[Hallicrafters] Fritz Franke Partly Censored!

[Duane Fischer, W8DBF]

Alright, I have searched my computers for the correct file and discovered 
that I possess more files then any human should be allowed to have in 
his/her possession! I also discovered that I had never finished editing said 
document! So here is about 65% of it and you will get the remaining 35% 
tomorrow!

I have many of these articles that have come my way over this century and 
last. "IF" there is enough interest here I will edit and post more of them, 
once, maybe twice, a month. What say ye?

                    Dayton Hamvention 1983
               April 30, 1983 Dayton, Ohio, USA

               ** Introduction by John Nagle **

"Fritz Franke graduated from Northwestern University in
1930 with a degree in engineering. He began working for
Hallicrafters in December 1940.  As chief of their systems
engineering department. He was responsible for the
development of the SCR-299, 399 mobile
communications system of which over 18,000 were built. He
stayed with Hallicrafters until 1963 when Northtrop disposed
of Hallicrafters or at least disposed of his engineering
group.  (Hallicrafters was not sold to Northrup until 1967.
At the request of Northrup, Bill Halligan, Sr. remained at
the helm for the next year during the corporate transition.
DBF) Since then he has retired but in his retirement has gone
back to work again and is still in electronics.  Fritz, we
are happy to have you. He was Bill Halligan's right hand man
and knew what was happening in those days."

*****
              ** FRITZ FRANKE's Presentation **

Thank you very much. The interesting thing is that 50 years
and 5 Months ago last night, which was New Years eve in 1933,
Bill Halligan announced that he was starting a Radio Company.
LARRY CHAMBERS and BURTON BROWN were present in Halligan's
small apartment on Chicago's North Side that New Year's eve.

BURTON BROWN was the person that later founded the Playboy
Club.

Now some of you Hallicrafter antique enthusiasts may remember
that LLOYD BACK was an advertising man, and he was
the one that suggested to Bill Halligan to create the name
Hallicrafters.

Bill had $800 in 1933, which in those days was quite a large
fortune, but not enough to really start a manufacturing
company by any means. Silver Marshall built most of The early
Hallicrafter receivers until about 1935, when Halligan tied
up with a company in Indianapolis that was in financial
trouble.

The actual S-1 and S-2s were never named S-1s and S-2s. Bill
doesn't recall when he really started to use "S" for a
receiver designation. We've gone through that. And my records
show that the first S number that was a true S number marked
on the receivers was really the S-3. (The name of Silver
Marshall does not appear on the S-3!)

Now the first turning point in Bill's career was when he and
a very fine gentleman by the name of RAY DURST took over
the Echophone corporation at 26th and Indiana Avenue in
Chicago in 1937.  Echophone was on the verge of bankruptcy.
They owed RCA $42,000 on license fees. They also owed OHMITE,
which was a privately owned resistor company in Chicago,
quite a few thousand dollars as well as owing STANDARD
TRANSFORMER quite a few thousand dollars too. Now to make the
deal with Echophone good and sensible, Bill got on a railroad
train and went down to New York City and saw his old friend
DAVID SARNOFF at RCA.

He convinced Sarnoff, that if Sarnoff would agree to wait
for his $42,000 in licensing fees due him from the bankrupt
Indiana company that Halligan had acquired, until Bill
started selling his new receiver, that Bill would pay that
debt in full.  Sarnoff was also to receive royalties As soon
as Bill started to ship Hallicrafters equipment out of
Echophone. David Sarnoff liked Bill, trusted him and agreed.

Halligan also convinced Standard Transformer, Ohmite and
General Transformer to do the same thing as Sarnoff had
agreed to do. And that's how they started out with Echophone.
They paid their royalties and they paid their past bills. It
took them about 2 and a half or 3 years before they cleaned
up all the back money that they owed. Bill made his promises
good and cemented together lifelong business friends.

One result was that Hallicrafters had a very very good
relationship with RCA.

Hallicrafters built some of the first high frequency
receivers using acorn tubes. Where all these special acorn
tubes were delivered to Hallicrafters by RCA. And RCA was
there working with Bert Shure, who I'll mention later, and to
be sure that the tubes were good to be used at high
frequency.  It went that way for many many years - our
relationship with RCA, with General Transformer, Ohmite and
so forth.

