NAEB Engineering Newsletter (Mar 1957)

ATTENTION GAIN GRINDERS! Electronic fuel injection for automobiles will mean the end of mechanical linkages for accelerator control (no carburetor). Instead, a potentiometer will accomplish the function of present day accelera¬ tors. Wonder if they’ll ever rate automobiles in dbh (db above one horsepower). * * * * IRE Transactions for February, 1957 contains a paper by Duane Weise, chief engineer of WTTW, presented at the Sixth Annual Fall Symposium of the IRE Professional Group on Broadcast Transmission Systems. It describes the WTTW studio facilities in some detail and contains other practical papers of in¬ terest to TV engineers. Keith Ketcham, chief engineer of WOI-TV, has prepared a resume of a paper by E. D. Goodale of NBC on “Phase., Amplitude and Aperture Correction in TV systems.” We have reproduced this resume and sent it to chief engineers of ETV stations and pro¬ duction centers. Additional copies are available upon request to NAEB. * * * * NOW WE'RE IN PRINT —by Mrs. Judith Stevens, Editor The radical face-lifting given the cosy old NAEB Newsletter stems from the many more copies now being distributed. Since the AERT-NAEB merger is officially consummated this month, the Newsletter goes to 1500 persons and/or institutions. Printing is less expensive than mimeographing when working with this quanity, and here we are. Many differences are at once apparent. By set¬ ting our news in type, we use about one-fourth as much space as we did before, so the new Newsletter is quite thin. It’ll be much easier to keep copies, as loose leaf notebooks can accommodate far more issues now. Now that we’re in print, photographs can be easily incorporated in our news. So when you send us news releases, send pictures, too. Make sure the photos are clear, not fuzzy, and preferably of persons doing something, not just staring at the camera. We feel the Newsletters “new look” is becoming. Hope you agree. A nice-looking reprint of the KETC St. Louis article in Broadcast News (January Newsletter, page 8) is available from RCA, Commercial Elec¬ tronic Products, Camden 2, New Jersey. The title of this slick publication is “TV and the Crisis in Edu¬ cation,” and it contains some excellent photos of KETC facilities and personnel. , * * * * A gift of broadcast equipment valued at more than $43,000 was made by Storer-owned WJBK-TV, Detroit, to the local educational WTVS. Equipment includes film chains, control panel, power supplies, monitors, amplifiers and relays. * * * * We hope more of you will follow Howard Andreasen’s example and drop us a note telling of your plans. The Independent School District of Des Moines was granted a CP for Channel 11 on Dec¬ ember 12, 1956. They plan to operate at their present KDPS studio until their new TV studio is finished in late summer of 1958. Present plans call for regular programming to begin in late September, 1957, with 10 kw ERP. Power will be increased to 50 kw when the new trans¬ mitter site is completed. BOX SCORE You probably notice the figures this month have changed considerably, some up and some down. For months we have been plagued with the fact that everyone prints or quotes different figures on the number of TV, AM and FM stations. No one knew who was right, so we wrote FCC. The figures this month are the ones the FCC sent us. From now in we’re using these, which, incidentally, are the same as the ones the NARTB uses. Total TV stations — 511 (includes 22 non-commercial) Total AM stations — 2987 (includes 37 non-commercial) Total FM stations — 654 (includes 126 non-commercial) Since we needed copy to fill out this page, we lifted two items above from the January Newsletter. We haven’t changed editors, Judy does the general Newsletter and I paste up her work every three months. We too, feel that printing is a big improve¬ ment. The engineering mailing list now has over 400 names so we save too on postage. Now that we can use pictures and photographic reproductions of schematics or line drawings, we echo her words “send them along.” CSB Page 5