Stephen (Steve) Dixon

Please allow me to add the Mt. Washington Water Tower, a landmark at the peak of Beechmont Ave. and smack in the middle of "the Village."

With a nice little branch library and a post office on its "campus,' the water tower sits about a half-mile from the entrance to Stanbery Park.

Philip Spiess

Bless you, Stephen, for thinking of this and including the lovely photograph!  I was focusing on water towers that graced our hills looking like castles; this one, which I'd forgotten, could either look like a castle or an above-ground missile silo, but we'll go with the castle!  (And it's one of Cincinnati's great Art Moderne architectural monuments, of which, no doubt, the greatest is Cincinnati Union Terminal!)

Paul Simons

Water towers are fine. We all need 'em, but they can be a bit scary too, when you think about finding yourself in one of them, in the dark, cold, wet, alone, in a bad dream.

But now radio towers...WLW had or maybe still has a diamond shaped Blaw-Knox tower and at one time ran it at 500,000 watts, 10 times today's limit. Here's the story:

WLW And The Blaw-Knox Antenna

WLW Blaw-Knox tower

Ohio Historical Marker:

"In 1922, during the infancy of broadcast radio, the call letters WLW were assigned to the station begun by Cincinnatian Powel Crosley, Jr. The station moved its transmitting operations to Mason in 1928, and by April 17, 1934, WLW had permission to operate experimentally with 500,000 watts. Becoming the first and only commercial radio station to broadcast at this 'superpower', WLW was formally opened at 500,000 watts by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on May 2, 1934. Using its 831-foot Blaw-Knox antenna to broadcast at ten times the power of any station, it earned the title 'The Nation's Station'. Locals reported hearing broadcasts on barbed wire fences, milking machines, rainspouts, water faucets, and radiators. The custom built transmitter, a joint venture between RCA, GE, and Westinghouse, remained in operation until March 1939 when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ordered the station to return to broadcasting at 50,000 watts."

Some History

In July 1921, Powel Crosley began broadcasting from station 8CR using a 20 watt transmitter at his home in College Hill, Ohio. The WLW call letters were originally licensed to the Crosley Radio Corporation, and in March 1922, Crosley was granted a license to broadcast using WLW at a power of 50 watts. He was assigned two frequencies: 833 KC (kilocycles) for entertainment programs, and 619 KC for weather and farm reports.

In late summer of 1922, WLW moved to Crosley's new manufacturing facility and was authorized to increase power to 500 watts, using newly installed Western Electric transmitters on a frequency of 970 KC. Its antenna was a 140 foot "T"-type cage antenna strung between two towers.

Power was increased again in 1924 to 1000 watts, with a frequency shift to 700 KC, then 710 KC. In 1925, the station was moved to Harrison, Ohio and authorized 5000 watts. In 1927, the Federal Radio Commission relocated WLW back to 700 KC.

In 1928, WLW was granted a construction permit by the commission to raise power to 25,000 watts regularly and 50,000 watts experimentally. By the fall of that year, now relocated in Mason, Ohio, WLW became the first station to broadcast at 50,000 watts on a sustained basis. Four more stations across the US joined in this elite group by the end of the year.

In early 1933, WLW began construction of a new 500,000 watt superpower facility at Mason, Ohio after approval of the Federal Radio Commission. RCA supplied the 500KW transmitter. A new 831 foot, half wave, end-fed, Blaw-Knox double diamond-shaped vertical antenna weighing 136 tons was erected for the small sum (in today's dollars) of $46,000. The wider, middle of the tower structure is 35 ft. square. A concrete lined pond was built in front of the transmitter building for transmitter cooling. Water was pumped through specially designed water cooled tubes, and was then sprayed into the air by fountains, returning back into the pond.

The Blaw-Knox company was a manufacturer of steel structures and construction equipment based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Today, the company is best known for its unique radio towers, most of which were constructed during the 1930s in the United States. Although Blaw-Knox built many kinds of towers, the term Blaw-Knox tower usually refers to the company's unusual, so-called "diamond cantilever" design, which is held upright by guy wires attached only at the vertical center of the mast, where its cross-section is widest. A 1942 advertisement claims that 70% of all radio towers in the US were built by Blaw-Knox.