Now in the Chicago area, any transformer company knew they
didn't have a chance at Hallicrafters because we used nothing
but Stancor - that is Standard Transformer and General
Transformer.  And Ohmite resistors, because of the
relationships formed years ago when they helped Bill start
Hallicrafters.

Now the Year 1936 was really the turnaround point for the
radio industry. Short-wave was booming, money was coming back
in after the depression.  Echophone really began to sell once
Hallicrafters bought it and for a year or so Bill did not
change the name. - Now when I say Echophone, it's really
Hallicrafters-Echophone. - As sales grew the name Echophone
was supressed and Hallicrafters was kept at the top of the
pile.

Now in 1937 - 1938 the marine radio field was beginning to
boom.  Western Electric was the only manufacturer of marine
radio telephones when Hallicrafters entered that field. And
by the time 1940 rolled around, Hallicrafters was producing
more marine radio telephones than Western Electric was!

The DD-1, which you have all heard about, was the worlds
first production of dual diversity receivers.  About the same
time the five and ten meter High Frequency bands came outThe
so did the DD1's.  There were only 500 built. - I'll stop now
and then to tell some little side stories.

And Joe I don't want you to reproduce too many of these
things! - I see you taking notes back there! - Particularly
about some of these little side issues of what happened at
Hallicrafters.

Somebody, and I forgot the name of the company, came out with
a push button band switch and Halligan was fascinated by it.
MCLAUGHLIN and CARL MILES did everything except stand on
their heads to convince Bill not to have push buttons put in
the DD-1, because they weren't good, and they wouldn't last.
This was for a military contract! Bill wouldn't listen.  They
put push buttons in it and every darn DD-1 that was shipped
out had problems and that was part of the reason that only
500 DD-1s were built. Bill's fascination with those push
buttons caused the receiver to be unreliable and the military
cancelled their contract.

According to my records, the SX-23 was the first receiver,
put into production that had an Automatic Noise Limiting
system.  Now Halligan was very excited about that Automatic
Noise Limiter because he thought maybe Hallicrafters could
get a patent on it. But they found out that RCA had gotten a
patent on a similar circuit 3 months before.

1939 - First wide coverage VHF receiver, the S-27 that
covered from 25 to 143 Mhz.

I started with Hallicrafters in December 1940. If you look
back, that's a long time ago.

The EC-1 was seldom advertised in ham magazines because we
were going after the Short Wave listener market. The
Echophone address was around the corner on 26th street. It
was the address of a barber shop down at the bottom of the
building on the first floor.  We used the Echophone line for
taking the things we developed at Hallicrafters, and then
economizing, stripping them down and so forth, to get a low
cost receiver.  One that we could sell through Wards, Sears,
Lord knows where, independent marketing organizations etc. A

A lot of people couldn't understand this other company, when
they'd come and look for an Echophone at the address and
see a barber shop! But the barber took all the mail in and
then we went downstairs, got it and took it upstairs.  That
was one of the stunts we used that created the low price end
of the deal.

Now in 1940, (sic) I think it was the Spring of the year,
FRED STERLING, who at that time was the Chief Engineer of the
FCC, called his old friend Bill Halligan and said "I want to
 borrow two SX-28 receivers with minor modifications made
to them." I made the minor modifications. We got the
receivers tuned very quickly and he borrowed them.

We found out later, that the FCC had had complaints about
interference from a powerful short wave station in Washington
DC. The FCC investigated it and on one frequency they found
dots and on another frequency they discovered dashes! By
using the two SX-28s and the audio system that we fixed up in
them, they could hear the dot dashes coming out on two
different frequencies. The commission sat down and copied it.

It was a breakdown of the entire Japanese naval code and
instructions that had been brought into our country by the
Japanese embassy and then delivered to the German embassy in
Washington DC.

This is one of the stories that has puzzled many many people.
That with the entire breakdown of the Japanese code, how was
it that when Pearl Harbor happendd, that we did not know the
things that were going to really occur? Because the FCC had
copied all that information and turned it over to various
other authorities to follow up on.

At the same time we had a call from a Colonel in the
artillery division, a good friend of Bill Halligan's from his
two years at West Point, for a special transmitter-receiver
combination.

