Re: Beethoven's Fifth Time Signals

[mwaters@wesleyan.edu (Martin J. Waters)]

>Joe Ross wrote:
>Quite so.  And many radio stations began using those 4 notes as a time
>signal at the top of the hour during World War II.  But unlike WTIC, most
>of them had stopped by the early 1950s.

        This is an aspect of the unique WTIC time tones that I've not heard
of previously -- that any other station ever did anything similar.

        One of the other posts mentioned that the old-time radio newsgroup
had a discussion of the WTIC tones a while ago. The subject also popped up
here, and on AIRWAVES, last year. My recollection of the authoritative
account that someone (whose name I don't recall) posted at AIRWAVES was
that the idea for some sort of special patriotic tone originated with a
young engineer (not the CE) at WTIC (AM) during World War II. His name was
given in the post. He worked with a tone generator to get the Morse code
for V for victory. A young executive at the station, Robert Patricelli,
later head of radio and TV operations for Travelers, noticed that the first
four notes of Beethoven's Ninth had a similarity to those four tones. The
four-note time signal ended up being a combination of the two. It was first
broadcast on July 4, 1943, so it just passed its 55th anniversary of use. I
don't know whether the original contraption or a later version still
produces the signal (as Bob Steele always calls it), although the AIRWAVES
post said it is originated at the transmitter building, with a backup on
tape or computer at the studio in the event the tone generator fails. But
WTIC (AM) still runs it, so most of those within the sound of this
newsgroup can listen at night (listen for Red Sox, or Schlesinger (7-8), or
Bruce Williams (8-11), or Gil Gross (11-?), then Bell). Channel 3 stopped
running the signal when it was sold in the mid-'70s and channel 61 in
Hartford never has run it.

        Hourly time-tone trivia: On my just-completed trek to the Northeast
Kingdom of Vermont, I noted that CJAC / 800, news-talk in English in
Montreal, runs a single tone on the hour and two tones on the half hour.
The co-hosts of a Sunday afternoon talk show had a great laugh out of
running over with a segment and continuing right through the half-hour
tones -- commenting on it on the air as if they had been naughty. Then
there was the FM station carrying CBC Radio 1. They seem to think they're
doing shortwave. The one hour I heard them they concluded their program
announcements at 59:30 to make way for a series of time tones at one-second
intervals, followed by five seconds of silence at 59:55, followed by the
hourly tone and the network. I guess nobody told them that (I imagine)
those tones were not meant for broadcast. Hey. It was Sunday --
part-timers. What can you do <g>.

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End of boston-radio-interest-digest V2 #163
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