Radio History Society What`s All This Muntzing Stuff Anyway?

Radio History Society
Radio-Television Museum
News
Volume 9, Number 4
December 2003
What’s All This Muntzing Stuff Anyway?
by Bob Pease
[This article was published originally in the July 23, 1992, issue of Electronic Design magazine. It is
reprinted here with their kind permission. The illustrations were added for this reprint. Check out
the Electronic Design Web site at www.elecdesign.com—Editor.]
Recently, a young engineer wanted to show me
a circuit he had been optimizing. We reviewed
the schematic and the breadboard, and we studied the waveforms on the 'scope. We realized
that one of the resistors was probably doing
more harm than good, so he reached over for a
soldering iron. When he turned back to the circuit, the offending resistor was gone! How did
it disappear so fast? Ah, I said, I always keep a
pair of small diagonal nippers in my shirt
pocket. And when I want to disconnect something, it only takes a second to snip it out or
disconnect it on one end just like Earl
"Madman" Muntz. The kid looked at me. "Earl
WHO?" And I explained.
Back in the late 1940s and early 1950s, television sets were big and expensive and complicated a whole armful of vacuum tubes, lots of
transformers and rheostats and adjustments that
had to be trimmed, and many complicated circuits for signal processing. And all to drive a
crummy little green-and-white 5-in. or 7-in.
picture tube, where the whole family could
crowd around to watch.
RHS Newsletter
Earl Muntz was a smart, flamboyant businessman. Anybody who could make a success of
selling used cars in 1939 or 1946 had to know
something about salesmanship, and Muntz had
built up a $72 million business in Glendale,
California.
This 21-inch Muntz Model 21CP-1 television set
came out in 1959. Like all Muntz sets, it was
engineered to be as inexpensive as possible.
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For example, Muntz would advertise a particular car with a special price as the "special of the
day" a car that had to sell that day. If the car
was not sold by the end of the day, Muntz
vowed to smash it to bits with a sledgehammer, personally, on camera. Needless to
say, with tricks like that he was able to generate
a lot of publicity and interest, and sell a lot of
old cars, too.
So when Muntz started his plans to sell TV receivers in 1946, it was obvious that he would be
looking for a competitive advantage in other
words, he had to have an angle. He wanted to
get the circuits simple, the manufacturing costs
low, and he knew he needed a lot of promotion.
He realized that a receiver designed for "far-
fringe reception" (40 or 50 miles out) had to
have at least 3 or preferably 4 Intermediate Frequency (IF) stages (with a pentode for each
stage, plus a transformer, 5 capacitors, and 3
resistors), and loops to hold the frequencies
stable even when the signals were very weak.
Muntz decided to relinquish that "fringe" business to RCA and Zenith and other established
manufacturers. Instead, HE would design for
Manhattan and other urban areas, where you
could look out your window and see the doggone transmitting antenna on top of the Empire
State Building, or equivalent.
HE knew he could get engineers to design television receivers that would be very inexpensive, very simple, and would still work quite
satisfactorily in these strong-signal areas. Then
he could get away with two IF stages, and they
would not need fancy loops, and the tubes
could all be biased up with cheap-and-dirty biases.
As the circuits shrank, the power supply
shrank. And as the price shrank, his sales volume began to grow, leading to still further
economy of scale in manufacturing. Muntz
dropped his prices so fast, so low, that his competitors again accused him of being a madman,
cutting prices and competing unfairly.
When people watched Ed Sullivan or other pioneering programs of the era on their tiny 7-in.
screens, who came on at the end of the hour to
promote his new, low-priced 14-in. (diagonal
measurement) TV sets? Why, Earl "Madman"
Muntz himself!
"You can have TV in your home tonight," he
would say. "Your living room is our showroom." And, wearing red long johns and a Napoleon hat, he would vow, "I wanna give 'em
away, but Mrs. Muntz won't let me. She's
crazy."
A 1949 12-inch Model M1 Muntz console.
RHS Newsletter
Muntz was a smart merchandiser, and he knew
that his competitors' jibes could be turned to
work to his advantage. He knew that his TVs
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were not built of cut-rate parts in fact, his receivers were carefully engineered to be at least
as reliable as the competitors' sets that cost
twice as much and they would perform just as
well, so long as you stayed in a strong-signal
area.
And how did Muntz get his circuits designed to
be so inexpensive? He had several smart design
engineers. The story around the industry was
that he would wander around to an engineer's
workbench and ask, "How's your new circuit
coming?"
After a short discussion, Earl would say, "But,
you seem to be over-engineering this. I don't
think you need this capacitor." He would reach
out with his handy nippers (insulated) that he
always carried in his shirt-pocket, and snip out
the capacitor in question.
