A VIRTUAL TOUR OF WEAF IN 1927

        By John Schneider, W9FGH

www.theradiohistorian.org
Copyright 2015 -
John F. Schneider & Associates, LLC

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This was the WBAY antenna atop the 24 Walker Street Long Lines building.

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WBAY's 500-watt transmitter at 24 Walker Street.

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The first home of WEAF was the AT&T building at 463 West Street.  This photo was taken in the late teens, before the station’s antenna was built on the roof of the building.

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WEAF's studios were located on fourth floor of the AT&T Building at 195 Broadway after 1923 .

The floor plan of the WEAF studios in 1923, showing the locations of the large and small studios, the announcer’s booth (1), and the control room (19).

This was the reception room at the WEAF studios, 195 Broadway, New York City, 1923.

This is a view of the main studio of WEAF at 195 Broadway, 1924.

This was the WEAF audio control room at 195 Broadway in 1924.  The program was fed from this panel to the transmitter on West Street over an AT&T phone line.

WEAF debuted the world’s first 5,000 watt transmitter on January 1, 1924.  It was the first broadcast transmitter to use crystal frequency control.

This view shows the WEAF antenna, supported by two 300 ft. towers.  The transmitter building was located midway between the towers.

This was the WEAF antenna tuning house, 1927.  The inductors and capacitors inside matched the balanced feed line from the transmitter building to the unbalanced antenna’s impedance.  The vertical downlead from the antenna can be seen at the center of the photo.

This view of the WEAF RT-150A transmitter shows the power amplifier frame in the foreground, the modulator frame in the center, and the rectifier frame in the background.

A WEAF engineer shows one of the water-cooled final tubes in the power amplifier frame.

This is a general view of the main transmitter room at WEAF in Bellmore.  The modulator frame is seen to the left, the rectifier frame is in the background, and the power control panel is on the right.  The operator’s desk is located in the center of the room.

This was the WEAF operator’s desk.  The switch panel could switch individual tubes out of the circuit in case of a failure, and substitute standby tubes.  The two RCA Radiola 20 receivers were used to monitor the station off-air, and to listen for maritime distress calls on 600 meters.  G.E. engineer A.D. Ring is at the controls.

This was the transmitter facility that NBC built for WEAF at Port Washington, Long Island, in 1941.  The change moved the station ten miles closer to New York City to improve its signal in the city.

 BEGINNINGS:

The iconic radio station WEAF in New York City began in 1922 as a grand experiment by the Western Electric Company, a subsidiary of AT&T.  Western Electric was interested in exploiting its collection of radio patents, which it believed would allow it to corner the market in the exploding field of radio broadcasting.  Specifically, its station was conceived by AT&T as a “toll broadcaster” – it would be a radio-station-for-hire, with blocks of program time that would be leased to anyone that wanted to broadcast.

The original AT&T station was actually licensed as WBAY.  The studio and 500-watt transmitter were located in the company's Long Lines building at 24 Walker Street, with the antenna on the roof.  The 24-story building rose conspiculously around its surrounding structures, and engineers believed the building would make an excellent location for the station.  After several months of construction and testing, broadcasting from WBAY officially began on July 25, 1922.  Immediately, it was detected that WBAY's signal coverage was greatly inferior to that of the Westinghouse station WJZ.  The signal faded especially quickly to the north and south.  A detailed study of the problem revealed that the building's steel girder infrastructure was resonant at the station's 360 meter frequency, and was itself absorbing much of the transmitter's power. 

Fortunately, AT&T had also installed a transmitter atop its eleven-story 463 West Street building, which had been assigned the call letters WEAF, and that station demonstrated significantly better coverage.  The result was that, on August 16,  AT&T's toll broadcasting operation was moved to WEAF, and the operations of WBAY were discontinued.  Programs continued to originate from the Walker Street building through a telephone line connection.   (In 1923, WEAF moved into more elaborate new studios on the fourth floor of the AT&T Building at 195 Broadway.)

