NBC Transmitter (Jan-Dec 1938)

12 NBC TRANSMITTER C. H. Campbell The NBC Transmitter salutes these members of the National Broadcasting Company who, this month, complete their tenth year of continuous service with the Company. C. Harold Campbell Radio has been the motivating influence in the life ofC. Harold Campbell, field engineer, since his boyhood. At the age of 15, he was the youngest person to hold an operator’s license in the United States. After aU tending high school and Trinity College at Hartford, Connecticut, he immediately followed up his learning and became associated with a few other radio “hams” in the operation of WCWS, a portable transmitting unit, with which they barnstormed the New England states. The idea was to anchor in a town and persuade the merchants to sponsor a program for a month. And that was 13 years ago! After the New England junket, he joined W ICC at Bridgeport as an engineer. NBC in New York claimed his services two years later and, after having completed a year in a studio control booth, he moved into Field Engineering and has been there ever since. As field engineer, Mr. Campbell has covered many of the big special event broadcasts during the past few years. He has handled most of the boat races and U. S. naval reviews broadcast by NBC. He was the first radio man to arrive on the scene of the Morro Castle disaster off the coast of New Jersey. Engineer Campbell happened to be in that part of the state, and when the NBC special events crew arrived to broadcast the news he had much of the technical foundation for the transmission ready for the hookup. Mr. Campbell is married and lives in Mount Vernon. His principal hobby is his own “ham” station W2IP. “Secondarily,” says he, “I play a rotten game of golf, but I like it.” Helen Kellie You might say that Helen Kellie was psychic or that the Goddess of Fate looked upon her with favor when in June of 1928. the year before the stock market crash, she resigned a position with a Chicago stock brokerage firm to cast her lot with in a few others who were then organizing an infant industry — radio. She joined (he newly-opened branch of the National Broadcasting Company the Windy City as secretary to Niles Tram mell, vice president of the Central Division of NBC. Since then “NBC Chicago” has grown to be one of the largest broadcasting centers in the country and Miss Kellie, along with all the others, can look with justifiable pride upon the great organization shehelped to build. Today, after ten years, she continues as Mr. Trammell’s secretary — industrious and poised. A Helen Kellie Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Miss Kellie went to Chicago in 1926. She worked for a LaSalle Street brokerage firm until she gave up stocks and bonds for radio broadcasting. Her hobbies are many, but her favorite is golf. And if she handles her clubs with as calm and capable a hand as she does her vocation. Old Man Par must take an awful beating when she is on the links. William K. Storrs Among the many veterans of radio on the engineering roster of NBC who received their early training as marine radio operators is William K. Storrs of the transmitting staff at WJZ, Bound Brook, New Jersey. Following his graduation from the Marconi Wireless Telegraphy School, Mr. Storrs sailed the seas for ten years before he turned landlubber in 1927 as operator of Station WBNY which is no longer on the air. From WBNY he went to RCA as a member of communications staff at Rocky Point, Long Island; thence to the NBC Blue Network’s key station for New York in J line 1928. Engineer Storrs was born in the Bronx at the turn of the century. There he attended the local schools before studying wireless telegraphy. Wm. K. Storrs Mr. Storrs is married, lives in Plainfield, New Jersey, likes to fish, and in the summer often goes swimming in the waters of his old haunt — the Atlantic Ocean. Marion McGovern When Marion McGovern started as a telephone operator with NBC ten years ago at the old 711 Fifth Avenue studios, she was one of three operators on duty at a three-position switchboard. In four years she saw the Company grow to the point where it required a thirteen-position switchboard; and if things had gone on under the old manual system then employed there would have to be a thirty-position board to handle the tremendous telephone demand of the present NBC headquarters in Radio City. But before NBC moved its studios to Radio City the old telephone system was changed to the dial system which operates automatically. However, NBC’s PBX still requires six operators during office hours. Miss McGovern who is now assistant to the chief operator, Margaret T. Maloney, declares that her job becomes increasingly exciting as it keeps abreast of the progress of radio in the world today. Her most memorable experiences at the switchboard have been those concerning special event broadcasts of nation-wide importance, such as the election and reelection of President Roosevelt; the abdication Speech of King Edward VIII, the present Duke of Windsor, and the various transatlantic flights. They bring back to Miss McGovern memories of long hours spent at a switchboard that screamed for attention. DdLK III LllC U1U days when an S.O.S.came in from a distressed ship all stations had to cease broadcast activities; and Miss McGovern recalls /' many an instance f when the Coast Guard would call up, give the operator the simple instruction, “Get off the air,” and hang up. Odd calls are innumerable. One day Miss McGovern got a call asking her to have someone paged at the corner of 50th Street and Sixth Avenue. A native New Yorker. Miss McGovern (Continued on Page 13) Marion McGovern