Well, doggone, the picture was still there! Then
he would study the schematic some more, and
SNIP...SNIP...SNIP. Muntz had made a good
guess of how to simplify and cheapen the circuit. Then, usually, he would make one SNIP
too many, and the picture or the sound would
stop working. He would concede to the designer, "Well, I guess you have to put that last
part back in," and he would walk away. THAT
was "Muntzing" the ability to delete all parts
not strictly essential for basic operation. And
Muntz took advantage of this story, to whatever
extent it may have been true, and he publicized
his "uncanny" ability to cut his costs in yet
more televised advertisements.
For several years, Earl Muntz kept impressing
his engineers to build in only the circuits that
were essential, and for those years, his TV receivers were competitive and cost-effective. All
because of his "Muntzing," he would say in his
ads. But really, that was just one aspect of good
sharp engineering. And of course, he had to
know where to start snipping. Although he was
not a degreed electrical engineer, he was a
pretty smart self-taught engineer, and his marketing and advertising campaigns capitalized on
the story: He knew how to engineer what peoRHS Newsletter
ple needed right down to a price.
For example, only in the last 10 years has Automatic Fine Tuning become universally available
on UHF as well as VHF tuners, so that manual
fine tuning is unnecessary. But as early as 1958,
Muntz TV bragged that there was no fine tuning
on their best receivers, on all 12 channels. Did
Muntz build in AFT before his time?? Heck,
no he just left out the fine tuning knob. The
tuners were all tuned up at the factory. Then if
the tuning drifted on a hot day, or the tuner components aged, you just had to call in a serviceman to tweak it with a special screwdriver.
So, Muntz had the gall to leave out an important
feature, and then he bragged about the apparent
simplicity! You can fool some of the people
some of the time...
Muntz got rid of the Horizontal Hold AFC circuit to cut costs. He got his engineers to use a
straight Hold circuit, which actually worked
well under strong signal conditions and was easier to troubleshoot than the temperamental AFC
loops of the day. He pioneered and took advantage of the Inter-carrier sound (Parker System)
so that audio tuning was automatic and no separate tuning was needed. This was a necessity
before he could drop the fine-tuning knob...
For some production adjustments, his test technicians would clip a trim pot onto the circuit,
twiddle it to get the alignment just right, and
then remove the pot and solder in a fixed resistor
of the required value. All very fine, AND inexpensive, but as the carbon resistor aged, and the
circuit aged, the TV receiver would go "on the
fritz." Then the TV repairman would have to
make a special trim, much more expensive than
just tweaking a pot. The repairmen were happy
to get all this repeat business, but eventually the
customers figured out that a low initial cost was
not necessarily the best investment...
Finally, as the TV receiver business matured,
Muntz realized he had sold all of the cheap sets
he could, and he got out of the manufacturing
business. After a brief bout with bankruptcy in
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1954, he got back in the business of selling TV
and electronics, "HiFi and Stereo," in a Los Angeles store, until his death in 1987 at the age of
77. The store is still open, operated by his family and heirs.
These are SAD days, because kids don't get a
chance to build their own TVs or radios or FM
tuners. Heathkit used to make it easy to build
their kits. I myself built three Heathkits and a
Knightkit 10-W amplifier, as well as a couple
other kits. And I helped some of my friends
when they were having trouble with their Heathkits. NOT because I was an expert on circuits in
those days at MIT, because I was really pretty
ignorant of electronics I was a struggling
would-be physicist then, in Course 8. I just
thought this electronics stuff was kind of fun!
But I was interested because these kits were
such interesting stuff.
These days, you can hardly buy a kit. Heathkit
went out of the kit business in January of 1992.
The kits were more expensive than the assembled circuits you could buy from any number of
stores. BUILD your own TV? How bizarre! The
Japanese could build them, with very high quality and very low cost, and even if you threw in
your own labor free, a Heathkit cost more to
buy!!
Let's go back to the scene where Mr. Muntz was
trying to justify which parts could be safely left
out of the TV set. If he snipped out a resistor
that appeared to be unnecessary, but it was actually needed for operation on low line voltage, or
when the frequencies shifted on a hot day, then I
really believe Mr. Muntz would not prevent the
designer from justifying it on a real need basis.
But frivolous circuits they were too expensive
to keep.
Now let me make some observations about adding features and "frivolous" circuits, which is
what I tend to support. An example: If I design a
new circuit with 8 new features, I may argue to
the marketing expert that these features will
surely sell lots of these parts to new markets.
RHS Newsletter
He may ask, "Bob, which of those 8 features
will make it sell so well?" And, I'll admit, I have
no way to guess exactly which ones, but I believe that 2 or 3 of them will be very popular.