We were already manufacturing a line of marine two-way radio
units.  I took a HT-14 marine transmitter, that had a 6
channel crystal control transmitter in it, as I recall, and
a receiver with a crystal control unit.  I changed some coils
to meet the military requirement on the prototype - which was
given to me over the telephone - We went to another company
that was manufacturing our cabinets and had a special cabinet
built. We put it all together and painted it olive drab.  We
loaded one in the car and I drove down to Old Point Comfort,
Virginia and turned it over to the Colonel.

It was very much of a rush problem. That became the SCR-543 -
Signal Corps number -and there were some 25,000 of those
built.

We couldn't manufacture the rising quanity of all of the
other units that we had under contract.  After Pearl Harbor,
the Signal Corps said "Well, get rid of the production on
that because you've got this and one company in the North end
of Chicago that's out of business was building them."  The
demand kept increasing and production times got shorter. we
nearly went crazy all through the war building the SCR-543.

Now at this same time another interesting thing happened -
and Joe this you can disclose!

Three of us were called in to Bill Halligan's office and
sitting there were some men from the University of Chicago.
They showed us a little box and gave us a circuit diagram to
study.  They showed us a second piece of the unit and then
gave us a circuit diagram on that.  They didn't say what it
was, but we immediately saw it was a Geiger counter. We said
"Yes we could certainly put that into production for you, no
trouble at all."  We said we could put it into production
very quick and keep it very quiet!  "How did you guys know
what Geiger counters were?"  (At this time the Geiger Counter
project at the University of Chicago was classified and
considered as top secret! DBF)  We knew a lot of things that
a lot of people didn't know we knew!

Anyway we built the basic unit at Hallicrafters with no name
on it, no identification numbers on it or anything else. The
portable unit was built at a business of mine that I was
trying to sell.  That was where my guys put the tube in and
the three wires on the assembly.  When I left Hallicrafters,
in the afternoon I'd pick up 15 or 20 units and take them up
to Shubert Ave in Chicago.  Then pick up more tubes and
assemblies, take them to my apartment and put them together.
The University of Chicago would pick them up the following
morning.

Now about 2 years ago, a former fellow employee of mine, told
me about something he had kept a secret for over forty years.
- He was involved in something that I'll explain a little bit
later and you'll see the story. - The Russians asked him how
did Hallicrafters, or why did Hallicrafters, build 150 Geiger
counters for the University of Chicago? Now just how did the
Russians find out that we had built those Geiger counters?
And they were our friends and allies?

Now another side thing about Pearl Harbor.

Well, as you all probably know by now, in the Summer of 1941
the Signal Corp tested different companies transmitters for
military use. Which included the HT-4, Hallicrafters
powerhouse AM transmitter, along with a Collins, a RCA unit
and a fourth transmitter. This was done down at Fort
Monmouth. Only the HT-4 stood the shaking and all the rest of
the stuff and they said "We want you to build this assembly."
So Bill and Hallicrafters had their foot solidly in the
doorway for getting military contracts.

Then they drove an ambulance, a 4 wheel drive Chevrolet,
in for us to see. They had installed the HT-4 transmitter and
two military receivers and a crazy antenna tuner in the
ambulance! They said they wanted 50 of these things built.
This was about October.

First of all, the transmitter was so set up that you flipped
3 switches instead of push buttons for voice operation. The
antenna tuner needed a whole lot of redesign work. And so
forth. And of course we said yes!

Strangely enough, the delivery date of the first prototype
vehicle was set for December 15th. I'd always like to set my
targets with a safety cushion.  If the 15th was the time we
were going to have something done, I would like to get it
finished about 7 days beforehand and have a little leeway.
Just in case we needed time for the unexpected things that
seem to happen whenever a deadline is involved!

I was in charge of this program and my guys complained loud
and long on Saturday because I expected them to put in a full
day of work. 'till 5 o'clock instead of the usual quitting at
noon on Saturday. As well as coming in on Sunday to get
the damn thing done that we had to get done so we could put
the whole final garbage together in the unit on Monday!  Well
they were complaining all of the time. All of a sudden we
heard about "Pearl Harbor" on the radio. We finished the job!

