Textile merchant John Lowell Jr. (shown here) leaves a bequest creating free "public lectures for the benefit of the citizens of Boston." The lectures prove so popular that crowds crush the windows of the Old Corner Bookstore where tickets are distributed, and sessions are repeated by popular demand.
The Lowell Institute forms a cooperative venture with Boston College, Boston University, Harvard, MIT, Northeastern and Tufts to broadcast its lecture series. The lectures begin the following February on local commercial radio stations, which donate the airtime.
The Lowell Institute Cooperative Broadcasting Council (LICBC) receives a license for one of the newly reserved FM radio channels set aside by the Federal Communications Commission for educational use. The WGBH Educational Foundation is incorporated to operate WGBH, the call letters of which come from the Milton location of the station's transmitter: Great Blue Hill.
Conductor Charles Munch gives the downbeat and 89.7 WGBH is on the air with a performance by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, live from Boston's Symphony Hall. The inaugural date is chosen to coincide with the first Saturday performance of the BSO's 71st season. During the intermission, composer Aaron Copland calls WGBH a "bright new hope among radio stations" and says it's "heartening to know that a station is now on the air broadcasting programs designed to be of interest to an adult mind." William Pierce hosts the symphony broadcasts from the station's inception through the 1989-90 season.
Families gather around the radio for 89.7 WGBH's "Children's Circle." Nancy Harper of the Nursery Training School of Boston at Tufts College hosts the daily program.
Television channel WGBH 2 airs its first program, "Come and See," a show for children from Tufts' Nursery Training School with Mary Lou Adams and folk singer Tony Saletan. 89.7 WGBH fixture Louis Lyons follows with the news. The station operates out of a converted skating rink at 84 Mass. Ave., Cambridge, leased from nearby MIT.
89.7 WGBH and WGBH 2 simulcast a concert by the Boston Symphony Orchestra at MIT's Kresge Auditorium, beginning a tradition of music broadcasts unique in the United States.
WGBH adopts as its logo an Aztec ideograph—a complex symbol combining three signs that together signify "family." Over time, small black decals with the gold stick-figure design decorate the windshields of WGBH contributors all around town. The logo is replaced in 1972 by the familiar WGBH drop-shadow, the work of noted design firm Chermayeff & Geismar.
First telecast of a Boston Pops Orchestra concert, direct from MIT's Kresge Auditorium. Conductor Arthur Fiedler (shown here) becomes a familiar WGBH personality.
Programs like "Facts of Medicine" and "Discovery" bring science to the masses. Mary Lela Grimes (shown here) hosts "Discovery," geared to a young audience. Her guests include a spectrum of distinguished Boston-area scientists—and a fair share of frogs, snakes and bats that sometimes run loose through the studio during the live show. WGBH begins recording the programs on kinescope film and distributing them to educational TV stations around the country.
