Earlier Years (1957-1975)

In 1957, TV station WROW donated its tower to RPI for WRPI use. The tower stands 690 feet tall, which remains one of the tallest structures in the Capital district and is worth over $1 million today! WRPI began its first FM broadcast at 1,000 watts from atop the tower on November 1st, 1957. This makes WRPI one of the oldest college FM radio stations in North America. On Sunday April 6th 1969, at 3:00pm, WRPI aired a landmark broadcast. WRPI began broadcasting at 10,000 watts from the tower in North Greenbush.

Middle years (1975- mid 1990's)

1975 was a great year for WRPI. The Darrin Communications Center (DCC) was constructed in 1973, and two years later we moved our facilities to the basement of the building. With only one hour of down time, WRPI made a successful changeover from the Playhouse to the DCC facilities. Membership consisted of only two or three community members and a smaller group of students. Programming has always been free format, and students had longer shows and kept the station on the air sometimes as long as 20 hours per day. During the early 80's, there was still an interest in the station, but nothing very innovative happened at the station. However, toward the later 80's, students lost interest in the station and there were gaps of dead-air. At this point, more community members began to come into the station to fill in these gaps. This continued throughout the 90's. As these members came in, they gained influence in the management of the station.

Later years (1996-2004)

In 1996, the management of WRPI began planning a renovation of the facilities. Over the course of 1997, this renovation was completed. In this same year, the Friends of WRPi was formed as a group to raise funds for the club. Over the next seven years, the Friends of WRPI had gained a tremendous influence in station matters and recruited even more community members. However, during 2003-2004, a strong executive committee rose up and began taking back control of the station.

Now and the Future (2005 on)

Sometime in 2005, the e-comm decided it was in the best interest of the students in the club to undergo a renovation to "re-arrange" the layout of the station to its original 1975 design. Since many students have been joining WRPI in recent years, WRPI was more than justified in taking on this project. A few very talented electrical engineering students took on the challenge of planning the layout and schematics of the renovation plan and have spent many hours wroking on the project along with others who pitched in when they could. The renovation is nearly complete, and is expected to be done by Summer 2006. In the future, WRPI will not move its broadcasts to the soon to be built EMPAC building. However, we plan on having a broadcast/production studio in the building to air some EMPAC events.