dinosaur droppings

Who am I and why do I qualify as a cable dinosaur? Age and experience, of course. I was born in NYC June 24, 1916, moved to rural Conn. in 1922, and grew up at the same time as radio and TV, far from the city, and always in the fringe reception areas.

Crystal radios were the only means of radio reception in the early 20's, and almost every household possessed long wire antennas strung from house to adjacent trees to receive the major market stations from across the nation. I remember sitting in a neighbor's parlor until the dawn, listening in turn to New York City, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Denver as the distant signals grew stronger with the advent of night in each city.

Battery-powered radios appeared in the mid-20's, followed quickly by Ac-powered home models in bewildering profusion. My father had a garage and I was a grease jockey until the end of my college career. The early automobiles had expensive radios with dry cell B-batteries for the high voltage, and every one envied the affluent drivers. Repairing the radios fell to the educated son, and I had a great time with the car radios, and the neighbor's home models.

By 1940, I had a Master's in Physics from Cornell and no high level job. Finally, in 1941, the GE personnel dept in Bridgeport, from the depths of their generous heart, took me on as a troubleshooter in their radio factory ($25 weekly). Several months later,in the mail, came an equally generous letter from the US offering a commission in the Army for one year, to engage in research. Arriving at Ft. Monmouth, before Pearl Harbor, I learned that the research is being a radar officer in the British Army in England!

Four years later, out of the army, strong on radar and weak on Physics, I found a job at Panoramic Radio Corp, NYC, where I met Ben Tongue, their very young, and highly competent chief engineer. Still wanting to dabble in Physics, I moved to City College as an instructor in engineering Physics. After a couple of years, boring myself to despair, preaching the same old material to inattentive students, I joined the TeleKing Corp, NYC, as an engineer to build receivers for an exciting new field, that many said could never displace radio, TELEVISION!

At TeleKing, my first experience with Master Antenna systems. The half dozen engineers in the Lab were constantly threatening to murder each other. Seems that the one antenna on the roof fed a twinlead running from bench to bench and only one engineer at a time could get a usable signal. I scanned my textbooks and came up with matched two set and four set resistive splitters which calmed the murderers but delivered a rather weak signal. The available tubes could not singly amplify the entire VHF band but, employed as a cathode follower, gave a few db extra. The factory manager soon grabbed me by the ears and demanded similar devices in his department. So, in 1948, MATV, of sorts.

Back home, my parents, 120 miles from NYC, suggested that their learned son install TV as a matter of utmost urgency. So I built a double Yagi, installed on a tall mast above the garage, and presto, especially at night, one could see cowboys galloping in and out of the snow, and hear the firing of guns. I explained the lack of good reception due to distance, and offered to remove the gear. The immediate reply was for me to stop talking, so they could enjoy the show. Some months later, on a visit home, my mother said she had just visited her friend on the hill and their reception was much clearer - why couldn't her son be a better engineer? I replied, "Mom, if you will move to a house on the hill, your son will also have a higher skill level"!

In 1950, Ben Tongue and I left our good jobs and founded our own company in a storefront in Yonkers, NY, without a single product to sell. We would temporarily install high quality Television systems for rich clients in the Westchester area until we could finish the design of some hotshot TV test gear for the engineering profession. However, there was some excitement the first week, police cars came screaming up to our little store, guns showing, to catch unawares the new bunch of Yonkers racetrack bookmakers like the last crowd that were in our location. They sure were disappointed to verify we were engineers!

In those days, the noise figure of the typical TV sets was so poor, all fringe installations used tuneable RF boosters. If you think the VCR is a consumer hazard, just watch your average citizen tune in the TV signal! To make our job easier and quicker, we jointly invented the first broadband amplifier, 2-13, four tubes, and a better noise figure than the TV's. I packaged the amplifier in a leatherette case, complete with an automatic power switch and a bypass switch and handed samples to some salesmen friends in the parts distributors field. Orders shot in, the fuses blew in our little store, and a bank gained the courage to finance a larger factory. Immediately, we started hearing stories that our unit was being sold for rudimentary master antenna systems in place of the high priced individual channel amplifier combinations. We came out in 1951 with a high gain, higher power broadband amplifier, the CA-1-M, the standard every else had to beat! Of course our products and business grew along with the cable industry. Why then didn't Blonder Tongue match the growth of the industry giants? Money magic, my friends, money. In those days we could not afford to sell to the cable industry, since the typical cable customer took one year to pay his bills, and the parts distributor paid within the month!

Our CA-1-M was installed in some strange ways. The service department reported that a couple were returned with bullet holes. Why? Seems that installations were being made out west using miles of fence wire nailed to trees as twin lead, 110 voltage fed on the wire to our amplifiers, also nailed to the tree with a rain shelter of sheet metal included. 'Target practice' was what we heard caused the bullet holes!

In the sixties I was the president of a Cable MSO with most of the systems in northern California. Times may be better today but in those days it never seemed possible to hire electronics technicians to climb poles and service the systems. I guess long distance trouble shooting was no worse than serving as a radar officer.

One of the rural systems we bought carried low band VHF only, at the bargain price of $3.50 monthly. The system was rebuilt to both high and low bands and the monthly charge raised to $5.50. At the request of the local authorities, with the aid of band separators, the increased price was made a voluntary decision on the part of the customer. Guess what?, the majority stayed with the lower price. Took a whole year to get the council to remove the option.

In another heavily rural system, we observed that one section did not enjoy the same subscription rate as the rest of the system. An audit by outsiders uncovered the reason - the installer was trading sex for hookups! Headquarters was not offered a share of the income, end of job. Perhaps if he had the skills of your average politician, he would have found a suitable compromise and kept his position.!