Bruce Fette

OK, We have all been challenged to address what we are doiing and why.

But of course, first we must address early radio and early TV.  So first early radio. I was probably 4 when I received my first radio. It was a crystal set  (so no tubes, no transistors, no loudspeakers, just earphones. There is a glob of Galena metal, a tiny pin on a spring to poke the galena, a coil of wire and a slider that selects a single point connection onto the coil of wire.  So by sliding the slider and playing with the needle contact onto the Galena, I could hear WLW or WSAI. Maybe 2 years later, my Dad gave me a two tube battery powered radio, with tubes, coils, resistors, capacitors, battieries and a loudspeaker. Many parts were mounted on a plywood plate and then mounted into a cardboard box. I was taught to name all the parts. The resistors were colorful. The 90 volt battery could give a jolt (great fun). The tubes would light up. And the coils could be manipulated as well as the capacitors to tune the radio. I remember sitting under the card table, with a blanket over the table to make it cozy, and listening to WSAI. Of course WSAI was popular with Rock and Roll over elementary and high school, followed by WNOP in College, and the 8 track in the last 2 years of college.  The real problem with battery operated radios was that the batteries got tired.  Most importantly, about the batteries, was that I could not charge them  up by hooking them up to the transformer of the train set (AC vs DC etc).  

Later at WHHS, David Ransohoff, Clark Ross and I were in the radio club, and I was building radio receivers and transmitters, often using information from magazines.  By the end of high school, I would take the bus downtown to places where I could buy a transistor with all my lunch money to experiment with.   

As for TV,  I remember reading Zworkin's work, and Clark Ross and I working to build a TV camera for our ham radio hobby.

So these days my hobbies include hobbiest rocketry (which hobby started in 1957 with Sputnik), but today I am working on writing a magazine article to teach elementary and high school kids about how computers are designed and how they work.  It will mostly be a followup to Walter Isaacson's book, based on my earliest employment. Hopefully it will encourage many kids to hands on participate in science fair contests as I did many many years ago.

So your turn- What are you doing today?

Philip Spiess

I remember Steve Kanter built a computer as his class project in 7th grade advanced math with Miss Parker.  I was duly impressed; the only thing I knew about computers (not recognizing a slide rule as one) was that it was a big machine called a "UNIVAC" (sounded like a giant vacuum cleaner that sucked up knowledge) which filled a room.

Dale:  Ruth Lyons may have started on radio with Crosley (WLW), but she practically ran programming at WLW, TV included, for years.  She was the original "Mother" of the "talk show."  [Wikipedia says Phil Donahue was the first TV talk show host to include audience participation, but that's nonsense:  it was Ruth Lyons, with nationally-known guests (like Bob Hope) and syndicated for years in a number of states.  (Eat your heart out, Oprah!)]

Philip Spiess

To answer Paul Simons' inquiry about whether "Everybody's Farm" show on WLW was of interest to the Corn Belt and Porkopolis boys and girls of Cincinnati:

It sure was!  In Mason, Ohio, is the Gray "History of Wireless" Museum, located near the corner of Church and Frank Streets (I assume it's still there).  Included in its collection of early radio materials is the famous WLW Farm "Corn Cob" Microphone, designed for WLW's working farm show, "Everybody's Farm."  This kitsch piece from the days of "rural programming" (as it was called) was cast in aluminum from a large ear of corn; it holds an RCA "salt-shaker"-style microphone, and -- yessirree -- looks like a real ear of corn on an electric cord!  (How this made an impact on radio -- much like that radio ventriloquist, Edgar Bergen -- is hard to see.)

The main transmitting station for the Mutual Broadcasting Network, formed by WLW out of a chain of radio stations, was established at Mason, Ohio [note:  originally "Narnia, Ohio," named by William Mason in 1815!], in 1928, where the 831-foot vertical radiator antenna tower (handsomely depicted by Paul Simons, above) sent out the station's signal at 700 kilocycles.  (Crosley also owned and operated WSAI, founded in 1923 by the U. S. Playing Card Co. in Norwood, Ohio, and W8XAL, 1926, which broadcast to worldwide audiences on shortwave.)