No matter how much he grills me, he can't shake
me loose from my ignorance I really do not
know which of the 8 added features will make
the basic chip a great seller.
BUT, things have changed from the days of Earl
Muntz. Today, I can add 5 transistor functions
here, and 8 there, and 14 here, and 27 there, and
altogether they will not add 2% to the area of
the chip, nor the cost, and they won't hurt the
yield.
They may not even impact the test time all that
much. They will surely have no effect on reliability if I design them properly. In Earl Muntz's
day, though, NONE of these statements were
true. Things sure keep a-changing, don't
they??!!
Service Data Available!
The Radio-Television Museum library contains
a huge collection of service data. Photocopy
packages are available for most radio and TV
sets prior to the 1960s, and some later ones. For
some early radios, only a schematic is available,
but more often you will receive a schematic plus
alignment data, parts list, etc. Make sure you
have the right make and model number. If you
wish, you can e-mail inquiries to librarian Brian
Belanger
([email protected]), who will
check availability of the data for your set(s)
before you order.
Radio service data: $3 for the first model and $2
for each subsequent model in same order. TV
service data: $6 for the first model, $4 for each
subsequent model in same order. Maryland
residents add 5% sales tax to total. Order
from:
Librarian
Radio-Television Museum
2608 Mitchellville Road
Bowie, MD 20716
December 2003
Page 4
Broadcasting’s Beginnings: Who’s on First?
by Christopher Sterling
D
espite years of effort by many researchers
(for a wide variety of clients), several
pretty basic radio history questions remain unresolved—or offer controversial answers—as we
approach radio broadcasting’s centennial. Who
made the first broadcast? What and where was
the first broadcasting station? And what is the
oldest radio station still operating? This brief
survey assesses the evidence and answers.1
Precedents As any reader of the RHS newsletter is well aware, a Scot, James Clerk Maxwell
(1831-1879) first theorized the existence of radio
waves in the 1860s, publishing a definitive edition of his work in 1872. Fifteen years later, in
Germany, young physicist Heinrich Hertz (18571894) first proved Maxwell was right in a series
of small-scale experiments conducted in 188788. And in 1895, Guglielmo Marconi (18741937) began to experiment with wireless on his
father’s estate near Bologna, Italy. Spurned by
the Italian navy, he traveled to England and with
the proper social introductions (thanks to his
mother) was soon impressing military and government officials with his ever-improving system
of wireless telegraphy.
Along with other important innovators in Germany, France, and elsewhere, however, Marconi
was not a broadcaster. Indeed, the concept did
not yet exist. Marconi was seeking to develop a
viable system of point-to-point wireless that
could effectively compete with the world’s land
and undersea telegraph lines. When he and his
colleagues successfully sent the Morse code signal for the letter “s” (three dits) across the North
Atlantic in 1901, the feat made newspaper headlines around the world. Additionally, Marconi’s
system was designed to communicate with ships
out of sight of any land. Several shipping disasRHS Newsletter
ters, notably the infamous maiden voyage of
the Titanic in April 1912, soon made the
value of wireless known to millions. 2
Several important wireless innovators were
active in the United States, chief among them
Lee de Forest and Reginald Fessenden, both
discussed below. Within the first decade of
the 1900s, Marconi, Fessenden, de Forest and
several German operators,3 among others,
built transmitting stations on the East Coast
(with a few on the Gulf Coast or West Coast),
all of them intended for long-distance wireless telegraphy work and communicating with
ships at sea. Competition was rife—operators
at one system’s stations often would ignore
messages from a rival. Slowly growing at the
Reginald Fessenden, Circa 1905.
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same time was the new hobby of amateur radio–the “ham” operators who used code and
sometimes crude voice signals. While those
hams were getting closer to the notion, they
still were not broadcasting stations.
Defining the Target What, then, is implied
by the term broadcasting station? Seemingly
an obvious matter today, most researchers
would agree that any such operation has to
meet several criteria. These include (a) use of
wireless electromagnetic signals (radio waves)
for transmission (b) of voice and/or music
sounds (in other words, wireless or radio telephony, not coded wireless telegraphy), (c)
on some sort of a continuing and regular
schedule (preferably announced), (d) intended
for the general public–indeed, anyone with
access to a receiver, and (e) holding a government license to transmit.
Many short-lived radio operations met one or
more of those criteria, but at first none met
them all.4 And virtually all of the “contenders” began as experimental stations, in
part because early licensing regimes left them
On Christmas Eve 1906 Fessenden (tall man in
center) transmitted voice and music from this
station at Brant Rock, Mass.
RHS Newsletter
little choice.
