In 1922, the Chicago Elevated Railroad was equipping its cars with a radio system. Shown here in the March 1922 issue of Science and Invention are a “dozen pretty girls” from the offices of the railroad line, dancing with road officials to the strains of jazz music transmitted from the radio station on top of the City Hall.

1922 L Cars like the one shown above. Wikipedia photo, © Jeremy Atherton, 2007; file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license .

The receiving antenna consisted of wires run atop the train car, and the radio was powered by a high voltage DC dynamo.

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