Chicago Public Library-Blog: How To Get Election Results Before Bedtime

Chicago IL

08 June, 2021

2:36 PM

Description

Press release from the Chicago Public Library-blog: Betsy June 7, 2021 It's the day of a presidential election. You know how it goes: you go home after work, turn on the TV, and by the time you go to bed you (usually) know if there's a new president. But what did people do before TV was invented? Before television, it was pretty much the same, except, starting in 1920, they listened to the radio. That year, the country's first commercial radio station announced the election results that were being phoned in to the Pittsburgh Post. The 100 people who listened to KDKA in Pittsburgh at 8pm that night found out that Warren G. Harding had won the election, before anyone could read about it in the paper. But what about before radio? Did people really have to wait until the next day's newspaper to find out who won? Well, yes, and no. What thousands of people did was crowd around newspaper offices on election night. A large screen was strung across the front of the building, and crowds watched and waited for the stereopticon to flash the latest news bulletins. But what about the people who couldn't spend the evening outside the newspaper office? Fear not, the newspapers were also thinking of them. In the late 1800's and early 1900's, newspapers used a combination of floodlights and other light displays to broadcast election results far and wide, visible maybe as much as 30 miles away. In 1904, the Chicago Daily News used a searchlight on top of the Masonic Temple. The front page of the November 8 edition included diagrams to explain the coded light signals: "If [Theodore] Roosevelt is elected president the searchlight beam will be moved from left to right and from right to left. ... If Parker is elected the circular sweep of the beam of light will have a rocking or up-and-down motion." The New York Times also used a similar signal system that year. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/06/insider/election-light-signals.html If you're interested in all that went into putting together election results in 1896, see Tab on an Election: How a Big Chicago Newspaper Handles the Returns (Chicago Tribune, October 25, 1896, p. 25). This press release was produced by the Chicago Public Library-blog. The views expressed here are the author's own.