The AM Forum

A real classic! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-JzxX75oYc

Joe - GMS

It's great that a lot of these old AT&T/ Bell Labs internal archived films are now seeing the light of day for the general public. There were a lot of cool things that they put to film back in the "good old days".

Please, no more utube videos. (even the name is insidious) You have killed several hours of my life, I'll never get it back. The Tube, then the Apollo 11 Saturn 5 Launch Cam E-8, then the Apollo computer. That lady Hamilton.... Now, its 5:20, my workbench hasn't been touched, and the wife has work for me. You should be ashamed.

I gotta go.

klc

Thanks Joe,

I thought the video was very interesting.

Fred

Always a pleasure Fred! 

Joe

A number of fascinating things in this video.

First is the opening shots of the transmitter. I think it may be the WOR transmitter in Carteret NJ. But it doesn't look quite right from the outside. But it is a similar transmitter, Western Electric, with the black glass front panels and the giant tubes.

I have the straight key from the main console (shown) and the back-up console from the WOR site.

One of the very cool things in the tube mfr section is the way that the filament/cathode wires were coated.
Another interesting aspect was the way they automated the grid winding.
The automated glass forming is neat too...

                         _-_-

That is the quietest transmitter I have ever seen.
And I am in the same boat as  klc.....more interesting stuff to see on UTUBE.

Yup 1hr and 30 minutes just flew by and now it's cold in the shack cuz I did not fire up the STUFF


Fred

It was water cooled. Ought to be quiet!  ;)

It was not a real transmitter. Do you really think that the transmitter operation would continue when they open the door?

Great video!  Lowell Thomas was the "pronouncer" of the day.

However, this video, especially the part showing the actual construction of a vacuum tube, was made well before anyone even considered something now called OSHA!

You mean they had interlocks way back then?? Jus keeding
Fred

I like those kind of videos. Too bad youtube makes it hard to download the highest quality versions. The hi-res ones have no audio but are played along with a separate audio file. Only the medium size one usually has embedded audio in the file. Still better than getting no local file. I prefer archive.org downloading, easy but but it does not always have all the same great videos. I'll have to happily waste a few hours watching too.

Not sure they show it operating with the door open or not.

And, yes that WAS a REAL transmitter!!

But the fact of the matter is that you could walk around inside that transmitter.
The tank coils were on par with 55 gallon or perhaps 35gallon size drums, wound with tubing... I was there.

Shame they did not pan the camera across the face of the transmitter, it was several of those glass panels wide...

I've been looking for a picture of the transmitter for many years now, and have yet to find anything other than a low res half-tone from some publication. :(

When my ham radio mentor, Bob Barkey W2UO (sk) took me and another friend there, we were maybe 14-15yrs old, and although I asked him repeatedly and he confirmed they were going to demolish the place, I could not believe it. As a result, I was reluctant to take stuff. But that I could have a time machine!! What I did not take were things like the monitor amps, and any of the low level tubes. You know things like 212E, 300B, possibly even a 555 compression driver or two in the monitor speakers, etc...
...I wish I had asked him to go back a second time.

That place made a real impression upon me, and it has never ever left my mind... it was "deco" in all its glory.

                        _-_-

Joe - Thanks for posting the link.  Great video. I had not seen Lowell Thomas on film before.

The level of automation that was in use at that time, shown in the tube video and others that show American assembly lines of that era, is fascinating.  In the Apollo video you can link to from that page, the system MIT came up with to determine the spacecraft position in space is cool. Very intricate work on the Raytheon assembly line.