On January 1, 1934 the commission authorized WLW to begin using the 500,000 watts on an experimental basis using the call W8XO. An operational license was granted on April 17, 1934 to operate at 500,000 watts at regular hours under the WLW call letters. Under great fanfare, on Wednesday, May 2, 1934, President Roosevelt pressed a telegraph key in the White House which turned on "RCA 1", the WLW transmitter.

WLW was required to cut back to 50,000 watts during the nighttime hours in December of 1934 due to interference caused to CFRB at Toronto, Ontario and other stations. The solution was to erect three 50 ft. anti-skywave phaser towers across the road to cancel out high-angle radiation in that direction. This was the first use of skywave directional control for broadcasting. It worked, and WLW resumed full power.

Superpower WLW was heard virtually around the world.

In 1938, the US Senate adopted the "Wheeler" resolution which resulted in capping high power AM stations at 50 kilowatts due to numerous interference complaints and the desire to establish a path for more locally-oriented stations. Consequently in 1939, WLW's 500 kilowatt broadcast authorization was not renewed, bringing an end to the era of superpower AM radio. The W8XO experimental license for 500 kilowatts remained in effect until December 29, 1942 due to an impending war feeling and the possible need for national broadcasting in an emergency. The 500 kW transmitting equipment was maintained into the 1960s by site engineers, but it was never operated on-air after 1943. Reports have it that WLW was used to broadcast coded communications during the war.

Crosley sold WLW (as well as the Crosley Corporation) to the Aviation Corporation in 1945 at the end of the war.

The WLW Blaw-Knox tower height was decreased from its original 831 feet to 747 feet. When a flagpole was removed from the top of the WLW tower, it was further reduced to 736 feet. The other tower in the background of one of the photos is a backup tower. The lookout tower shown in one photo was manned by armed guards that watched the facility during WWII.

Today

WLW is currently owned by Clear Channel, Inc. and broadcasts an all talk format. The transmitter site remains on Tylerville Rd. in Mason, Ohio.

At least five Blaw-Knox diamond cantilever towers are still standing in the United States:

   WSM-650, Nashville, TN
   WLW-700, Cincinnati, OH
   WBT-1110, Charlotte, NC
   WFEA-1370, Manchester, NH
   WBNS-1460, Columbus, OH

Other Crosley Contributions

Among other notable contributions, Powel Crosley and his brother Lewis were responsible for many "firsts" in consumer products. He was the builder of the Crosley automobiles, the second car radio (Motorola was first), the first push button radio. He developed early radio soap operas, the first non-electric refrigerator, the first refrigerator with shelves in the door, the first to light a major league baseball field. He was the owner of the Cincinnati Reds major league baseball team for many years. Crosley Field, in Cincinnati, Ohio, was renamed for him. Crosley was also chief engineer and later executive vice president of Emerson Radio.

Bruce Fette

Thanks Paul,

I made it a hobby of getting off the cross town bus to visit various TV and radio transmitters on the way home from school. Of course WLW was farther afield.  It is so impressive that the voltage delivered to the antenna base would be about 6100 volts RMS to deliver that much power. And the parts to be able to build such a transmitter are so unique in order to be able to work without failure at such voltage, that it staggers the imagination to design such a transmitter. Makes you wonder if it glowed at night when there is fog or rain.

Even the wires to carry the signal to the antenna must also be astonishingly unique.

Our family certainly had Crosley radios. Mostly my kindergarden memory was that WSAI was the strongest (almost the only) signal on my crystal set radio. But my two tube radio could get 3 signals - WSAI, WLW, WCKY.

I think part of the Crosley mansion area on Kipling in College Hill subsequently became a medical facility.

And Jim Jaeger (who founded Cincinnati Microwave) lived on Kipling too.

Philip Spiess

Brilliant, Paul -- much material I did not know; thank you!  If I may add a few addenda (few, because you cover the waterfront):

The Crosley Radio Corporation (established 1924), at Colerain Avenue and Sassafras Street in Camp Washington, although a classic industrial building of its period (1924; 1926; 1929), was, the last time I saw it (2003), rapidly declining into a ruin.  It was one of the world's largest manufacturers of radios, electric refrigerators, washing machines, gas and electric stoves -- to say nothing of the first compact car, introduced in the 1940s -- and Powel Crosley, Jr., was a pioneer in the development of the radio industry.  As Paul notes, he was also the owner of the Cincinnati Redlegs Baseball team.  [Note:  At least some of Crosley Field, now no more in Cincinnati, has been re-installed in Kentucky somewhere down the Dixie Highway.]

