[GreenKeys] Robert Weitbrecht W6NRM

[Duncan Brown]

Jim,

Thanks for you comments. From those, and what I found on the Internet 
about Weitbrecht, I will recommend that we accept the donation.

I have your ARTS bulletins CD and some old copies of the west coast RTTY 
magazine. (the Museum has most of RTTY plus CQ magazines).  I'll go 
through them to see if I can find anything to better identify the unit.

Duncan


On 13-Oct-11 11:50, Jim Haynes wrote:
> 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
>
>
>
>