As mentioned previously, WEAF was initially conceived by AT&T as a “toll broadcaster”.  On August 28, 1922 WEAF broadcast what is widely considered to be the first radio commercial by the Queensboro Corporation, promoting its new apartment building.  But while the toll concept attracted considerable public attention and debate, it did not attract many paying users, and so WEAF out of necessity reverted to creating its own programs.  It quickly became one of the country’s most important station, presenting high quality talent like singer Vaughn De Leath, Will Rogers, the Happiness Boys, the Silver Masked Tenor, the Ipana Troubadours, and a number of renowned artists from the Metropolitan Opera Company.  One of WEAF’s first announcers, Graham McNamee, was to become radio’s most famous announcer in the 1930s.

On the technical side, Western Electric was using WEAF as a laboratory for the development of its commercial broadcasting equipment.  WEAF began with 500 watts, but by 1925 it was using the country’s first 5,000 watt transmitter, a Western Electric prototype.  WEAF was also a pioneer in the early development of radio networks, as it regularly linked up with its sister station WCAP in Washington as well as other stations around the Northeast to create the first “chain broadcasts”.  These early WEAF experiments, coordinated with sister company AT&T, led to the construction of an elaborate national network of broadcast-quality telephone lines which would become a major source of revenue for AT&T.

In 1919, AT&T was one of the original partners in the formation of RCA (the Radio Corporation of America), along with General Electric, Westinghouse and the United Fruit Company.  However, the marriage of these companies did not go smoothly, and RCA suffered a great deal of internal friction between its partner companies.  For one thing, Westinghouse and G.E. had been fierce competitors since the AC-vs-DC current wars of the 1880s.   Additionally, AT&T felt its patent holdings gave it a monopoly on transmitter technology and radio broadcasting – a point strongly contested by both GE and Westinghouse, who were also operating their own pioneering stations.   All of this turmoil finally came to a head in 1926 during a serious of contentious meetings between the partners that resulted in AT&T exiting the business of radio broadcasting, and the purchase of WEAF by RCA for $1 million.  The partners also agreed that AT&T would provide broadcast transmission lines to RCA for the creation of a proposed national radio network. 

RCA made good on that plan in September of 1926, in a powerful move that reinforced its dominion over radio broadcasting - it formed the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) as an RCA subsidiary, and created two new national radio networks – the NBC Red and Blue Networks.  WEAF became the key station for the Red network and WJZ headed the Blue Network.  The new networks quickly signed up many of the most important radio stations in major cities around the country as, and AT&T settled comfortably into its lucrative new role of supplying NBC with all of the network lines it needed to feed affiliate stations around the country.  In 1927, all studio operations of NBC, WEAF, and WJZ were consolidated in beautiful new art deco studios at 711 Fifth Avenue.  (They would move again in 1933 to even more opulent surroundings – Radio City in the new Rockefeller Center building.) 

Within a few short months, RCA and NBC had become the kings of the radio hill, and they now turned their attention to improving their two key New York outlets.

SUPER POWER:

RCA now wanted to lead the nation in the development of “super power” transmitter facilities for its two stations.  The first high power station in the country was General Electric’s WGY in Schenectady, New York, which began operating regularly at 50 kW in 1926 and even experimented with 100 kW in 1927.   However, the Federal Radio Commission would not allow any station having more than 5 kW to broadcast from inside its city limits for fear of overloading the public’s still-primitive radio sets.  If RCA was going to increase its stations’ power beyond 5 kW, it would have to transmit from outside of New York.  The company obtained two rural tracts of land for its stations and contracted with its partners Westinghouse and General Electric.  Westinghouse would build a 50,000 watt transmitter for WJZ, and GE. would build one for WEAF.

WJZ was the first station to throw the big switch, which began operating experimentally with a Westinghouse open-frame transmitter from Bound Brook, NJ, in late 1925.  However, the station immediately received 1,500 interference complaints from nearby neighbors, and as a result was not allowed to operate with more than 30 kW until 1933.

WEAF was the second station to increase power, broadcasting from a new transmitter site located in more rural surroundings on Maple Avenue in Bellmore, Long Island, 28 miles East of New York.  Construction began in the summer of 1927, and the new site formally debuted on October 10.  Let’s take a virtual tour of that facility.