Cincinnati's first experimental radio broadcasting station was WMH, installed in 1919 at Peebles Corner by the Precision Equipment Co.; by early 1920 the first Cincinnati-made crystal radio sets were in use.  [I had a crystal radio, which I made from a kit in the late 1950s; on it I first heard the songs "Green Door, What's That Secret You're Keepin'?" and "The Ballad of Charlie and the MTA," made famous by the Kingston Trio ("He may ride forever 'neath the streets of Boston; he's the man who never returned!") -- which is a modern political rewrite of the 19th-century Ohio Valley railroad ballad, "The Wreck of the Old '97."]  Crosley had started out as a manufacturer of phonographs and automobile accessories; he also made one-piece porcelain sockets for vacuum tubes.  Desiring to purchase a radio receiving set for his son, he was so outraged at learning the price, $130 for the cheapest, that he assembled one at home for $35.  This gave him his manufacturing idea, and soon he had developed a complete crystal detector apparatus that sold for $15.  In 1921 Crosley and his engineer, Dorman Israel, designed a unit without a crystal; it included a coil with an oatmeal box as a core; it worked, and soon Crosley was manufacturing "Harko, Sr." radio sets.  By 1922 Crosley had become the world's leading manufacturer of small crystal sets; by 1924 he incorporated as the Crosley Radio Corporation.  In its prime, the Crosley Corporation factory had a conveyor belt two miles long which moved parts along the production line, producing over 2,000 radio units daily.

Because Paul does such a fine job of giving the broadcasting history of Crosley Radio, I'll only add that in 1936 the Crosley Corporation opened its high-fidelity transmitter on Warner Street atop Clifton Heights (I believe it's still there).  In 1934 WLW formed the Mutual Broadcasting System, which became a national network.  Crosley also owned and operated WSAI, which had been established in 1923 by the U. S. Playing Card Company, as well as W8XAL, begun in 1926, which broadcast to a worldwide audience on shortwave.  (The first so-called Soap Opera on radio was the show "Ma Perkins"; as it was sponsored by Procter & Gamble, it became known as a "soap opera," and all other similar radio melodramas came to be called such as well.)

In the 1940s, the Crosley Corporation purchased Elks' Lodge No. 5 (B.P.O.E.) on the northeast corner of Ninth and Elm Streets, turning it into its main broadcasting studios, especially after Crosley got into television (Ruth Lyons, Bob Braun, et al.); this locus came to be called Crosley Square.  In the 1960s, after Mr. Crosley's death, the Crosley Corporation was bought by the Avco Corporation, which had been founded in 1929 as the Aviation Corporation of America, now (i.e., 1978) Avco Manufacturing.  In about 1975, Avco sold off its broadcasting interests, continuing to manufacture electronics, farm equipment, motor coaches, car shell bodies (in Nashville), laser beams, and missile re-entry systems [!].

The Mason, Ohio, site of WLW's impressive "diamond" tower also became the location of a massive system of "Voice of America" transmitters.  And also located here is the Gray "History of Wireless" Museum (near the corner of Church and Frank Streets in Mason).  It displays a number of early Crosley-manufactured radio equipment items (a "Harko Sr." one-tube receiver; a "Harko Jr." crystal receiver; and a Crosley "Pup" receiver), as well as De Forest, Radiola, Westinghouse, Western Electric, and Atwater Kent equipment.  Most exciting, to my thinking, is the famous WLW Farm "Corn Cob" Microphone, designed for WLW's working farm shows, such as "Everybody's Farm"; this kitsch piece from the days of so-called "rural programming" was cast in aluminum from a large ear of corn, and holds an RCA "salt-shaker"-style microphone, and -- yessirree -- looks like a real ear of corn on an electric cord [maybe I'll post a picture of it if I get around to it].

One further note:  Various "retro-style" (i.e., 1940s-1950s) radios, record players, and combination radio-CD players, etc. (maybe even juke boxes?), are currently being marketed under the "Crosley" label.  I have yet to research what this is all about.

Jonathan Marks

I may be recalling alternative facts, but it seems to me that WLW broadcasted on a north-south axis, which led to a lot of the South following the Reds as their home team.  

One of the station's most distinctive sponsors was Kash Amburgy's Bargain Barn in South Lebanon, Ohio.  At a gas station in Mississippi in the early '60s the attendant asked me what part of Ohio I was from.  I told him.  He thought about it.  Then a glimmer of knowledge flitted across his face:  "Is that anywhere near South Lebanon?"