Becky Payne (Shockley)

Wow! I get dizzy reading all this radio history, but it's fascinating. Thanks for sharing. Just for the record, my Dad, violinist Karl Payne Sr., joined the WLW radio orchestra about 1928 - soon after graduating from the Colege of Music. He didn't like the music, but it paid a lot more than symphony orchestra salaries in those days, so he did it till they disbanded the orchestra around 1950. He then practiced hard for a year before joining the CSO about 1952. I remember him talking about the Ruth Lyons show. (He wasn't iimpressed.)

Paul Simons

Glad this opens doors all around. To tell the truth my memory of Cincinnati Music Hall is from 1966, Bob Dylan and The Band, great music that sounded great in that room.

Best video I've found yet about the actual inner workings of WLW. These folks weren't fooling around. They built stuff nobody had ever seen, and it still works decades later. I went an unintentionally deleted a prior entry but anyway this YouTube link is better.
 

Thomas Lounds Jr.

Hello, Class of 1964!  It has been a while since I been on which is a long storythat need not be repeated.  First of all, I too want to thank Philip for his many many contributions here. Of.course I want to thank him for dedicating his most recent contribution about Cincinnati's African-American master caterer to Mr. Johnson and this writer.  I read it to my wife who was occupied at the time and she too was impressed and asked " Who is this Philip? " You can just about imagine my trying to explain your credentials as best I know them.  I finally ended with something like "he is the finest historian who has ever dedicated something to me". I did so because , while I know you have shared this info, albeit piecemeal, with us, often as part of explaining some aspect of our Cincinnati history, you have never had a chance to "blow your own horn" about your experience and accomplishments.  With all that you have done for us, you have earned that honor.  Don't worry.  It's not boasting.  It's helping me to answer my wife's question.  
The recent attempts to get Artemis off the ground to begin more exploration of the moon has prompted me to explore another subject with the Class.  As many of you have heard in the lead-up to the launches, the launches in the late '60's were accomplished in the ages of cigarettes and slide rules. Slide rules,  Imagine that!  When I left WHHS to answer the Civil Rights movement and integrated the executive ranks of Procter& Gamble, I was stunned to see that everyone was using slide rules to do routine calculations.  I had to teach myself how to use them among other things I had to learn.  Did any of you have special memories  of the pre-computer experience as you pursued your careers? In my 10 years there, I experienced the evolution from slide rules to large hand-held calculators to pocket calculators to computers.  

The fact that some events in the WHHS upcoming celebration will be held at Music Hall ( which I will not be able ta attend ) nevertheless brought back some very special memories.  My parents worked their for many years as, for lack of a better term, "attendants" at the special entertainment events that were held there.   In those days of segregated events, when the white community held an event, often a dance, it was called the Music Hall Ballroom.  When the black community held an event, it was called The Graystone.  Oftentimes, they would bring me along to shine shoes and boy did I learn a lot about people!  Especially when they get drunk! 

on the other hand,  I met a number of stars.  I believe I met the famous bandleader , Harry James.  I definitely met Ray Charles , well before he became famous, and actually witnessed a fight between two of his band members which my father helped break up.  Got Billie Holliday's autograph.  Also sang in the Children's chorus in  a production with the Cincinnati  Symphony Orchestra there.  Quite a place of memories.    

Philip Spiess

Mr. Lounds:  I'll try to answer your inquiry (and your wife's) as simply as possible.  When I am at home, I am immoderately immodest; in public, I try to be moderately modest.  In the Walnut Hills Class of 1964, I was voted (along with Laura Reid Pease) "Wittiest" (I am an inveterate punster, as everyone in the class -- and sometimes this site -- will attest).  I grew up in Clifton, still lit by gaslights; to that I attribute my being "the last of the Victorians" (I was also close to my great-grandmother, who was born in Cincinnati in 1872).  As a result, I became interested in Cincinnati history at an early age, and I was quite taken, in 8th-grade Social Studies, with Mr. Meredith's course on Ohio and Cincinnati history.  By my teenage years, I was exploring all over the city, following Caroline Williams' drawings (from the Cincinnati Enquirer) to locate historic spots.  Thus, by my freshman year in college, I had a good working knowledge of the city, and I wrote a short history of my suburb of Clifton, Sites and Scenes in Clifton:  An Historical Tour, which was sold and distributed by Clifton Town Meeting.