A VIRTUAL TOUR:

The WEAF transmitter was housed in a two-story 30x70 ft. stucco building decorated in a colonial style to blend in with its rural surroundings.  Two 300 foot towers supported a single 3/8” wire antenna, instead of the multi-wire T-type configuration that was typical of that era.  A center downlead wire connected the antenna to the tuning house.   As an aircraft hazard marking, the towers were painted in alternating 12 foot bands of black and yellow and illuminated by floodlights. (This was before orange and white colors we see today were standardized.) 

Even though it was constructed by GE, all the top electronics minds of Westinghouse, GE and RCA participated in the planning of the new RT-150A transmitter, representing the apex of radio science in the day.  Dr. Alfred N. Goldsmith of RCA, Dr. E.F.W. Alexanderson of General Electric, and Frank Conrad of Westinghouse, all participated in its design. 

RT-150A TRANSMITTER DESCRIPTION:

The new transmitter incorporated several major design enhancements that were “firsts” for their era.  While most transmitters were basically high-powered free-running oscillators, the RTA-150’s carrier frequency was generated by a quartz crystal housed in a temperature-controlled oven.  It used a MOPA (Master Oscillator-Power Amplifier) configuration, where the crystal oscillator’s signal was amplified in a series of successive stages until it reached the final 50 kW Class A amplifier.

The transmitter was a “Rube Goldberg” design compared to the sleek transmitters of just a few years later.  It consisted of separate assemblies for each major operating function, which were installed at different locations in the building.   The major sections were:

• An audio monitoring and control panel
• The speech amplifier cabinet (modulator driver) – with two redundant amplifiers and a transfer switch.
• The crystal controlled oscillator cabinet, whose three crystals that could be switched to operate either of two oscillators.
• An Intermediate RF amplifier, with one 10 kW air-cooled tube.
• The RF final power amplifier, in an open frame assembly
• The modulator section, in an open frame assembly
• The high voltage rectifier, in an open frame assembly
• The output loading condenser – a large open-frame multiple-plate air capacitor
• The output coupling transformer with electrostatic shield between the windings
• The antenna tuning unit – located in a small tuning house under the main antenna downlead
• A heat exchanger for water cooling system, located outdoors
• Redundant pumps and a still for the water cooling system
• A master power control panel for all transmitter components
•  The operator’s desk
• Redundant DC motor generators for filaments, bias, and intermediate voltages
• A control panel for the motor generators
• Power supply transformers and reactors
• Banks of batteries and a battery charger for low-voltage circuits
• An oscillograph for monitoring the transmitter’s modulation (a mechanical predecessor to the oscilloscope).

At the time, the highest-power vacuum tube available was GE’s UV-207, rated for 10 kW input power, so to reach 50 kW it was necessary to combine many tubes in parallel.  In all, the transmitter contained 32 tubes– eight RF tubes plus two spares, six pairs of modulator tubes with two pairs of spare tubes, and six UV-214 Kenotron rectifier tubes.  The power amplifier, modulator and rectifier sections were each enclosed in separate open-frame chassis with exposed tubes.  The high voltage connection points were also exposed, and the only protection for the operators against contact with high voltage was a wooden railing that ran in front of the transmitter.

Each of the 32 tubes was housed in its own porcelain socket and cooled with distilled water, and there were rubber hoses coiled around each tube base to deliver the flowing water.  The cost of each tube was $10,000 (in 1927 dollars), and so a relay at each tube prevented accidental damage to the tube by not allowing its operation unless the water was flowing.  65 gallons of water per minute circulated through the tubes in a closed-circuit system, and it was pumped to an outdoor heat exchanger to extract the waste heat before returning it to the transmitter.

AC power for the power amplifier and modulator cabinets was supplied from the rectifier cabinet.  The 2,300 volt AC mains voltage was stepped up through large transformers and fed to the six Kenotron water cooled rectifier tubes, connected in a double-Y configuration to provide 15,000 DC volts at 12 Amperes. 