Paul Simons

Paul Simons

To Bruce's comment - looking things up - a few photos - first the type of tower base insulator needed:

The cooling pond for the water-cooled transmitting tubes, tower in background:

Mercury-vapor rectifier tubes:

Powell Crosley Jr. turning it on:

Bruce Fette

The picture of Powell Crosly with the huge knife switch raises a big question in my mind.  0.5Million watts is quite a lot of electricity.  About equivalent to  1,000 homes at that time. So I suppose all that electricity was generated from coal at the power plant(s) on the Ohio river near the I75 bridge.  

So, Phil, WHAT do we know about the source of WATTS? There must be a story about energy in Cincinnati too. 

And of course the story is similar for Tesla. He needed about that much to make lightning bolts in his lab. Whats the story about his WATTS?

Philip Spiess

Jonathan:  Your surmise about southern transmission from WLW sounds accurate to me; "The Renfro Valley Barn Dance" was broadcast from Kentucky by WLW way before "The Grand Old Opry" was broadcast from Tennessee (and then there was WLW's "Midwestern Hayride" on WLW-TV with Bonnie Lou, the yodeler).  And Kash Amburgy brings to mind Robert Hall ("When the values go up, up, up, and the prices go down, down, down, Robert Hall is in season to show you the reason -- low overhead, low overhead!").

Bruce:  Ah, I wish my father was alive to answer your question; his entire professional career was spent with the Cincinnati Gas & Electric Company, where he was head of the Right-of-Way Department.  But I'll have a guess: I think you're right on the station by the bridge; the Walter Beckjord Station upstream was not built until the mid-1950s.  As to Tesla, I'll have to research this one, but I have a good number of books on Tesla in my library (I've been an Edison freak since an early age); I'll get back to you on this. 

Paul:  Your mention of a manure-spreader brings to mind a story about Henry Ford:  When I was fresh out of graduate school, looking for a museum job, I applied for a job as Historian of Technology at, and was interviewed by, the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan (I was not hired).  But I heard this story:  After Henry Ford had established the Museum and Village (in 1929) as a tribute to his friend and mentor, Thomas Edison, he was fond of giving tours himself to the public through his museum.  A significant chunk of the museum is a collection of agricultural implements and machines, and one day a lady stopped Mr. Ford on his tour and asked, "Mr. Ford, what is that large-looking machine over there?"  "That, madame," responded Ford, "is a manure-spreader."  "Oh," she said, "and what exactly does it do?"  "Well, to be quite honest, madame," said Ford, "it shakes the shit out of things!"  "Oh," said the lady, "we have one of those; it's called a Model T!" -- and he never took the public on another tour!

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

I wish my late husband were still here, he'd be able to join in this discussion on Crosley and AVCO.  In 1973, the Evendale Operation of AVCO Electronics Division was purchased by a group of key AVCO executives.  The new company became known as Cincinnati Electronics Corporation and manufactured a broad range of sophisticated electronic equipment for communications and space, infrared and radar and electronic warfare, among others. Ed worked for both AVCO and CE for most of his career, after moving to Cincinnati from Louisville.  Ed was involved with designing and the manufacture of a combat net radio (CNR) known as SINCGARS ( Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System)  and secure satellite radio equipment for Air Force One.

In the mid-90s, the company changed  the name to L3 CE, sold the Evendale Building and moved to Mason, OH. 

Paul Simons

Dale Gieringer

  WLW's transmitter in Mason is so powerful that hapless birds used to get their feet burned off after landing on the transmitter cables .   
  The station's range is boosted by being a clear channel, meaning that no other stations are allowed to transmit at the same frequency of 700 khz.    I remember hearing a WLW broadcast - attenuated by stratospheric static - while driving through mid-southern Florida on a family vacation.  Other than that, they were a boring whitebread station.   WSAI was my favorite rock n roll station when we were in school .  Remember DJ Ron Britten and his "chico buddy-buddies?"   Wasn't he fired for consorting with underage groupies?   And then there was WNOP, the offbeat jazz station with droll DJ's and a studio on a barge in the Ohio River at Newport,

Bruce Fette

Ann,

You may be pleased to know that SINCGARS is still the prefered radio for the Army, after at least 40 years.My Dad also worked at AVCO, and may have known your husband, at least briefly.