Over 18,000 of these mobile radio stations were built by
Hallicrafters. They went all over the world. Later when I
started to travel around the world, no matter where I went,
people knew the name of Hallicrafters!

I was a guest of the Shah of Iran, and a General in charge of
all the Iranian communications equipment, in 1967. The first
thing he wanted to know was where could he get spare parts
for 10 HT-4 transmitters? They were still using them and I
was able to get them very quick and very fast. - Which is
another tale! - We became very close buddies.

The SX-28's, about 25,000 were built.  The S-29 was another
receiver that was built for the Army, that was somewhere in
excess of 18,000 units. The EC-l was also built for the
military, those were entertainment receivers. They had short
waves bands on it so that various military posts could listen
to American short wave broadcasting.

Now I am going to tell you another little story that has
never been published. I have told it to a few people and I'm
hoping, Joe, you won't write this one up because I still
insist I'm going to sit down and write it for Readers Digest
because now is the time to come out with it. But I'll tell
you ladies and gentlemen the story.

In the Spring and Summer of 1942, the US Government gave 50
SCR-299s to the Russian Government. They were our friends and
allies.  One morning I got a telephone call from the Signal
Corps. "two Russian civilians are going to come to Chicago in
3 days. We want you to show them the engineering
department and production department. Sit down and work with
them translating the instruction manuals and all the
technical information. Answer all their questions that they
ask as they translate it into Russion. They're civilians."

Certainly we agreed. It was an order from the Signal Corps.

About an hour or two later I got a telephone call from Bill
Halligan, Senior to come down to his office immediately. I
walked in and there was a Navy captain, Naval security, three
FBI men! They said "Under no circumstances are you to allow
the Russians in the plant. They can't put a foot in the front
door! We have reserved a hotel room for you at the Palmer
House and this 3rd FBI man Mr. so-and-so speaks, reads and
writes Russian fluently. He, Mr. Franke, is going to be your
assistant. However he knows very little about radio."

I said to the FBI, Gentlemen, I don't need a Russian
translator, because I have an assistant engineer working for
me by the name of BILL BUENOFF and he reads, writes and
speaks Russian. We brought Bill BUENOFF in and Bill was
floored when the FBI guy rattled off some Russian to him but
BUENOFF came right back. So that was it. BUENOFF and I were
going to handle the situation.

We met the Russians at the Palmer House and we sat in our
reserved room and explained only what they needed to know.
We stayed right to the point, only the manual. We didn't say
anything else - only what the manual said - and then every
night we were debriefed by the FBI. We got madder and madder
and the FBI said "Your turn is coming." About two days later
it was over with. "They night before, they said now it is
your turn. This afternoon when you finish, you will see this
gentleman at the far end on the west side of the bar in the
Palmer house on Wabash Avenue. When you get there, Mr. Franke
, ask him for ice-cold Vodka. He will have bottles there".

I knew the name "vodka", but I had never tasted it. And
Buenoff since you talk in Russian...

The older man was a Colonel in the Russian Army.  The second
 man was a Captain in the KGB we call it now. Well if you
ever saw two fellows ready to collapse, when I came to the
bar and said ice-cold Vodka, 4 glasses please, picked up a
bottle, filled it half full and said "Na zda-ró-vye
Colonel!" in Russian.

 Buenoff, Joe (Nagle?) knows him, Buenoff started to talk
Russian - those Russians, our friends and allies, worked on
Bill Buenoff for about 6 months trying to find out more
information! They kept trying to convince him to come over on
their side. They wanted him to provide them with classified
details from Hallicrafters. And Bill Buenoff kept it a secret
from me that the second part of the Russians group had been
after the Geiger counters, after their encounter with the
first Russians that I told you about earlier.

Lets get back to The Battle of Britain.

The S-36 and the S-37 were used for listening to German
information.

Now one thing more that happened in the early part of 1942.
Was the Navy came to us and wanted us to convert an SX-28, to
use panadaptors. So we had to make minor changes to the SX-27
to use the panadaptors and do it immediately!

