The Future Arrives in Cuba City

If you were to stroll down Cuba City's Main Street in, say, late 1920 or 1921, you'd find a small, pleasant town with several shops, two attractive banks, and even a new municipal building with a bell tower. While taking in the sights, it would be easy to breeze past the unassuming confectionery store selling candy and cigars at 111 South Main, but if you did, you'd be missing the greatest show in town, for the future had arrived in Cuba City. Its harbinger? A high schooler named Charles Schuh. 

Tucked away in a workshop behind his family's store, the tech-savvy teenager wowed Cuba City residents by conjuring words and music out of thin air with something called a crystal radio set. Wide-eyed visitors of all ages grasped an earphone to their heads while listening to broadcasts from the country's first commercial radio station: Pittsburgh's KDKA. 

A family listens to a crystal radio set in this advertisement from a 1922 issue of Radio World magazine. Image available on Wikimedia Commons.

Despite his young age, Schuh's experimentation with radio would have come as no surprise to his friends and neighbors. A few years earlier, he could be found in his shop dabbling with the wireless telegraph. Schuh was likely encouraged by his father, William, a cigar maker and confectioner by trade, who was also technologically inclined and even had plans for a toy steam engine published in Popular Mechanics magazine.

Charles Schuh on Cuba City High School's 1920-1921 basketball team. Photograph courtesy of Rachel Butts.

Despite its modest beginnings in those informal demonstrations behind the candy store, radio quickly infiltrated the lives of Cuba City residents. By the spring of 1922, a weather report received by Charles Schuh "over his Radio Phone" was being read to high school students every afternoon. The following year, the high school got its own "radio outfit" set up in the physics laboratory.

The Cuba City News-Herald jumped on the bandwagon, promising a regular segment discussing all things radio to satisfy current customers' interests and, hopefully, entice new readers to subscribe. And, before the newspaper office had a radio of its own, it relied on the device at the nearby Gem photography studio to get timely state basketball tournament scores.

Published in the Cuba City News-Herald (May 5, 1922, Page 1).

By 1924, there were at least two Cuba City businesses selling radios: the Cuba City Motor Company and the Gem Studio. Thanks to the local newspaper, folks could stay up-to-date on which of their neighbors had the new devices in their homes, and perhaps plan their visits accordingly!

Published in the Cuba City News-Herald (January 11, 1924, Page 5).

Not everyone was enamored with the new technology, however. While it is hard to imagine today, radio was briefly seen as a threat to movie theaters. On January 5, 1925, the Telegraph Herald reported on how the increase in home radios was hurting Cuba City's movie business:

"The installation of radiophones in homes in towns and villages, and out on the farms is beginning to cut deep inroads into movie theatres. Over in North Hollow, west of Cuba City, one farmer has a radio outfit and when it is tuned up all the farmers on the telephone lines take down their receivers and get all the good music, singing and lectures free of charge.

Teasdale & Redfearn, lessees of the Auditorium theatre in Cuba City have cancelled their lease on the building and have ceased operations. Last Wednesday evening they gave their last film plays. They claim their business has fallen off tremendously of late and that they have lost as high as $100 a week on some of their recent offerings."

As it turns out, there would be plenty of room for both home radios and movie theaters when it came to entertaining the public, but for now, radio was the main attraction.

Additional Sources

Cuba City News-Herald. (April 23, 1922, Page 1; March 23, 1923, Page 1; May 18, 1923, Page 1. 

O'Neill, Edward J. Cuba City Centennial: 100 years, 1875-1975 (Cuba City, Wis.: Cuba City Centennial Committee, 1975).