The operator’s control desk sat in the middle of the main transmitter room, and contained two radio receivers and a transmitter control switch panel.  One of the RCA receivers was tuned to the station’s 610 kHz frequency (later changed to 660 kHz), while the other one was tuned to the 600 meter maritime distress frequency.   Regulations required the station to leave the air immediately in the event of an SOS distress call.  The operator’s control panel selected the tubes that would operate in the transmitter, and allowed the operator to shut down a defective tube and switch in a replacement without taking the transmitter off the air. 

The basement of the building was the power house.  It housed three 25 kW filament voltage motor-generators, four 3 kW intermediate plate voltage motor-generators, two 0.55 kW bias voltage generators, plus assorted power transformers, rectifiers and switching equipment.   There was also a storage battery room and a storage vault for spare tubes.

All told, the entire WEAF transmitter facility represented an investment for NBC of $500,000 - or$6.8 million in today’s dollars.  It represented the pinnacle of radio science in 1927, and received great amounts of publicity when it opened.

 POST SCRIPT:

Despite NBC’s huge investment, the installation was not a great success.  The transmitter was at the leading edge of technology, and as a result was never very stable in its operation.  There were just too many devices in parallel, and it was difficult to keep them all functioning and in balance. The transmitter also was not capable of 100% modulation because of its use of the Heising modulation method.  The result was that only one other 50A was built to fulfill the RCA contract.  It went to WEAF’s sister NBC station WENR in Chicago.

Before two more years had passed, GE had developed the new 100 kW UV-862 power tube, which eliminated the need to parallel so many smaller tubes.   Using this new tube, GE developed a new transmitter called the 50B, later also manufactured by Westinghouse and RCA.  Unlike the RT-150A, this unit proved to be a successful product, and it entered the marketplace just as dozens of stations were being authorized for 50 kW operation.  The transmitter found its way into dozens of the country’s high powered stations over the next decade, and many of them were still operating into the 1950s.

At WEAF, the old RT-150A was replaced with a new 50B in 1931.  A new wing was added to the building to house new transmitter, and the old RT-150A was kept in place as standby rig. 

But there was another, more fundamental problem with the Bellmore site - its signals were never very strong in New York City – it was just too far away.  Initial reports in 1927 showed that WEAF in many parts of the city was weaker than from its old 5 kW rig on West Street.  Finally, in August 1941, WEAF moved again – this time to Port Washington, NY – ten miles closer to the city.  A new two-tower directional array was put into operation, and the station’s signal in New York City was finally strong again.  The 50B was moved from Bellmore to Port Washington, and so the old RT-150A probably sang its swan song by keeping WEAF on the air during the move.

In November, 1946, NBC changed the station’s call sign from WEAF to WNBC.  In 1988, NBC sold the station, and it became WFAN, which is operated today by CBS Radio.  Since the 1960s, it has broadcast from its present transmitter location on High Island in the Long Island Sound.

REFERENCES: 

• The Airwaves of New York, By Bill Jaker, Frank Sulek, Peter Kanze
•  Commercial Broadcasting Pioneer:  the WEAF Experiment, by William Peck Banning, 1946
• "Extracts from the log of station WBAY", by O.B. Hanson and C.H. Clark, 1935.
  
•  America’s New High Power Broadcasting Station” by A. Dinsdale, “Wireless World”, March 31, 1926.
• “WEAF superpower plant on L.I. goes on the air”- Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 8/28/1927
•  “New 50 kW transmitter of Station WEAF” – Radio News, November, 1927
•  Radio Broadcast Magazine, December, 1927, page 108.
•  “WGY: America's New 100kw Transmitter.    Satisfactory Results of a Thirty Days' Special Test” by A. Dinsdale, “Wireless World”, October 5, 1927.
• “’Sparks’ visits WEAF’s new home – Boys Life, December 1927
•  “New $300,000 transmitter used by WEAF” – Radio World – 4/25/31.
•  “Pioneer NBC Stations Modernized”- RCA Broadcast News, April 1932
•  Broadcasting Magazine, 3/15/39
•  Broadcasting Magazine, 3-15-39

NOTE:  This article appeared in the Spectrum Monitor Magazine, December, 2015.