retransmitted nationwide a special thirty word message.

This matched, at a small fraction of the cost, the performance of the then-current RCA method for transatlantic radio, which used massive longwave Alexanderson alternator transmitters for producing signals that were sent and received using antennas with lengths measured in kilometers.

The next month Westinghouse arranged to have the callsign of an experimental station in East Pittsburgh changed from 8XAU to 8XK, and the historic call began to be heard worldwide, conducting shortwave transmission tests.

In the A Return to Normalcy episode of the TV program Boardwalk Empire, employing artistic license, Frank Conrad is portrayed as the person announcing the 1920 election results from Pittsburgh.