[GreenKeys] Robert Weitbrecht W6NRM

[Jim Haynes]

On Wed, 12 Oct 2011, Duncan Brown wrote:

> Do any of you old-timers know of Robert Weitbrecht, W6NRM?

I knew the late Bob pretty well, used to have an almost nightly RTTY
QSO with him and others back in the late 1950s when he was working
at Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin and signing W9TCJ (but he never
gave up his W6NRM call sign, and was at Yerkes a fairly short time).

He is better known today as the inventor of the modem used in the
TDD machines.  U.S. patent 3,507,997.  There is a book about Bob and
the TDD work, "A Phone of Our Own : the Deaf Insurrection Against
Ma Bell" by Harry G. Lang, Gallaudent University Press.  Harry Lang
is a professor at Rochester Inst. of Technology.

I could say a lot about Bob, but will keep it short.  A lot of hams
seem to think that RTTY began and ended with Irv Hoff.  Bob was there
ten years earlier, put in many hours and drove many miles developing
RTTY gear and helping hams get started in RTTY.
>
> The AWA Museum has been offered a tube-type AFSK TU built by him.  I
> need to convince the Museum Curator that it is a significant piece of
> history.  There is a picture of the unit and short description at :
> http://webpages.charter.net/123goto/w6nrm_2.jpg
>
Looking at that picture makes me skeptical that the unit was actually
made by Bob.  He built a lot of stuff and I don't remember him ever using
Dymo labels on his construction.  I could do some research in old RTTY
magazines to see if there is a picture of that unit in any pictures where
Bob appears.  If AWA doesn't want it then you could ask Harry Lang if
RIT or Gallaudet wants it; but it would be better to try to authenticate
it first.

I have an artifact of Bob's that came to me in a very unusual way.
Bob built a modem that connected to the telephone line and allowed him
to transmit CW or FSK to his friends in the Redwood City area.  It was
when he tried to communicate from there to Pasadena that he ran into
trouble with echoes in the telephone system and came up with the idea
that led to the TDD modem.  So this box is the original prototype of the
TDD modem.  It was some years after Bob died (he was killed when hit by
a car while walking his dog) that I was at the Foothill College swap
meet one day.   There was a seller who brought a truck load of stuff
to those meets, and as I walked past his tables I saw on the ground
a small box with a telephone dial on the front.  I didn't pay much
attention then, walked through the rest of the swap meet, and was ready
to leave when I decided to see what that box was with the telephone
dial on the front.  As soon as I picked it up I recognized it as Bob's
handiwork, and it was only $5. so of course I bought it.  The seller
didn't remember how he came by it or why he had preserved it; but I
was just so stoked over finding it and being able to acquire it, a
hand-made relic of my late friend.

Jim W6JVE