Category: Tech

No Static at All – 3

Transmitting element for the Alford FM Antenna Array on the Empire State Building

I think of the 1965 installation of the Master FM Antenna on the Empire State Building as another example of the 60’s being the most happening of decades.

“… for the first time multiple FM stations could operate at full power from a single shared antenna system…”

https://www.aes.org/blog/2019/7/empire-state-buildings-historic-alford

Three things happened in the 60’s that brought about the FM radio revolution. First, adding stereo sound.

https://www.radioworld.com/columns-and-views/roots-of-radio/how-fm-stereo-came-to-life

Second, as covered in a 2019 post, transistorized Japanese stereo receivers of high quality were being brought home by returning Vietnam vets. Which quickly transformed the home audio market.

The Vietnam War in Hi-Fi

Third, on January 1, 1967 the FCC’s non-duplication rule, written in 1964, finally took effect. Stations in larger cities that were licensed to operate both AM and FM transmitters had to offer unique FM programming. The easiest, and by far the cheapest, way to do that was to let kids from college stations bring free-form programming to commercial radio.

Three days after the FCC edict, there was an event of cosmic serendipity. The Doors released their first album. “Light My Fire” had a single version for AM stations…

… and the hippies who would soon be at the mics of newly liberated FM stations played the album version. Underground Radio was born.

In a few months there was Jimi Hendrix, the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Underground Radio ushered in the Summer of Love.

In Boston, as I have mentioned numerous times, we had the legendary WBCN. I was fortunate to listen to BCN during its first five years, while it was truly revolutionary.

A couple of FM engineering nods:

  • A colleague and friend of Boss Radio 66 founder Debbie Daughtry is Steve Shultis, CTO of New York Public Radio. When the Master FM Antenna was being decommissioned, Shultis was one of the people who claimed dibs on an array element before it went on the scrap heap.

https://www.radioworld.com/news-and-business/news-makers/shultis-helps-put-radios-best-face-forward

  • Closer to home, Christopher Kelly is the transmitter engineer for Boston Public Radio station GBH.

https://www.wgbh.org/foundation/highlights/2023-08-06/by-air-land-and-sea-a-radio-transmitter-tour-with-christopher-kelly

No Static at All – 2

My parents’ General Electric 408 AM/FM Radio from 1950, the year they were married. Dig that Atomic Age tuning dial!

My bedside radio as a kid in Connecticut was my parents’ old GE 408 that I rescued from the attic. It was introduced in 1950, only a few years after the FCC’s mandated change in FM frequencies, from 42-50 MHz to 88-108 MHz.

Edwin Howard Armstrong invented and patented FM. Armstrong had a very difficult time getting broadcasters to embrace his cutting-edge technology, despite the fact his inventions had made AM broadcasting possible. So Armstrong started his own radio network.

“In the war’s final year, big industry, led principally by RCA, was working quietly behind the scenes to undermine FM’s position… The interests aligned against FM were concealing a strong poker hand, and they planned to play their cards as soon as the war ended.”

http://www.theradiohistorian.org/fm/fm.html

The war stopped Armstrong just as FM was gaining in popularity. Then the post-war frequency band change rendered his FM radios obsolete. His consolation prize was FM being mandated by the FCC for TV sound.

Ad for Zenith radios with “Genuine Armstrong Frequency Modulation,” from the December 6, 1941 issue of The Saturday Evening Post

No Static at All – 1

Something I failed to spot in 2015 was the 50th anniversary of the Master FM Antenna installation on top of the Empire State Building. There was a light show, commemorating the date, synchronized to Steely Dan’s “FM”.

The song was from the 1978 movie of the same name.

Ironically or not, we played “FM” on the AM station where I worked. In 1978, for a $15/week raise, I became a one-man news department, like Les Nessman on the fictitious AM station WKRP in Cincinatti, which premiered that same year. Loni Anderson was a breakout star on the show, but for me the one to watch was Jan Smithers.

https://youtu.be/gHNHj6Kg5gs?t=1094

That Number Again

Yesterday, I commented that my 5,000+ blog posts aren’t as many as stars in the galaxy. They are, however, as many as the stars that can be seen with the naked eye at night. So said the late physicist Richard Feynman.

Feynman was one of the young scientists who developed the atomic bomb. You can read about his time working at Los Alamos in his first memoir, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman.

Caching Out

An update somewhere in the software stack changed the caching code, and new posts were taking hours to appear, so I have disabled the WordPress cache. This might slow down the site, but that’s preferable to having a stale presentation.