Fessenden Canadian-born Reginald Fessenden
(1866-1932) held a U.S. Weather Bureau contract to perfect radio systems for detecting and
reporting climate changes.5 That involved experimental transmitters on the central Atlantic
coastline. In December 1900 Fessenden transmitted intelligible voice signals from his experimental Weather Bureau transmitter on Maryland’s Cobb Island. Historical signs mark the
location today. He eventually signed up financial backers to create his own point-to-point
wireless system.
On Christmas Eve of 1906, at Brant Rock (on
the Massachusetts coast south of Boston) Fessenden conducted what is generally regarded as
the first broadcast when he sent out music and
announcements to “previously alerted” shipboard wireless operators and a few hams who
tuned in.6 He repeated his informal “program” a
week later on New Year’s Eve. Because of
those transmissions, Fessenden generally is
credited with being the world’s first broadcaster, though his broadcasts, being secondary
to his prime research efforts, were one-time
events, not intended to be continued.
De Forest Not far behind was the betterknown Lee de Forest (1873-1961). De Forest
had earned a Ph.D. at Yale, purportedly with
the first dissertation concerning a wireless subject.7 Neither a trained engineer nor a scientist,
de Forest primarily was interested in the potential exploitation of wireless as a profit-making
venture. In 1906-7 he developed his most important innovation, the three-element “audion”
tube which eventually would prove essential to
amplification of sound. In his search for the big
financial score, de Forest fell in with some
shady financiers and went through several wireless companies.
As part of his search for both publicity and in-
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He used a spark gap transmitter, then a transmitter
of his own design, though neither was optimal for
radiotelephony.
Lee de Forest with one of his audion tubes. He
broadcast the Metropolitan Opera circa 1910.
vestors (and reflecting his love of opera), de
Forest broadcast Enrico Caruso and other stars
singing from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. That was in January 1910,
though few heard it because of interference from
a nearby wireless telegraphy transmitter. He
may have conducted similar experiments as
early as 1907 (records are a bit shaky) and continued to about 1912, though he never attempted
the operation of a regularly-scheduled broadcasting station
Herrold/KQW Soon the San Francisco Bay
area became another center of broadcasting developments. While little known until relatively
recently, in 1909 Charles Herrold (1875-1948)
had created a radio school in San Jose.8 As part
of that school’s training, Herrold built a wireless
transmitter that provided both telegraphy and
telephony signals. It first transmitted voice signals in early 1909. Not later than 1912, and perhaps earlier, the Herrold station was providing a
regular schedule (at first just a few hours a
week, but then daily) of music and voice transmissions, which would continue into early 1917.
RHS Newsletter
Herrold’s station FN (later calls included 6XE and
possibly SJN) probably was the first continuing
station operation that fit all of the criteria noted
earlier—except that along with hundreds of other
operators, Herrold was forced off the air as America entered World War I. While other operations
were too, it took him some time after the war before what became station KQW got back on the
air, soon to be controlled by others. Thus while his
can clearly be cited as the first station (certainly in
America, though there are contenders elsewhere,
especially in Canada and Holland), the warinduced break between 1917 and 1919 and subsequent delay in getting back on the air forfeits its
chance as the oldest station still on the air.
Herrold died, a forgotten man, in 1948.
It was only when experimenters began to use the
constantly-improved three-element vacuum tube
rather than the spark, alternator, or arc transmitters
(as used by Marconi, Fessenden and Herrold),
that the first truly effective means of transmitting
the human voice arrived. With this change in technology, already under way by 1913-14, the stage
Charles Herrold’s station in San Jose. Herrold
is standing in the doorway.
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was set for real broadcasting, only to be held
up by World War I’s forced suspension of
most operations from 1917 to 1919 or 1920.
University of Wisconsin The only one of the
broadcast station pioneers with which I have
had some personal experience is University of
Wisconsin station WHA, in Madison. I was a
student announcer there through the 1960s
while working on my undergrad and then
graduate degrees. I remember announcing
WHA as “the oldest station in the nation”
many times . . . before I began to question that
claim as I learned more about radio’s history
in grad school. My attempts to say “oldest
educational station in the nation” were not met
with approval.
The university’s experimental station 9XM9
was sporadically on the air in 1915, building
on physics department experiments dating to
1909. Wireless telegraphy (code) weather
forecasts and market reports were regularly
provided. By 1917 use of handmade vacuum
tubes allowed the first voice transmissions.
Most importantly, 9XM continued operations
after most other transmitters were shut off for
the duration of World War I because it as-
sisted in training of military radio operators.
While records are not clear, however, regularly
scheduled telephonic (voice) transmissions to
the general public (weather and market reports
again) appear to date from September of 1920
(or possibly early 1921)–by which time others
were offering similar service (see below). 9XM
became WHA at the beginning of 1922 and
went on to pioneer many educational aspects of
radio.