Paul,

Yes, I figured the knife switch had to operate a relay elsewhere to kick in the larger supply, or else was just for show.  Yes, filiament supply at 5 volts, and 6 volts and 12 volts was pretty common. The tubes you show however, were quite unique, clearly rectifying 3 phases, and probably a full wave rectifier bank, but even so, probably not the 6 to 10,000 volt classes of tubes which would require a huge separation distance between filament and plate. And you are so right about the difference in efficiency between tubes and solid state. Just try to imaging making a modern computer chip (~1B transistors) with tubes (generally a maximum of 3 cathodes and 3 anodes per glass - so 300,000 tubes or so, as big as a house and 1M watts of Air conditioning too.)

And yes today the transmitters are built with transistors. WTOP here in DC has something like 32 Transistorized 1KW transmitter power amps, and a massive signal combiner to reach their output power. And a very careful energy stabilizer to make sure each PA is running equal to the others. 

Dale,

WNOP - We Need Obsolete Privies. I enjoyed it throughout my time at UC.  It was truly fun to listen to and great jazz. Standing Room Only (SRO) was a great way to know whats happening. I think it is no longer a jazz station.

Phil,

I guess the folks in Fairfax county Virginia intend that same function. I think they must go out and install new pot holes every day.  We will all be entertained by what you next illuminate! More power to you!

Lee Max

First a word of warning. Only techno-nerds (like me) should read beyond this point. All others are likely to quickly fall asleep.

SINCGARS was the first solid-state, wideband, man pack, military radio. Previous man pack radios used tube transmitters, and required tuning, every time the operator wanted to change the frequency. Solid-state radios had existed for other applications, but this was the first solid-state man pack radio produced that could meet colocation requirements (i.e. multiple radios transmitting nearby, at the same time, on different frequencies, without jamming the receiver of the other radios) for infantry field use.

The initial RF power transistors used in VHF transmitters were bipolar transistors. The output power, the wideband amplification, and the wideband circuit design for the power amplifier in the SINCARS transmitters was reasonably straight forward. However, when bipolar transistors were used in this wideband application, they could produce plenty of transmitted power, and they amplified the intended signal very well, but they also generated broadband noise (not to be confused with noise figure, or harmonic content). This broadband noise jammed all the receivers nearby, and rendered the nearby radios “deaf”. Armies worldwide wanted small, light man pack radios for their soldiers in the field, but the existing RF power transistors could not meet the broadband noise requirements of the application. In the mid-1970s, RF power MOSFET technology became commercially feasible in the form of VMOS FETs. In many applications, this transistor structure had advantages over existing bipolar, but the crucial benefit for the SINCGARS application was its extremely low broadband noise generation and transmission. It was finally possible to develop and deliver a solid-state, VHF, man pack radio for the U.S. army.

Interestingly, if you look at the members of that AVCO radio team from the 1970s, many went on to establish their own high tech RF and microwave companies.

Ann, by the way, you forgot to mention that Ed was by far, the best golfer who ever worked at AVCO.

Paul Simons

Thanks Dale, Bruce, Lee for the elucidating and interesting information. I remember making a crystal radio myself and then a few years later a two-transistor radio with Raytheon CK-722 and CK-768 transistors and now a few decades later - well, we all know what's going on now. Now there are a number of full-length movies on a chip the size of a fingernail, that I can watch on a screen with 16,000,000 colors on a phone in my pocket. The far-distant science-fiction future is now.

Philip Spiess

Bruce:  WATT do you think I know?  In answer to your inquiry (4-28) about what electrical watts were being produced in Cincinnati by what electrical power stations and when, to transmit radio signals, I will offer the following (as a historian, I leave the descriptions of how these kilowatts, now megawatts, actually were being utilized to more scientific experts such as you, Paul Simons, Dale Gieringer, the erudite Lee Max, and others):

First of all, the Cincinnati Gas, Light and Coke Company (1837), which became the Cincinnati Gas and Electric Company in 1901, underwent many changes over the course of the 19th Century, a history which I may encapsulate when I write about my beloved Clifton gas lights in a future entry (right now I'm focusing on Cincinnati's electrical history).  In 1877 Civil War general Andrew Hickenlooper (a forebear of our classmate of the same name), was named president of the Cincinnati Gas, Light and Coke Company, a position he would hold for twenty-six years, while guiding the company through a consolidation of the company's gas and electric services.  Electrical service was first introduced into Cincinnati in the early 1880s, shortly after Edison had perfected the incandescent bulb (1879), and by 1883 numerous small electrical generating companies were sprouting up throughout the city.

