Reel Rare: Part 5, Films From 1920S Show Craze For New Home Radios

This final installment of "Reel Rare: Found Films from Old KC" explores another technological wonder of the 1920s--radio. Footage from the Sterling Radio Co. may even help explain the who and why behind some of the movies.

It seems surprising, but home movie making is more than one hundred years old. Kodak introduced the first 16-millimeter camera for consumer use in 1923.

These days, collectors like Joe Tomelleri scour the internet in search of vintage camera gear and old film reels, many bearing images that haven’t been viewed for decades, if at all.

Tomelleri admits that sometimes what he buys turns out to be little more than “Billy eating an ice cream cone on the front porch.”

But recently, the Leawood resident (a scientific illustrator by trade) struck the mother lode.

Much to his amazement, some unmarked film canisters he’d purchased on eBay were chock full of moving pictures from Kansas City in the 1920s and 1930s.

Those images are the centerpiece of The Star’s five-part video series, “Reel Rare: Found Films from Old KC.”

Our final installment of the series focuses on another of the era’s emerging technologies—radio.

According to Chuck Haddix, curator of UMKC’s Marr Sound Archives, KDKA in Pittsburgh acquired the first government radio license in 1920. “Two years later,” he says, “there were four licensed radio stations. The next year there were 576.”

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