[GreenKeys] DC Basement in Wisconsin and Chicago

[Don Robert House K9TTY]

Thanks Jim,

I will look forward to the articles.  A lot of my older Bell friends will also be interested.
When I attended St. John's Military Academy in Delafield, Wisconsin a friend of mine and I broke into the basement of the cadet library
The library had once been the school gymnasium. In the basement was all of the DC generating equipment the school had used before
AC came to the small town.  I am wondering if the equipment has been scrapped or still there.

The DC installation for the Bismarck Hotel in Chicago was still there about 10 years ago when the hotel closed.  Not sure what happened
to the building.  The owners had spent approximately 2 million updating the hotel and making one room out of every two.
Sadly, in the process they also destroyed most of the art deco decor that was the charm of the place.

Some might look up the history of the Baker Hotel in St. Charles, IL.  The place is still powered by a dam next to the hotel on the Fox River.
The hotel also has a beautiful lighted glass dance floor and a huge built in pipe organ.

I think they have turned it into a retirement home.  

Best,
Don


On 12 May 2015, at 2:31 PM, Jim Haynes wrote:

> An aside to all this - some years ago I bought some old 1930s issues of QST at a hamfest.  The very first one I opened had an article about a
> technology I had never heard of before or since.
> 
> If you lived in a DC powered area of a city it was hard to build a ham
> transmitter of any power because you needed a motor-generator set to
> develop the high voltage DC for the amplifier tubes.  Raytheon developed
> a special gas-filled tube which was not a thyratron but could carry high
> current at low plate voltage and operate at radio frequencies.  I'm away
> from my library right now but if you want to know more I can supply
> references next week.
> 
> Another aside concerned a broadcast transmitter in New Mexico reported
> by James O'Neal in Radio World.  To get high voltage for the tubes they
> had motor-generator sets stacked up and wired with the DC outputs in
> series.  There was a tendency for the generator brushes to get stuck.
> The engineer in charge had a yardstick with which he would swat the brush
> holders when necessary.  On one occasion the yard stick was apparently
> damp and he was electrocuted.
> RadioWorld.com->Columns->Roots of Radio and then find "They Put the Juice
> in Powerful Radio"