Although I was an undergraduate English major (Hanover College), I went to work for the Cincinnati Historical Society (then in Eden Park) at the end of my freshman year, and continued to work summers and Christmas vacations for the Society for the next eight years (often "immodestly" correcting information in its files).  I had been hired originally by the Society to re-catalog its collection of museum objects (then in storage), which had last been cataloged in 1939 (it was now 1965).  This, and my interest in museums and history in general, led me to do my first graduate work at the University of Delaware, which had graduate programs in Museum Studies funded by the du Pont family.  I did my Master's in History work at the du Pont family's Eleutherian Mills-Hagley Foundation and Hagley Museum, specializing in Historical Agency Administration, as well as in the History of Technology, and I took some courses at the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, a decorative arts collection.  Because I still planned to teach, I later got Master's degrees at Indiana University in English and at Drew University in 19th-Century Studies.  (I style myself a Cultural Historian, being versed in the history of literature, art, music, architecture, the theater, landscape architecture, city planning, philosophy, religion, science, technology, fashion and design, food and drink, criticism, archaeology -- and collecting, and therefore museums.)

My first full-time work in museums took me to the New York State Historical Association in Cooperstown, New York (I lived behind the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and this is where I met my wife -- but I didn't get to first base with her then).  In 1973, my former boss, the director of the Cincinnati Historical Society, invited me to join him on the staff of the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington, D. C., where he had become Director of Education.  I served there as head of Research for six years, honing my interests in architecture and technology, and moving the national meeting of the Society for Industrial Archeology (I was president of the Society's Washington, D. C., chapter) from Louisville to Cincinnati in 1978 because Cincinnati had "better" industrial archeology sites.  Then I was invited to join the faculty of Mary Washington College (now University) in Fredericksburg, Virginia, to found the College's undergraduate degree program in Historic Preservation and Museum Studies, which I did.  I left there in 1982 to go to the Smithsonian Institution's Office of Museum Programs (its professional training arm), where I had been hired to head up a six-year, $3 million national project, funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, to increase the educational role of museums in their communities throughout the United States (we worked ultimately with over 200 museums); my two bosses there were both Walnut Hills graduates (Class of 1939 and 1940, respectively -- not why I was hired!).  (My wife Katherine, also a museum professional, a graduate of the Cooperstown Graduate Program in Museum Studies, was hired by the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History to computerize its collections -- for the first time -- and she eventually became Assistant Director for Collections Management at that museum.)  Afterwards, as an at-home father to my son (born on my birthday), I did numerous museum consultancies, mostly at medical museums (this work included curating one of Washington's six pairs of false teeth).

I taught graduate Museum Studies at The George Washington University for thirty years and 5th- and 6th-grade History and Geography (after I retired from museum work) at a private school in Alexandria, Virginia, for eight years.  (I am also an internationally known authority on the history of museums and a nationally known authority on the history of bathrooms, on which I gave a two-projector slide lecture in Cincinnati in 1976 and subsequently elsewhere.)  But I have never lost my interest in Cincinnati history (both my undergraduate thesis and my Master's thesis were on Cincinnati subjects).  My classmates' and my reminiscences on the WHHS "Forum" have spurred me to write the historical vignettes I have written for this site.  And I am currently helping long-distance in the restoration of Cincinnati Music Hall -- Mr. Lounds, see my article on "Some Lights on African-American Music in Cincinnati" (WHHS "Forum" Post #4751, 5-12-2020) for confirmation of your comments on the segregated nature of the Music Hall ballroom.

(I ask my classmates' indulgence in this somewhat lengthy autobiographical response to Mr. Lounds' inquiry, and I thank Mr. Lounds for his very kind comments on my historical writing.)

Paul Simons

Just a quick note - good to hear from Mr. Lounds who in my opinion instructed us on both science and on the art of what Miles called the cool. Very valuable these days when there's plenty going on that can get one pretty hot. Thanks also to both you and Phil for touching on WLW programs that I remember and Music Hall where I had the luck to hear Bob Dylan with The Band, a great sound in a great sounding hall. This was in 1966 when he first went electric and folk purists were rudely interrupting his shows with shouted insults, similar to what a SC Representative did at the 2009 State of the Union speech. However this did not happen at Cincinnati Music Hall. That audience was respectful throughout the whole evening, acoustic and electric. 