The Detroit News This newspaper-owned station began experimentally as amateur operation
8MK in August of 1920, though there is considerable confusion as to who actually held the
license that early.10 The WWJ call letters, still
used today, first appeared early in 1922, and
the connection with the earlier amateur operation is not fully clear. But there seems little
disagreement that regularly scheduled programs date to August 1920, making this one of
the oldest broadcast operations in the country.
That Lee de Forest “chose” WWJ as the oldest
station back in the 1940s added luster if not
verifiable fact to its claim to be the oldest station in the country.
Westinghouse Best known of all the claimants, of course, is Westinghouse station
KDKA, which began regular service under those
call letters, broadcasting
presidential election returns in November 1920.
KDKA is best known in
considerable part because
it remained under the
same ownership for decades and cranked out continuing flurries of publicity (beginning at least in
the early 1940s) claiming
it was first.
Operating position at station WWJ, circa 1922.
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December 2003
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other sources, among the best of which are
Hugh G. J. Aitken, The Continuous Wave:
Technology and American Radio, 1900-1932
(Princeton University Press, 1985), and Aitken’s former student, Susan J. Douglas, Inventing American Broadcasting, 1899-1922
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1987).
Operating position at KDKA at the time of the
Harding-Cox election returns broadcast in 1920.
The initial East Pittsburgh operation grew out of
experimental work by company engineer Dr.
Frank Conrad (1874-1941) over his ham transmitter 8XK that dated to perhaps 1916, but began scheduled voice transmissions to the public
by the fall of 1919. The story often has been
told of how Westinghouse officials, seeking a
way to keep their trained workers and smooth
assembly line in operation after the cancellation
of wartime radio contracts, noted Conrad’s
broadcasts and the growing public interest in
them.11 They began KDKA as a direct result—
providing programs to lure listeners to buy the
new Westinghouse receivers.
As the connection between Conrad’s 8XK and
KDKA are clear and direct, and the latter remains on the air today (even under the same,
though renamed, ownership), it can fairly be
acclaimed as the country’s oldest station,12 joining Herrold’s operation as the first station, and
Fessenden’s turn-of-the-century transmissions
as the first broadcasts.
2. The best treatment of the role of radio in
the Titanic disaster remains Gerald Marcus,
The Maiden Voyage (New York: Viking
Press, 1969), but see also John Booth and
Sean Coughlan, Titanic: Signals of Disaster
(Westbury, England: White Star Publications, 1995).
3. A useful quick survey of the key German
wireless innovators is found in Christopher
H. Sterling, “German Wireless Pioneers, “ in
Encyclopedia of Radio (New York: Fitzroy
Dearborn/Routledge, 2003), pp. 653-655.
4. For a discussion of these criteria—and
four specific claimants which are further addressed here, see Joseph E. Baudino and
John M. Kittross, “Broadcasting’s Oldest
Stations: An Examination of Four Claimants,” Journal of Broadcasting 21:61-83
(Winter 1977).
5. The only full-length biography of Fessenden is a memoir by his wife. See Helen
Fessenden, Fessenden: Builder of Tomorrows (New York: Coward McCann, 1940).
For a more considered view of his technological role, see Frederick Seitz, The Cosmic
Inventor: Reginald Aubrey Fessenden (18661932) (Philadelphia: American Philosophical
Society Transactions 89:6, 1999).
Notes
6. Aitken, op cit, p. 469.
1. At the risk of appearing self-serving, much of
what follows is drawn from Christopher H. Sterling and John Michael Kittross, Stay Tuned: A
History of American Broadcasting (Mahwah,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002, 3rd ed.), especially the first two chapters. There are a host of
RHS Newsletter
7. Though it must be used with care, see Lee
de Forest, Father of Radio: The Autobiography of Lee de Forest (Chicago: Wilcox &
Follett, 1950).
December 2003
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8. Gordon Greb and Mike Adams,
Charles Herrold, Inventor of Radio
Broadcasting (Jefferson, NC:
McFarland, 2003) is, by far, the most
complete rendering of the fascinating
Herrold story.
9. There is no definitive study of
WHA’s origins or operations. See R.
Franklin Smith, “Oldest Station in the
Nation?” Journal of Broadcasting 4:4055 (Winter 1959-60) for a useful survey
of the available records—and also
Baudino and Kittross, op cit.
10. See Baudino and Kittross, op cit,
pp. 75-76.
The museum often hosts school groups. The
second grade from the Grace Christian School,
pictured here, sent us a nice thank-you note and
this picture.
11. The classic first-person account is
H.P. Davis, “The Early History of
Broadcasting in the United States,” chapter VII
in The Radio Industry: The Story of its Development (Chicago: A.W. Shaw, 1928), pp. 189225.
