[GreenKeys] Robert Weitbrecht W6NRM

[Norm]

Hi
I was reading your message and at the bottom of the page the little box with 
a dial in it caught my eye, and I remembered when I became a ham and was 
told that they would build a box or attach a dial and have it mounted in 
their cars.   They would hook it to their horn and dial a 4 and 2 which 
would be the letters HI, when another ham passed them on the road, and when 
they found out I worked for the phone co, I was pretty popular getting dials 
for them.
Norm
WB7WEQ

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jim Haynes" <jhhaynes at earthlink.net>
To: "Duncan Brown" <duncanancy at earthlink.net>
Cc: "Green Keys" <greenkeys at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2011 8:50 AM
Subject: Re: [GreenKeys] Robert Weitbrecht W6NRM


> 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
>
>
>
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