Dale Gieringer

Mr Lounds -  In regards to your question about slide rules, somewhere I may still have the slide rule my grandpa gave me in HS.  It was a deluxe model - made of ivory, with my name engraved on it and a leather case, with at least a dozen different scales  that could compute logarithms, exponentials and trig functions.  I used it frequently through my college days, grad school and beyond, until acquiring a personal computer in 1984. I didn't use it in my professional life, though, which began precociously around 11th grade when I was hired (along with classmate Mike Lichstein) to program computers for UC Med School.  They had figured out cleverly enough that high school students were every bit as competent and cheaper than other workers for the job.  We didn't need sliderulers for programming, though.     My next job was a summer gig for the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory at Harvard, where I also programmed computers.  However, I still used my sliderule for my astro and physics assignments and other personal calculations, PCs and electronic calculators not being available at the time.  When I started at SAO in 1965, their offices were equipped with mechanical desktop calculators that could do sums, quotients and even square roots to a dozen digits or more.  That same year, I saw my first electronic calculator, similar to the other desktop models but with an electronic digital display, and also quite expensive for the time ($300 or so).  Thereafter, personal caclulators became increasingly affordable.  Somewhere in my mementos I may still have my slide rule, but it has long been supplanted by a more compact, efficient and powerful Sharp electronic calculator that has run on the same battery for over ten years now.

Jeff Daum

Did someone mention slide rules?    I still have a few around (along with an abacus).  The Dietzgen from Germany, and smaller one from England, were both my Fathers. The whiteish one is a Pickett and made out of aluminum with use guides printed on its backside.   The rounds are Concise, both from Japan, and fortunately still have the associated Users Guide.  Every once in awhile I take one or more of them and try to refresh my memory on how to use them.

Philip Spiess

Jeff and Dale:  I, too, have three slide rules still around; one was my father's, and one was my grandfather's, and one, I suppose, was mine.  I never really learned to use one beyond 2x2=4 (which sometimes came out as 6.2 on the slide rule the way I did it, but I still have the instruction boooklets to go with them).  I also have an abacus; I bought it in Chinatown in San Francisco on a business trip in the 1980s and told my wife when I got home:  "Honey, I got you a personal computer on my trip!"  (Curiously, she was not amused.)

Gail Weintraub (Stern)

Slide rules!

I still have mine from Gordy Duvall's AP Chemistry class. However, after I did the calculations, I never knew where to place the decimal point. True story.

I also have my late husband's slide rule. He was a college physics major. Both of ours are in a drawer never to be used by me again. They are relics. Fond memories.

Paul Simons

Nobody ever taught me how to use a slide rule (pronounced "sly drool") but I did learn some C++, VB, HTML and JavaScript along the way. I'm curious of those who did write software - what programming languages were you using? Please don't feel compelled to answer- just curious.

Jeff Daum

Fortran IV, C+, and a few other coding languages, though as I recall, most of my doctorate research was done with Fortran IV and punch cards-- a rather unforgiving process.  Most of my post doc research was done with SPSS.

Steven Levinson

Gail, what did you get on the AP Chemistry exam?  I scored a 2 and considered myself lucky.

Richard Winter (Winter)

I'm pretty sure I still have a slide rule around somewhere.   I did use it at WHHS and in engineering college, but never professionally.  My early professional life was all about software development, not the industrial engineering that I trained for in college. 

To answer Paul's question, I programmed for years in IBM 360 assembler and later in a variety of other languages. Though its been some years since my professional work entailed hands on coding, I do still write in SQL, the standard structured database query language.  

Something else that Mr. Lounds' comments brought to mind: mechanical drawing.   As a freshman in engineering college, I was required to take two semesters of mechnanical drawing, another skill that has largely gone the way of the slide rule.   I really was not at the front of the line when they passed out the drawing talent; my diagrams and hand lettering never looked the way they were supposed to, no matter how hard I tried.  I passed these mechanical drawing courses only because the instructors seemed to understand by 1965 that mechanical drawing was not going to be as important for an engineer as it once was.

