Radio-Craft, March, 1938, page 620:
REMINISCENCES OF OLD-TIMERS
WILLIAM DUBILIER--
Vice-Pres., Cornell-Dubilier Electric Corp.
PIONEER in radio and specialist in condenser design and manufacture. His activities in this field are responsible for the many improvements in condensers since the era of the Leyden jar. Holds innumerable radio patents pertaining to telegraphy, telephony, high-frequency apparatus, and a system for detecting submarines which he devised during the World War.
I FIRST became interested in radio when I read in the local papers that Marconi was coming to this country to lecture on his wireless telegraphy apparatus in 1903.
In 1904 and 1905 I assisted in giving lectures for some of Marconi's associates who remained here and then began to build some of the early coherers and open spark coil transmitters, using medical induction coils.
In 1906 I was associated with the Continental Wireless Telegraph and Telephone Company.
In 1907 and 1908 I exhibited radio, telephone and telegraph apparatus at the electrical show at Madison Square Garden, then at Madison Avenue and 23rd Street, for the Collins Wireless & Telephone Company.
In 1908 I formed my own company--the Commercial Wireless Telegraph & Telephone Co. I remember buying equipment in 1908 or '09 from the Electro Importing Co., run by a young man named Hugo Gernsback who had a room upstairs on West Broadway and who was selling wireless apparatus, Branley coherers, spark coils and other equipment.
It is not generally known that I operated the equivalent of a broadcasting station as early as 1909. The novelty of receiving music through the air appealed to the owner of an amusement park in Seattle. He fitted up a crude receiving set and erected a sign "Listen to the Wireless for 10c." Strangely enough, every time that I visited the amusement park and attempted to listen-in, I was told that the apparatus was out of order. The receiver was working, but there was no music to pick up--for the simple reason that I was not at the transmitter to operate it!