12. And Baudino and Kittross so conclude in
their 1977 article cited above. Baudino was a
long-time Westinghouse official, it should be
noted, but undertook careful research in the records to arrive at his findings. .
So Long to Eddie Gallaher!
O
f the popular radio broadcasters in the
Washington area, one of the best-loved
was Eddie Gallaher, who died on November 26,
having nearly reached age 90, after 53 years in
broadcasting. Gallaher began on WTOP-AM in
1947.When Arthur Godfrey left D.C. for New
York, Eddie replaced him, and hosted the
"Sundial" program in the morning and the
"Moondial" program at night. Later Gallaher
moved to WASH-FM and then to WWDC-AM,
where he stayed until he retired. RHS Board
members Ed Walker and Walt Starling knew
Eddie well and considered him one of the finest
in the business.
RHS Newsletter
Multiple tributes to Gallaher appeared soon after his death. Bob Levey devoted much of his
December 2 Washington Post column to Gallaher. Noting Eddie's signature sign-off, "It's so
nice to know so many nice people," Levey said,
"Of course what Eddie never mentioned was
that he was the nicest of all." And, "...his voice
had a smile built into it, like the voice of every
great radio talent." Like Levey, Gallaher campaigned conscientiously for Children's Hospital.
On December 5, the Post ran an editorial about
Gallaher. It said, "Above all, it was Mr. Gallaher's man-about-town chatter that listeners
relished: countless tidbits of local lore about
merchants, government workers, good
neighbors and so-so fellow golfers. He was a
master at working the one-to-one intimacy of
radio. His ad lib commercials, especially for the
many restaurants he frequented, were rhapsodic.
NBC's Willard Scott, who with partner Ed
Walker hosted a rival "Joy Boys" morning
show, said that when Mr. Gallaher "sold food,
you salivated."
It is rare that a radio personality touches the
heart of a community like Eddie Gallaher obviously did. Bob Levey closed his article with,
"Your red 'On the Air' light will never go out."
December 2003
Page 10
“Heavy Metal Rally” at the Museum
AM Fans Take Note!
P
lans called for the museum to take part in
a nationwide ham radio "Heavy Metal
Rally" featuring the heritage mode of AM, as
local amateur radio operator Paul Courson and
several others prepared a vintage Collins AM
transmitter for display at the museum annex.
(This newsletter went to press just prior to the
date of the event, December 27, so we cannot
report on the actual event.)
You may recall that earlier this year Paul
helped arrange to loan the art deco style 1947
Collins to the museum, and it is in our annex
building shining proudly once again as cleanup
and tune-up continue. The transmitter had been
used by a small station in Florida, and is identical to transmitters used in our area by Annapolis station WYRE and D.C. station WUST just
after World War II. Paul's crew has been preparing the transmitter for operation on the 160meter ham band. Using vintage radio broadcast station transmitters on
the ham bands has become increasingly popular in recent years.
for more information.) The mode of AM is
enjoying a revival among hams who long for
the sound quality that was lost when singlesideband emerged as a more efficient means
of communicating.
Assuming that everything was ready by the
27th, Paul intended to string a temporary antenna and put the station on the air with the
special callsign W3R. We expect interested
hams to stop by to see the Collins lit up, so
we also will put out on display some of the
older antique ham receivers in our museum
collection—National, Hallicrafters, RCA,
etc.—to create the right atmosphere. Paul and
his crew will be operating the Collins now
and then to create yet another interesting experience for museum visitors. E-mail Paul at
[email protected] for information on future
events involving the Collins.
Ham radio's Heavy Metal Rally,
organized by the chief engineer of a
Colorado radio station, features AM
transmitters that weigh more than
250 pounds and have a power of at
least 250 watts. The Collins certainly qualifies at 1,360 lbs. and a
quarter kilowatt. This is the third
year for the event, which last year
drew more than 200 stations coast
to coast, running a wide variety of
ship, military, broadcast, handmade,
and amateur equipment.
On December 27 AM transmitters
like the Collins were to be fired up
for a nostalgic gathering on the airwaves. (See www.amwindow.org
RHS Newsletter
Paul Courson’s crew has been working hard to get
this Collins transmitter back on the air.
December 2003
Page 11
Book Review
Johnny Holliday: From Rock to Jock
by Johnny Holliday with Stephen Moore
Reviewed by Walt Starling
J
ohnny Holliday never met a person he didn't
like. And in a career that has spanned four
decades and covered cities coast to coast,
Johnny has met lots of people. In fact he mentions more than 1,000 of his closest friends in
his new book Johnny Holliday: From Rock to
Jock, helped along by co-author Stephen
Moore.