Technical education was ever thus.   My dad, a mechanical engineer, once told me that he had to spend a great deal of time and energy in college learning how to design steam engines, but he never was near one in his professional career.  Though steam enginess still exist, he was involved primarily with electric motors and internal combustion engines, which were much more widely used during his life.  He did use a slide rule in his professional life....when he died, it was inherited by one of my sons, who is -- of course - a poet and creative writing teacher.

Bonnie Altman (Templeton)

I still have 2 sliderules; 1 large one that I used in many classes and 1small one that I carried in my purse in case I needed to calculate something when I was out. Steve you made my day because I scored a 3 on the chemistry AP and I thought it was the lowest in the class. 

Philip Spiess

Richard:  I have to disagree with you on the demise of mechanical drawing.  Although I never took a scholastic course in it, I can say I took a course (or more) in it from my father.  He started out (before I was born) as a draftsman at the Cincinnati Gas & Electric Company, later becoming head of its Right-of-Way Division (buying properties for power lines, substations, etc.).  He taught me quite a lot about drafting (i.e., mechanical drawing), and it has served me well over a whole career; I'm famed in certain circles for my printing (but I also did posters, maps, etc., at Walnut Hills and elsewhere).  I inherited both my father's and my maternal grandfather's drafting tool kits, which I cherish, even though my son has absconded with at least one of them!  (He also is now using, in his work, my father's drafting table.)

And so to my disagreement with you.  My son, at one point in his very varied, never quite completed, undergraduate career, was taking theater courses for a degree in that subject.  One or more of his theatrical design courses required him to draft designs of theatrical sets and/or costumes.  The drafting set he "borrowed" from me allowed him to do some beautiful set designs -- done by mechanical drawing (although I believe much of this is done nowadays by computer).  Also, now that he's a professional in sound engineering, he sometimes has to design and draw the electronic requirements for the sound systems via mechanical drawings (his grandfather, Philip Spiess, an electrical engineer, would be proud!).  [Relative to mechanical drawing, see also my discussion on Rick Montague's Memory page.]

As to your son, a poet and creative writing teacher, that's more in my line -- and I think highly of him for it!  (And who'd have thought a mention of slide rules would have gotten us off on another great class discussion?)

Steven Levinson

Bonnie, chemistry wasn't my long suit (an understatement).  I thought the periodic table (a la 1963) was cool, but that's where I Peter Principled out.  Congrats on your 3; at least you got college credit for that, I assume.

David Buchholz

Dale Gieringer

Am I the only male on this website who was taught everything I ever wanted to know about mechanical drawing in eighth grade by Mr. Catterall (Sp?  not to be confused with Ms Catalin, the abominable eighth grade English teacher who graded us with fill-the-blanks reading tests)?   Drafting was offered as an alternative to a second year of industrial arts.  Not having excelled in the latter in seventh grade, I was happy to give drafting a try.  Like Richard, my drawing skills were imperfect, but Mr Catterall was an easy grader.  He asked us just ten questions on our final exam;  the first was what's your name?, another was what instrument does one use to draw a straight line?, the last was who is buried in Grant's tomb?  I didn't know then that Grant was buried with his wife Julia, but Mr. Catterall didn't let that detract from our grades.  Mr. Catterall was also my home room teacher.  Our class saved up money for an end of the year trip to Coney Island, but when the eagerly expected day came, it rained and the trip was cancelled.  We never got our money back from Mr Catterall and never saw him again.  He didn't return to school the next year.  Word was that he'd been arrested for forgery. 

Philip Spiess

I didn't know Mr. Caterall from a catamaran (as I said, I learned my mechanical drawing from my father), but it sounds like he was a straight ruler in class -- but then forged ahead elsewhere.

Paul Simons

Gail Weintraub (Stern)

I recall another unsavory legal incident with our excellent language teacher, Barron Wilson. I don't know the specifics but what a sad way to end a teaching career.

Margery Erhardt (Schrader)

Additionally there was another teacher, Mr. Arcelesi (help me with the spelling here!), who taught out in the annex and who also had a brush with the law.