NBC transmitter (Jan-Dec 1939)

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12 NBC TRANSMITTER ^nniticr^ant, (jfljinu# The NBC Transmitter salutes these members of the National Broadcasting Company who, this month, complete their tenth year with the Company. Frank O. Johnson The computation of the overtime salaries of the staff musicians of NBC is such a large and complicated task that it takes all the time of one of the employes in the Auditing Department in New York. Frank O. Johnson has had that job since he came to NBC ten years ago. He. himself, was a professional musician at one time. Several years ago when he was in his early twenties he played the trombone with various dance bands. He also played with a concert band which played for various clubs in New York. But he gave that up long ago, he said. Before coming to NBC, Mr. Johnson was in the real estate business, and before that he was a teller in the securities department of the Federal Reserve Bank. Previous to his position in the Federal Reserve Bank he had a government job with the City of New York. Mr. Johnson has three full-grown children — two boys and a girl — and they are all working. One son is with a paint company, another is in the textile business and the daughter is working for an insurance company. Having given up music, Mr. Johnson’s chief hobby now is stamp collecting, but he also likes photography and fishing. A. E. Fisher Ten years ago, Aubrey Eugene Fisher came to California from Honduras— “because nothing ever happened in Honduras” — and joined the NBC staff in San Francisco. In the decade, since that event, so many things have happened that the goodlooking young engineer lifted his head in surprise and said, “Gosh, has it been that long?” when the NBC Transmitter reporter came for his story. Mr. Fisher was born in Winesburg, Missouri, one of that generation of lads to whom electricity and electrical apparatus appealed from childhood. In his high school laboratory he experimented happily with the new thing, called wireless; and when he entered Central Missouri State Teachers College, it was not with the aim of becoming a teacher but of adding to what he already knew about electrical engineering. When he was graduated in 1920, he entered the Naval Radio School in Chicago, and from there he went as a radio operator to the Naval Radio Station at San Juan. When his en listment was up, he went to work for RCA Communications. Later he went to Honduras, where he worked for the Tropical Radio Telegraph Company. He liked the work but the monotony of the country and the climate — not even a revolution or a hurricane occurred while he was there — eventually brought him to California. Engineer Fisher is now with the transmitter staff at KGO in Oakland. He was transferred there from the studio staff in 1931. He is a bachelor. John J. Kulik No other NBC engineer in Radio City has probably had as much musical training as John J. Kulik, relief supervisor of the Master Control Board. His is the story of a singer who turned his hobby into a profession. His family gave him a musical education and during his early ’teens he sang with the famous Russian Cathedral Choir for many years. While in high school he became interested in radio and built his own amateur station, W2ARB, which he still operates today. After graduating from the public schools in his home town. Clifton. New Jersey, he went to work for a bank. While working at the bank he con tinued his musical studies and also attended the Marconi Institute where he studied radio engineering. He remained with the bank seven years, working his way up to the position of note teller. During that period he sang as a member of the Russian Imperial Quartet and it was during an audition at NBC that he decided to become a radio engineer. He filed an application for a job and soon afterwards NBC employed him as apprentice studio engineer. Mr. Kulik turned out to be an ideal engineer because of his musical background. Soon he was handling the controls for many of NBC’s leading musical programs. But he did not give up his music entirely. Soon after he came to NBC he joined the Balladeers Quartet, and when he wasn’t riding gain he was on the air with the quartet, which rapidly became famous and was heard on many popular shows for many years. When Toscanini went on the air with the NBC Symphony Orchestra in his first series of NBC concerts, Engineer Kulik was chosen to handle the knobs in the control room. He was among those who worked to give Toscanini’s concerts the hest reproduction possible in radio. His name was not mentioned but it was he who was riding gain when the music critics praised Toscanini’s music and the way it was reproduced by NBC. Many wrote that it sounded as well on the loudspeaker as it did in the studio. At the end of the first series of Toscanini’s concerts last year, Mr. Kulik was promoted from the studio engineers staff to the Master Control Board. He is married and has a threeyear-old son named Alexander John, and he still lives in Clifton, where he has his own home. Theodore Kruse Ten years ago Theodore Kruse left high school to take a position in the Mail Room of NBC in New York. At the lime he wasn’t sure as to what he f Continued on next page)