Grapevine radio

Grapevine radio refers to the transmission infrastructures, used for distributing audio programs, which were built to serve a small number of rural upstate South Carolina communities from the early 1930s to the middle 1940s.

The equipment used to distribute programming over a facility's wire network was located at a central site, for example a general store's back room.

Information about the grapevine installations (also called "speakerline") is limited, because of their brief history and the fact that they do not appear to have been established outside a small region of South Carolina.

The first grapevine system was begun in the winter of 1930-1931 by a high school student, Gordon F. Rogers, who lived on farm in central Greenville county near Mauldin, South Carolina.

Dissatisfied with a battery operated set, he successfully reconditioned a vacuum tube receiver that ran on AC electrical power.

At this point he decided to also run a single-wire connection with a ground return from his receiver to a loudspeaker at the home of a neighbor who didn't have electricity.

[5] This occasionally led to issues when his wires ran too close to standard telephone lines, which sometimes picked up the strong grapevine transmissions.

[6] Subscribers had to provide the wire, poles (often actually fence posts) and speakers needed to connect to the main system lines.

Unskilled attempts by individuals to tap into the lines without paying generally caused service disruptions for nearby customers, which made it possible to locate and remove the improper connections.

Although at first the service was provided for free, as the number of participants grew Rogers began charging a monthly 10 cent fee.

[7] This charge was later raised to 25 cents, and at times a $1 surcharge was applied to finance replacement of sections of the transmission lines that needed to be upgraded from the original iron wire to higher quality materials.

Increasing demand, spurred by finding a source of affordable speakers ($2.85 each), expanded the number of connections to more than 200 within the next four months, and by June 1934 the transmission lines spanned 15 miles (24 kilometers).

[10] In the spring of 1936, Rogers, now a junior at Clemson, presented a paper, "Bringing Radio to the Rural Home", at a regional conference of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, which provided technical information about his innovation.

A second wire network, originating from a small store in Ware Place, South Carolina, was later established which provided an extensive program service for the southern part of the county.

The Wasson family ran a small store in Hickory Tavern, South Carolina, located in southwest Laurens county.

[18] This system was operated by Carl Ellison, who owned a general store located at Williamston, South Carolina in east central Anderson county.

Like the Ware Place system, after the grapevine programming ended for the night individuals could be heard by other subscribers by speaking loudly into their speakers.

[19] Gordon Rogers estimated that a total of ten to twelve grapevine operations were eventually installed, all located in South Carolina.