Johnny starts out on a broadcasting career that
begins on WBBN, a tiny AM station in Perry,
Georgia, moves up to modestly successful
WRNY AM in Rochester, New York,, and then
breaks through on flame-throwers WHK
(Cleveland), WINS (New York) and KYA (San
Francisco). But as radio starts to change and
Top 40 fades, Holliday successfully makes the
switch from smooth patter and hot platters to
peach baskets and pigskins. Johnny transfers his
high-energy delivery from rock ‘n’ roll to playby-play, and finds an even bigger audience.
time. You’ll wonder when Johnny found
time to sleep. While Johnny did make hundreds of friends along the way, he met one
person he didn't like. You’ll have to buy the
book to find out who it is.
The book is available at local bookstores
and at www.jholliday.com, where you can
get information about purchasing an autographed first edition copy. Radio Daily
News called this book "fascinating and historically significant."
Copyright 2002, Sports Publishing LLC
ISBN Number 1-58261-461-X
Hardcover, 232 pages, $22.95 (or $23.95 for
postpaid autographed copies from the Web
site noted above).
Johnny ends up in Washington as the morning
man on WWDC, but he also has West Coast
pro football and pro basketball air checks in
hand. Holliday's association with the University
of Maryland football and basketball broadcasts
as the play-by-play announcer means he finally
puts down roots for good, only to spend more
time traveling to away games in 23 years than a
congressman on a junket. (How many Frequent
Flyer Miles, Johnny?)
If there is one thing lacking in his book, it's the
other side of broadcasting and sports, the weird
things that happen, the competition and infighting for jobs and promotions, the everyday
things that make life such a roller coaster ride.
If you’re interested in any of the above in radio,
rock, or sports, then Rock to Jock is worth your
RHS Newsletter
The new Johnny Holliday book is fun reading
for anybody who has enjoyed his broadcasts.
December 2003
Page 12
One of the Hallicrafters 7” TV sets featured in this 1949 Lafayette-Concord catalog is on display at the museum.
RHS Newsletter
December 2003
Page 13
Museum News
I
n addition to its regular hours on weekends,
the museum continues to host special tour
groups on a regular basis. Docents Dwight
Heasty, Brian Belanger, Paul Kirkkham, Mac
Shawe, Harley Perkins, and John Robinson
have been stalwarts in accommodating such
tours on weekdays. Enthusiastic visitors have
made comments like, "Wow, what a gem you
folks have here!" And, "I am so glad I came. I
had no idea there was a museum like this in
this area."
unless we preserve it.
Donations continue to arrive at the museum on
a regular basis. We have acquired some interesting television sets recently, and many boxes
of literature, swelling our library holdings considerably. Check our website for the latest listing of books and journals on hand.
Cathryn Davis
Herndon, Virginia
Six boxes of radio books, test
equipment, radios, parts
The RHS auction on November 2 finished up
the remainder of the items in the Nye estate
that were not being kept for the permanent collection of the museum. We netted about
$2,000 on the auction, and the attendees had a
great time. In addition to several board members who helped with the auction, we thank
Domi Sanchez, Lynne Bushong, Willie Sessoms, and Bill Goodwin, who went out of their
way to help with this event.
It is the beginning of a new year. How about
sending a check to our membership chair, John
Holt, to renew your membership for another
year? Please be as generous as you can. Remember, RHS is an IRS 501(c)(3) organization, so all donations of money or artifacts are
tax deductible if you itemize deductions. The
beginning of a new year is also a good time to
review your will. Why not consider mentioning RHS and the Radio-Television Museum in
your will? Some of our members already have
done so. This will help to ensure that the museum can continue to grow and provide services to future generations for whom the history of radio and television will not be known
RHS Newsletter
Donations since our last newsletter listing:
Brian Belanger
Rockville, Maryland
Videotape of 1940s Army film on tubes
Citizen VCR
Tom Buckley
Washington, D.C.
Five videotapes, WLW, WTOP, etc.
Janet Dietrick
Bowie, Maryland
Hallicrafters SX-25
Philco 40-125
Peter Eldridge
Alexandria, Virginia
Book on Marconi
Althea Fahringer
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philco 48-2500 projection TV set
Maurice Falk
Boca Raton, Florida
Approx. 200 tubes
Paul Farmer
Washington, Virginia
Lighted Philco dealer sign
Genealogy Museum
Bowie, Maryland
War Emergency Radio Service
Operator Permit
Charles Haslet, Jr.
