The First Olympics on Television
With the Winter Olympics in full swing in PyeongChang and many of us watching a 1080p picture with beautiful surround sound (shameless plug: courtesy of Telos Alliance’s Linear Acoustic division), we might want to spend a moment to take a look at the first Olympics ever to be televised, the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Read MoreTopics: Television, Broadcast History
A National Treasure: WSM Nashville
The Friday before Christmas, I was driving from Cleveland to Troy, NY, to pick up my daughter and bring her back to Cleveland to celebrate the holiday with the rest of the family. It’s about a nine-hour drive, so I had plenty of time to listen to my music files, internet streams, Pandora, SiriusXM, or the old reliable radio.
Read MoreTopics: Radio History, Broadcast History, WSM Nashville
Magnetic Tape and the Emergence of High-Fidelity Recording
In the earliest days of sound recording (late 1880s to 1926), all recordings were made acoustically. That is to say, a recording machine with a large horn with a needle on the other end was set before an orchestra and the vibrations from the needle would “draw” a pattern on a spinning wax cylinder (or later flat disc). If a vocalist was called upon to sing, they would stand before the horn and sing right into it.
Read MoreTopics: Vintage Electronics, Vintage Audio Technology, Broadcast History
Vintage Audio: Fly with an Edo-Aire ADF Receiver
Found in the Attic columns regularly seek out forgotten or unusual types of AM receivers, be they farm radios, high-fidelity AM, unlikely frequency coverage, or novelty types. If you're totally stumped by the picture of this device, don't feel too bad. Unless you've had a pilot's license and been flying private aircraft for the past thirty years, you'd have no reason to encounter one of these receivers. This installment follows on the Sony AIR-7, and is our second aviation-related entry. The Edo-Aire R-556 E ADF (Automatic Direction Receiver) is typical of radio navigation aids that were in virtually all private aircraft before the advent of GPS receivers.
Read MoreTopics: Vintage Electronics, Vintage Technology, Broadcast History
John Vassos: Celebrating a Visionary Broadcast Industrial Designer
Of all of the legendary inidividuals associated with the broadcast and music industries in the United States, there is probably no one more responsible for the advancements in broadcast industrial design, audio and video consumer good design, and the look and feel of transmission equipment and broadcast facilities in general than John Vassos.
Read MoreTopics: Broadcast History, john vassos
Dubai DJ Gets in Over his Head for Record-Breaking Broadcast
One of the great things about being a broadcaster is that you occasionally have a chance to be involved in some unique broadcasts. But while some broadcasts are memorable for the events they cover, others are so unique that the broadcasters themselves become the story.
Such was the case recently with the crew at Channel 4 FM in Dubai, when the marketing team thought it might be fun to do a live 5-10 minute broadcast segment from the Ambassador's Lagoon outside the iconic Atlantis the Palm Resort, more or less as a publicity stunt to promote the exotic location. We’re not talking poolside, mind you, but broadcasting from within the pool – an underwater broadcast from a pool that hosts a variety of sea life!
Read MoreTopics: Broadcast History, Broadcasting, Dubai
Saving Sounds from the Dumpster
As the Twentieth Century is rapidly receding in the rear-view mirror, historians, archivists and collectors furiously gather artifacts and documents before they all disappear. Forgotten by many, but not all, are the soundscapes of the past; both technological and natural in origin.
If you've worked in radio long enough, you already know something about changing soundscapes. The clattering of a teletype machine in the newsroom, the sound of records and reel tapes being cued and the once per second chunk-chunk-chunk of the Western Union master clock as it counts down the time remaining till the next hourly newscast, are all gone but not forgotten.
Read MoreTopics: Broadcast History, audio
A Step into the Vintage Gear Time Machine
Most of us make the annual trek to Las Vegas in April to see all of the new tech at NAB. But if you walked down the main lobby of the convention center this year, you could also see old broadcast tech. In case you had this experience and wondered where you were, you had likely entered the vintage equipment time machine known as the Museum of Broadcast Technology (MBT).
Read MoreTopics: Broadcast History