With word of the upcoming closing of the Econco tube rebuilding facility, we thought it was worth looking back at an industry that grew up fast and saved stations a lot of money, but now is fading as solid-state transmitters have replaced a lot of the high-power rigs using tubes. Reid Brandon was […]

This week we saw the 124th anniversary of an event that may not have happened. The late Don Kimberlin took a deep look into what he called the myth of Marconi’s success. You may find the story interesting for several reasons. Much of today’s world is blithely ignorant about the origins of the […]

Anyone who has entered the broadcast industry in the past ten years sees it in a totally different way compared with those who have worked in radio and TV for decades. Some common tools were not available as recently as 20 years ago – and if you named some common tools from past […]

Even as we move further and further away from using tubes – especially power tubes – in transmitters in favor of solid-state products, the history of those power tubes and how their development helped the broadcast industry grow with reliable power amplifiers. Reid Brandon is back with a look, this time, at […]

A fair number of broadcasters have recently been startled when seeking to rebuild a power tube. Solid-state transmitters are definitely the norm now. But what about those still trying to keep their tube units operating. Reid Brandon – a former Eimac engineer – has some disquieting thoughts. I was recently contacted by […]

Some parts of broadcasting have not changed since its very beginnings. People do not talk in digital fashion – we have always been analog. Getting the best quality reproduction of voice and music has been a top priority of microphone designers. Dave Felice shares with us the background of one of the finest […]

In general, RCA had a good reputation for well-built transmitters. Even today, if you look at the immaculate wiring inside the transmitters, there is some admiration for the folks that did the work. But not all the transmitters were trouble-free. Hans Bott designed some of the early RCA FM transmitters and for their […]

It is true: we often take things – especially technical things – for granted. “That’s the way it was always done.” Yet, when we do learn when and how they were developed – and some of the things that were overcome, it gives us a better sense of appreciation for the tools we […]

It is the 61st year since the FCC authorized FM Stereo broadcasting. Bob Carpenter was there at the beginning, and recalls a time when putting clean stereo transmissions on the air was not always easy. By the late 1950s it became obvious that the last unoccupied FM channels in major cities would soon […]

There are a lot of terms we rarely hear any more, or that no longer reflect their original meanings. If you listen to an old radio show, you may well hear the announcer say at the beginning: “Transcribed.” Here is why. Today, the term “transcribed” is well understood to mean that some speech, […]