We put four units together in a crash program for the Navy.
Six months later we found out that these units with the
panadaptors were used in special Navy cruisers that went on a
high speed listening cruise near the coast of Japan. They
were trying to detect any Japanese radar equipment. (Unlike
the Germans, the Japanese pretty much ignored Radar!
Unfortunate for them, but most fortunate for the rest of us!
DBF) The answer was, there wasn't any of them in use.

The war is over.

Toward the end of the war I injured my back and had to take
time off for spinal surgery. When I came back to
Hallicrafters, Bill Halligan and Ray Durst had decided that
the war was practically over and that we had better start to
think about what's going to come next. So I was set up to
head up a secret research and development group.

I picked up some engineers from the plant, we shared our
thoughts about the future of radio after the war and what
Americans would want to buy.

I had also previously recommended that we go to some
professional industrial designers to give our products a more
professional look. Working great was important, but
Hallicrafters had to get the proper look on the equipment,
shape, colors and all of those things to really get good
design quality and the attention of those who took bids on
military gear.  Raymond Loewe was finally selected to be the
industrial designers. They came up with the SX-42.  Raymond
Loewe did the outside design of the unit, the green colors on
the dials, the shapes, the curved cabinets and all the rest
of the details. The SX-42 was the first electronic device
to ever win an international design award at the New York
Museum of Art.

The S-38 also won a design award. (This would have been 1946
as that is the year that the S-38 was first marketed. DBF)

Business boomed!  Short wave listening was going on more and
more. In 1947, I think you'll all remember Attilo Gatti, and
the Halligan sponsered Mount Kilimanjaro expedition to the
Mountains of the Moon. The first time a DXpedition had been
financially sponsored by a major company. It got a lot of
media attention, there was even a book published about it.

More and more as our business was booming we had more and
more money to spend on various promotional things. We helped
QST and so forth.

Danny Weil 1952. About 1951 Danny Weil came down from England
in a sailboat and got lost at sea! So he started out again
with another one -finally got to the United States.  But I
think the best one of all was that one at Clipperton Island
with Bob Denniston (W0DX, 1954).

Bob called up and he talked to me. He wanted to go to
Clipperton Island, he told us all about it and I said
"alright, come on in. Here's what we'll do. We'll loan you
some equipment and if you work 2500 stations, we'll give you
the equipment to keep. But we'll send out the QSL cards for
you."

The four Iowa farm boys put up all the money to go down there
 and rent their boat. They got down to Acapulco, Mexico,
 rented the boat, get on the boat and they get half way out
 in the Atlantic, and the navigator drops his sextant
 overboard! They can't find the island so they turn around -
 the captain says "to hell with you, I'm not going to take
 you to Clipperton Island."

 It was a Saturday morning. I got a phone patch from Bob
 Denniston and he says "Fritz, we're stuck, we can't get to
 Clipperton Island. We don't have any more money and the only
 boat we can find is going to cost us - say it was $1800 - to
charter". I said "sit tight and I'll get hold of Halligan.

I got hold of Bill Halligan, and he said "call JOE
FRINERHEISEN, the treasurer of the company. He'll talk to
somebody at the First National Bank in Chicago and they've
got a code they'll send out by telegraph down to the bank at
Clipperton Island."

This is about an hour later. It is all set up. I called Bob
and his Iowa boys crew, to give them the word. - "use this
code number" to get the money that Halligan had sent. About 2
hours later I got another phone patch -"we got the money,
we're on the way to Clipperton Island."

They started to sail out to Clipperton Island and got about
one hundred miles from Clipperton Island. Suddenly there is
no wind and the diesel engine on the cruiser blows up! Then
the telephone calls really started.

The telephone rang almost constantly - phone patches kept
coming in -"What are we going to do?"

Now I was listening on the short-wave bands  and heard that
some pilot on the west coast had found the part for the
diesel engine up in Seattle. Another pilot was going to pick
it up and deliver it, but I got an offer from A General in
the Air Force in San Diego. He said "get the damn thing down
here and I'll fly it by my men and drop it to them so
 they can get the boys to Clipperton Island."


TO BE CONCLUDED SUNDAY NOVEMBER 8TH SOMETIME!
Duane Fischer,


W8DBF - WPE8CXO
E-Mail: dfischer at usol.com
Hallicrafters web site: www.w9wze.net
HHRP web site: hhrp.w9wze.net