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Outside WMEX studios in the 1950's

I think the tower atop 21 Brookline avenue was originally built around 1939 or 1940 as a high-frequency (150 Megahertz??) FM relay station eventually called WEOD, which was picked-up off-air by the Yankee Network's pioneering FM stations atop Mount Amnesbumskit in Paxton and Mount Washington in New Hampshire and rebroadcast on their commercial FM frequencies.

After those stations were shut down, and WNAC-FM-98.5 and WNAC-7 were launched, I believe it was used as a studio-transmitter link to relay programs of the two stations to the Medford transmitting tower they shared.

I don't think the old WNAC-FM ever transmitted from atop 21 Brookline Avenue
 
heard a really fascinating chat on 2-meters Waltham, a guy who *started* his job at National Radio (or so) in 1939 in Boston. he was talking about early TV experiments from Brighton to Cambridge, what was going on around Fenway, W1AW the guy before it was the ARRL. gotta get on ther and elicit more stories
 
carmen said:
heard a really fascinating chat on 2-meters Waltham, a guy who *started* his job at National Radio (or so) in 1939 in Boston. he was talking about early TV experiments from Brighton to Cambridge, what was going on around Fenway, W1AW the guy before it was the ARRL. gotta get on ther and elicit more stories
Click to expand...

I wish I could remember the name of the TV pioneer whose lab was in the same building (70 Brookline Ave) as the old WMEX studios. His name might have been Baird (maybe "Doc" Baird), but that's a guess, and his office/lab was not merely in the same building as WMEX, you used the same entrance to get to it and it was on the second floor right next to WMEX's studios/offices. I never went inside the door next to WMEX, but I'm told that he was doing low-resolution slow-scan monochrome TV with a mechanical scanner (rotating disk with square holes in a spiral pattern punched into it) and a Selenium photocell as a detector. I don't think anything was broadcast--just piped by wire to primitive receivers in the same lab. But I could be wrong about that. What he was doing didn't require a lot of bandwidth and the signals could probably have fit on the AM band.
 
DanStrassberg said:
...but I'm told that he was doing low-resolution slow-scan monochrome TV with a mechanical scanner (rotating disk with square holes in a spiral pattern punched into it) and a Selenium photocell as a detector. I don't think anything was broadcast--just piped by wire to primitive receivers in the same lab. But I could be wrong about that. What he was doing didn't require a lot of bandwidth and the signals could probably have fit on the AM band.
Click to expand...

"Nipkow disk".

It *was* transmitted over the air at one point, and it indeed fit in the AM band -- some AM stations experimented with it overnight. Our HR person (who used to work for WGY Schenectady) has in her office a reproduction of a reception report someone in West Virginia sent in the late 1920s after they picked up WGY's after-hours rotating disk TV experiments.
 
There is a great website for early broadcast history, especially here in New England:
www.ggninfo.com It also contains some great links to other broadcast history sites.
I found the stuff about the Yankee Network and the old DuMont TV Network particularly
interesting...
 
To answer Dan Strassberg, the name was Hollis Baird.

As far as I know, he wasn't related to British inventor John Logie Baird, who pioneered television technology in Europe.
 
I think 70 Brookline Avenue is the oldest continuously operating broadcast facility in Boston.

W1XAV (experimental TV) from 1930, WMEX from 1936 and for many years thereafter and now NESN is up there.

I wonder if there are any recognizable, original architectural elements still left inside.
 
NESN outgrew the space and moved to Watertown a few years ago when the studios became HD. The space was converted into expanded concessions in LF.


HHH said:
I think 70 Brookline Avenue is the oldest continuously operating broadcast facility in Boston.

W1XAV (experimental TV) from 1930, WMEX from 1936 and for many years thereafter and now NESN is up there.

I wonder if there are any recognizable, original architectural elements still left inside.
Click to expand...
 
Larry Justice, a WMEX "Good Guy" from early 1965 to late 1968, once said to a newspaper interviewer that the sound of the crowd cheering at Fenway Park could be detected on the air when the mic and studio windows were open.

Guess it was a big change from WIBG, Philadelphia, where he was prior to WMEX. Their studios were not in the city of Philadelphia itself, but at their very suburban transmitter site in Lafayette Park, PA.
 
Early Byrd said:
Larry Justice, a WMEX "Good Guy" from early 1965 to late 1968, once said to a newspaper interviewer that the sound of the crowd cheering at Fenway Park could be detected on the air when the mic and studio windows were open.
Click to expand...

Oh yeah. WMEX was soooooo "Boston". I remember the contest winners all seemed to be from Mattapan and Dorchester and had the thickest Boston accents that I ever heard!
 
HHH said:
WMEX was soooooo "Boston". I remember the contest winners all seemed to be from Mattapan and Dorchester and had the thickest Boston accents that I ever heard!
Click to expand...

the "Dorchester Irish" accent on WUNR sounds a lot thicker than ads during Southie Saint Patrick's Day coverage. although that isnt 'made for TV' - on 17 meters you'll hear both sides speaking it in the afternoons..
 
HHH said:
Oh yeah. WMEX was soooooo "Boston". I remember the contest winners all seemed to be from Mattapan and Dorchester and had the thickest Boston accents that I ever heard!
Click to expand...

I won $15.10 and a "Good Guys" sweatshirt in summer '67. I was one of the few winners from the west suburbs (Newton) where the signal was weak.
 
WLYNgm said:
There is a great website for early broadcast history, especially here in New England:
www.ggninfo.com It also contains some great links to other broadcast history sites.
I found the stuff about the Yankee Network and the old DuMont TV Network particularly
interesting...
Click to expand...


I'm surprised this site still exists, as Norm Gagnon passed away last March.

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/unionleader/obituary.aspx?n=norman-j-gagnon&pid=156590954&fhid=4831

Enjoy it while you can, as it can't last forever.
 
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