[GreenKeys] Fwd: [ham-hist] Hugo Gernsback's callsign?

Tue Aug 15 17:52:35 EDT 2017

    There was never a restriction on AM bandwidth but broadcasters have 
decided to limit it in order to make room for digital signals. The specs 
of nearly all AM transmitters show audio flat  from about 30Hz to about 
10,000 Hz. Some, like the Western Electric Doherty transmitters were 
flat beyond 15 Khz. The FCC did not spec performance beyond the 
transmitter for AM stations. Before the days of R&R stations and 
loudness contests many AM stations broadcast reasonably high quality 
signals. The limitation was in the receivers, which with very few 
exceptions, were quite poor. These days many AM stations limit response 
to 5Khz. In the bad old days network programs were similarly limited 
because the phone lines at best were good only to about 6Khz.
     It has been so long since anyone has put a clean, high fidelity 
signal into an AM transmitter that most people have never heard one.
     The broadcasters keep complaining about loss of audience and blame 
the internet for it but its really the lack of anything worth listening to.
     One of the experiments at W2XR was the use of a high carrier 
frequency in order to reduce the ratio of carrier to maximum modulation 
frequency.

On 8/15/2017 2:07 PM, Bruce Gentry wrote:
> To the end WQXR had a far better than average sound for an AM station. 
> Whether they got permission from the FCC to continue wideband AM or used 
> as much as they could without getting prosecuted to death I don't know, 
> but they sounded very good. I also think they were the last commercial 
> classical station in New York City, and perhaps in the country. AM 
> stations could sound far better today on their  allotted bandwidth if 
> they were allowed or required to convert to Single or Vestigial sideband 
> and offset their carrier like analog TV stations. The FCC is concerned 
> about the present state of waste of the AM broadcast band because it is 
> important for emergencies and can be received with the simplest 
> equipment. As far as experimental AM transmissions, in the late 1960s, a 
> broadcast enginner I knew - probably SK now- and a cohort devised some 
> sort of clandestine RTTY encoder to send the Associated Press news on 
> the station's signal. They vehemently refused to discuss it with me.  I 
> don't think it was carrier FSK because they used a modified FM stereo 
> decoder board from a console hi-fi as part of the setup. It worked, but 
> they abandoned it after a couple weeks.
> 
>       Bruce Gentry, KA2IVY
> 
> On 8/15/17 11:21 AM, Richard Knoppow wrote:
>>     The clue is the X in the call. It would be interesting to know 
>> more about this station. A famous experimental call in NYC was W2XR 
>> owned by John V.L. Hogan. This was an experimental "high fidelity" 
>> station operating near the high end of the broadcast band with audio 
>> flat to 15 KHz. When it became commercial the call was change to WQXR 
>> which looked and sounded much the same.
>>
>> On 8/15/2017 7:20 AM, Jeffrey Angus wrote:
>>> It was in mid year 1925 that the 58 year old immigrant from 
>>> Luxembourg, Hugo
>>> Gernsback, received a permit to operate a portable shortwave station 
>>> at the Hotel
>>> McAlpin in New York City, under the experimental callsign 2XAL.
>>>
>>> It was on October 1, 1928, that the experimental callsign 2XAL was 
>>> modified, along
>>> with all other similarly identified stations in the United States, to 
>>> W2XAL. The initial
>>> letter W was allocated to the United States in a recent international 
>>> radio convention
>>> over in Berlin, Germany.
>>>
>>> The key phrase here is Experimental and not Amateur.
>>> Despite the appearance of what appears to be an amateur call sign.
>>>
>>> -- 
>>>
>>> Jeff-1.0
>>> www.foxsmercantile.com
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
> 
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-- 
Richard Knoppow
1oldlens1 at ix.netcom.com
WB6KBL