[BC] Saving History

[Rich Wood]

------ At 12:21 PM 2/23/2006, Scott Fybush wrote: -------

>WOR deserves some credit for this, too - both at 1440 Broadway and 
>at the new Wall Street digs, the walls were/are lined with photos 
>from the station's early history, including Jack Poppele at work and 
>a very early flat-top antenna in New Jersey.

On a move from one floor to another at 1440 Jim Huste (CE before Tom 
Ray) and I discovered the negatives. Those photos were taken with an 
8x10 view camera. The negatives I found were all 8x10. He and I 
decided it would be a great project to both catalog and transfer a 
huge collection of 10" reels to minidisc. We hired someone to sit, 
listen and catalog. Unfortunately, storing that many reels on 
Manhattan real estate is expensive. I don't know where that project stands.

Someone was doing a book on WOR and Mutual and visited about 10 years 
ago. It seems most of the old logs are at the Library of Congress. 
There were no funds to catalog them, so they're not on display. 
Thanks to Herb Squire, much of WOR's history still exists. Somewhere 
in my old desk is a list of places the Mutual material can be found. 
I wish I could remember the author's name.

At one time there was an audio history of the 20th century at 1440 
Broadway. Mutual and WOR had covered virtually everything. They could 
do it. One day Jim Huste came to me with a chart of the engineering 
department. At one time there were 155 engineers at WOR. Shortly 
before I got there the last sound effects man had just retired.

I don't care what your choice of formats. Meeting the ghosts of 1440 
Broadway was the experience of a lifetime. I had a little more than 
10 years to get to know them. Priceless.

Rich

Rich Wood
Rich Wood Multimedia
Phone: 413-303-9084
FAX: 413-480-0010