In 1887 the Cincinnati Gas, Light and Coke Company entered the electrical service business.  By 1889, the company began construction of its own electric generating station adjacent to the company's initial West End Gas Works station, and by 1890 the company had become the dominant source of Cincinnati's electrical power.  The consolidation in 1901 of the Cincinnati Gas, Light and Coke Company with its chief competitor in the electrical field, the Cincinnati Edison Electrical Company (1892), thereby becoming the Cincinnati Gas & Electric Company, transferred all of the company's electrical production to the Edison Company's Plum Street Station, built in 1899.

In 1906 the company began selling electrical appliances and fixtures in its office lobbies.  By 1917, the Cincinnati Gas & Electric had expanded its Plum Street Station to produce 34,800 kilowatts of power, more than eight times its original generating capacity, in order to keep up with the demand during the years of America's involvement in World War I.  Therefore, in 1918, the Cincinnati Gas & Electric Company constructed the 50,000 kilowatt West End Station (I believe this is the one by the bridge, alluded to in previous posts).

Postwar growth during the 1920s led the Cincinnati Gas & Electric Company to double the West End Station's generating capacity and to construct, in 1924 (completed 1925), the 45,000 kilowatt Miami Fort Station (originally called the Columbia Power Station) at the confluence of the Great Miami River and the Ohio. This 12-acre site, a prehistoric native American central meeting place and village for several regional tribes (circa 900 A.D.), including the Shawnees and the Miamis, and called "Fort Hill," included some burial mounds (from which I extracted a possibly human tooth and bone around 1960 on a Boy Scout campout, there being no laws then to prevent me from doing so), was also the site of 9th President William Henry Harrison's home (the so-called "Log Cabin," but later surrounded by a more Federal-style edifice), which later burned down.  His son, John Scott Harrison (have I mentioned the story of his grave-robbing episode on this site before?), father of future 23rd President Benjamin Harrison, later built a house on this site, which was still there when the company bought the land for the power station.  This station produced double the kilowatt hours from the same amount of coal used at the West End Station.  In 1928 the company began construction of its 20-story corporate headquarters (completed in 1930) on the southwest corner of Fourth and Main Streets, where the company had installed the city's first gas lights in W. H. Harrison's drugstore in 1843.  For many years this was the third-highest skyscraper in Cincinnati, after Carew Tower and the Union Central (later Central Trust) building.  In the building's lobby there appeared, every Christmas season, a large model train exhibit with moving trains and numerous tracks; it was one of the highlights of my youth.  (Do they still do this?)

In the late 1940s, the Cincinnati Gas & Electric Company began construction on the Walter C. Beckjord Power Station (completed 1952) near New Richmond, Ohio, on the Ohio River, twenty-two miles east of Cincinnati.  Both coal- and oil-fired, its six units were commissioned between 1952 and 1969; it was decommissioned in 2014, and is now slated for demolition.  Its output was 1,433 megawatts.

The second (so-called) Miami Fort Generating Power Station was put on line in 1949, increasing its output in 1960, 1971, 1975, and 1978; it was decommissioned in 2010 and 2015; it had a capacity of 1,398 megawatts.

The Cincinnati Gas & Electric Co.'s William H. Zimmer Power Station, located near Moscow, Ohio, turned out to be a mess from the start.  Originally designed to be a nuclear power facility, poor construction over many years eventually converted it to be a coal-fired facility.  Developed in 1969, work began in 1972, and it was due to be completed in 1975-1976, but the second unit was never constructed.  As a result of questionable construction, a federal investigation was instituted in 1978, with a cover-up of bad practices by the company being alleged.  Thus work was halted on the nuclear reactor in 1982; even the FBI investigated what was going on!  Thus in 1984 the decision was made to convert the station to a coal-fired facility; this work was carried out from 1987 through 1991.  The facility now produces 1,351 megawatts of electricity.

David Buchholz

Another Short Trip With Lots o' Photos...

It's Antelope Canyon, a slot canyon on Navajo land, a few miles from Lake Powell, a place that one web site identified as one of the thirty most beautiful places in the world.  Still, not that many people know about it.

