RE: 560 WGAN

["Pete Ferrand" <petef@sprynet.com>]

A. Joseph Ross, J.D.  writes:

> it seems to me that back in the 1950s and
> at least the early 60s, stations used to use their full dial position.
> WBZ was "Radio 1030," etc.  Sometime later, they started dropping the
> final zero in AM stations (WBZ became "Radio 103"), and FM stations
> started to drop the decimal or round up ("FM 97" for WJIB 96.9, for
> example).

With far more digital radios around, it makes sense to utter the number that
people can see on their radio sets. Older radios, such as the 1931 GE I just
checked in my bedroom, had the full number on its tuning dial, "700"..."800"
and so on. I suppose people then may have had some idea of how to read the
intervals between the markings, too. Radios of the 1950's and '60's had
simplified the dial so they had "56"..."8"..."10" on 'em, I suppose also in
part because so many of them were smaller and the dials were not the
elaborate ones that could display a relatively fine granularity, in many
cases just a simple disk on the same axis as the tuning capacitor.

Must have been a problem when there were only two stations in town and one
was a 1430 and the other a 1380.

Now with all the digital sets we can say "Ninety-six-nine or
"Ninety-six-point-nine" and people will actually see that on their display.

-Pete
Enfield, NH