Purcellville, Virginia
Sams Photofacts
December 2003
Page 14
Bill Hayes
Nanjemoy, Maryland
Beco ac/dc radio, book
Ken Mellgren
Rockville, Maryland
TV test pattern
Dwight Heasty
Oxon Hill, Maryland
Spark coil demonstrator
RCA dealer sign
Marconi catalog reprint
Fisher 600T receiver, Garrard turntable
Howard Meyers
Bowie, Maryland
Resistors
Patricia Miller
Waldorf, Maryland
Philco 1937 console
Midd Hunt
Reston, Virginia
WE 298A transmitting tube
Scrapbooks and literature from WJSV
The Newseum
Arlington, Virginia
Dell computer & monitor
Bernie Katz
Reston, Virginia
Heathkit stereo units, tape recorder
Rick Rieve
Fairfax, Virginia
WRC poster, radio service card
Florence Keith
Bowie, Maryland
Zenith B&W TV set
Honora Roberts
Marana, Arizona
Sylvania 163-16 TV set
Admiral 30C17S TV set
Hi-fi gear
David Kelleher
Falls Church, Virginia
Circa 1950 Emerson radio, tubes
Elizabeth Koether
Glen Burnie, Maryland
Many boxes of radio books and magazines
Walter Kozlowski
Bowie, Maryland
Hallicrafters SX-71 & speaker
Tubes and parts
Danny Lange
Bowie, Maryland
RCA Model 21S521N TV set
Edward Leffson
Hyattsville, Maryland
Two transistor radios
Julian Levin
Chevy Chase, Maryland
Emerson TFS86 radio
Richard Marks
Gambrills, Maryland
Tube checker, radios, parts
RHS Newsletter
Eric Schindler
Bowie, Maryland
RME 45 & speaker
Mac Shawe
New Carrollton, Maryland
Philco 37-630 & scope probe
Ludwell Sibley
Gold Hill, Oregon
Schickerling tube poster
Richard Smith
Rockville, Maryland
E. H. Scott 800 B radio/phono console
David & Linda Taylor
Winchester, Virginia
RCA 21CT662U color TV set
10” RCA circa 1947 TV set
National NC-100X & speaker
Test equipment, literature, parts
Steve Tilden
Cherry Hill, North Carolina
RCA 21AXP22 color TV
Test equipment, tubes, parts
Many boxes of radio books and magazines
December 2003
Page 15
Rusty Wallace
Rockville, Maryland
Two RCAs & one Zenith plastic radios
VOA and CNN Executive
Bernard Kamenske Dies
Robert White
Frederick, Maryland
Test equipment, DuMont and HP
Bernard Kamenske died September 25 at age
75. Kamenske started his media career as an
Associated Press writer, joined the Voice of
America in 1955, and became VOA's chief
news editor in 1974. He was a strong champion
of objective, impartial news reporting at VOA
and was a key person in establishing the charter
that explicitly called for journalistic integrity.
The Washington Post quoted a Senate staffer as
saying, "He more than anyone else has kept the
sanctity of VOA news—he sleeps with the First
Amendment every night." After leaving VOA
in 1981, Kamenske became an executive with
CNN's Washington Bureau.
XM Satellite Radio
Washington, D.C.
Satellite radio and subscription
Max von Zatorski
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Several radios, test equipment
books, parts, tubes
RHS Officers and Directors:
President:
Rusty Wallace (2004)
1205 Gladstone
Rockville, MD 20851
(301) 279-2268
[email protected]
Vice President
Chris Sterling (2005)
4507 Airlie Way
Annandale, VA22003
(703) 256-9304
[email protected]
Corresponding Secretary/
Membership Chair:
John Holt (2004)
9403 Ulysses Court
Burke, VA 22015
(703) 978-6642
Treasurer:
Michael Rubin (2005)
1427 Woodman Avenue
Silver Spring, MD 20902
(301) 649-3722
[email protected]
RHS Newsletter
Museum Curator and
Newsletter Editor:
Brian Belanger
5730 Avery Park Drive
Rockville, MD 20855-1738
(301) 258-0708
[email protected]
Volunteer Coordinator:
Dwight Heasty (2005)
1830 Clayton Drive
Oxon Hill, MD 20745
(301) 894-0550
[email protected]
Webmaster:
Ken Mellgren (2006)
13 Bitterroot Ct.
Rockville, MD 20853
(301) 929-1062
[email protected]
Directors:
Charles Grant (2006)
(301) 871-0540
December 2003
Kate Marks Persinger
(2006)
(410) 765-3803
Bill McMahon (2004)
(301) 977-4807
Harley Perkins (2005)
(410) 685-6206
Jerry Phillips (2005)
(202) 726-5115
Don Ross (2006)
(703) 569-5052
Gerald Schneider (2005)
(301) 929-8593
Walter Starling (2005)
(301) 840-7373
Tony Young (2004)
(301) 262-1917
Ed Walker (2006)
(301) 229-7060
Page 16