"Antelope Canyon was formed by erosion of Navajo Sandstone, primarily due to flash flooding.  Rainwater, especially during monsoon season, runs into the extensive basin above the slot canyon sections, picking up speed and sdand as it rushes into the narrow passageways.  Over time the passageways eroded away, making the corridors deeper and smoothing hard edges in such a way as to form characteristic "flowing" shapes in the rock.  Flooding still occurs.  A flood occurred on October 30, 2006 that lasted 36 hours, and caused the Tribal Park Authorities to close the Lower Antelope Canyon for five months."  Wikipedia

Here are a handful of the hundreds of images I was able to make amidst the crowds at Upper Antelope Canyon last Saturday.  The canyon and the experience were at odds with each other,  The former was a dream; the latter, a nightmare.  Besides the number of people flooding the canyon, there are additional photographic challenges that beset amateurs unaccustomed to atypical conditions, the most important of which is the wide exposure range, often 10 EV or more, that makes it impossible to render any one given image properly.  Only HDR images, taken by bracketing as many as three to five exposures, allow the photographer to sandwich images to capture the darkest darks and the lightest lights.  And doing this among the hundreds of sightseers tripping over the tripod legs, required a full plate of patience.  BTW, the photo tours are booked through November.  Obviously, someone else knows about it.

And that's enough of that.  If you're so inclined you can see about ten more on my blog and website.  Before we visited Antelope Canyon we spent a few days in Sedona.  Perhaps some of you might remember that there was to be a huge glacial shift there in 1987, and thousands of people gathered together to witness the top of Bell Rock taking off and a flying saucer either landing there or exiting fron inside the mountain.

I copied the whole story from an article in the Sedona Historical Society publication in 2012.  Don't waste your time clicking on this link.  You have better things to do.

http://www.davidkbuchholz.com/new-blog/2018/5/8/sedonaantelope-canyon

Bruce Fette

David,

These pics from Antelope Canyon clearly demonstrate your spectacular photographic capabilities. Another great shot in the area is Spider Rock over at Canyon Tsegi. I hope you caught that one too. Also popular is the mittens near ShipRock.

I also see you were here in DC for Cherry Blossoms, and you should have let us know you were going to be around, so we could say hi!

Phillip,

It is hugely interesting that WLW could consume far more power than a power generating station of the era could generate. In fact - nearly 10 generating stations. And the technology of the time was staggeringly difficult to master compared with our current tech. I was entirely unaware of all but the generating station downtown. I am also eager to see what deeper info you are able to uncover about Tesla - a man so far ahead of the technology of the time. He may actually have invented things we still dont know about or understand. Lots of mystery surrounds his notebooks. We do know that he understood resonance better than most of that era. 

And of course, if you are willing to dig into history on another high power note, TV became available about the time we were all toddlers. What is known about the growth of TV broadcasting during those early years.

I remember 3 stations, and occasionally one from Dayton. But then there was WCET - educational TV. Most of these ran 50KW - so not 500KW but still hard to make transmitters at VHF with that much power and that tall antenna.Source material distribution must have been quite difficult for networks. Did they mail their videotapes? Deliver them by truck? Surely they didnt have telephonic or fiber optic means as we have today.And I think I remember that at least 1 antenna had a calamity? Have anything in the Cincy history books on TV?  Or maybe our favorite programs? 

Laura Reid (Pease)

Gorgeous photos David!  What talent you have!  And thanks for sharing it.

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

David - Spectacular pictures!!

Bruce - When I hear the name Tesla, I think of the giant Tesla coil purported to have been part of the rumored “Philadelphia Experiment”  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Experiment

Bruce Fette

Ann, Yes, He also built a huge coil in Colorado Springs. Most amazing!

Alas it is very hard to know anything about secret experiments, if ever any such thing existed or happened, worked or didnt. But we do know that Tesla was so far ahead of his time due to his deep understanding of resonance.

Larry Klein

Bruce - I am somewhat an expert on "resonance" myself, but my expertise relates to my golf balls bouncing off the rocks in the creeks.  I actually had one bounce into the cup for an eagle several years ago.  But most just disappear downstream somewhere.

Laura Reid (Pease)

Congratulations Jonathan Marks on your retirement!!!!  Job well done!

Henry Cohen

Walnut Hills for fourth year in a row just designated top school in the state and 90 something in the country. Of course we never had any doubt.