updated 5 December, 2011
The members at SPARC are saddened by the recent passing and loss of Jack Watson, on Nov. 27, 2011, one of our most devoted and knowledgable volunteers.
Pictured here on the cover of Senior Living Magazine, in February 2008, Jack greets you, holding a broadcast transcription. Jack's passion was for the golden days of radio broadcasting - its music, history, and the wealth of entertainment it brought into our homes.
His weekly contribution to the SPARC Museum will be missed by all of us. Jack was delighted every time he could offer a tour to visitors, and they were delighted in turn by his engaging stories and enthusiasm. Any time I wanted to know the artist, orchestra, or year of an old favourite, he came right back with the answers from the top of his head.
Jack and I spent many enjoyable hours on our frequent live SPARC "remote" setups, playing old favourites for outdoor or indoor summer and Christmas events. If need be, he would happily jump on a city bus to be there, even in his 90s, and help. An impressive, knowledgable man. He's pictured here at the controls, at Place des Arts.
Jack leaves a wonderful legacy at SPARC of the many "Vintage Oldies" programs that he produced exclusively for the Museum's broadcast station. His programming was so good, that he was invited to create a twenty-six week series for a Bellingham, Washington radio station, KMRE, the station of the Museum of Radio and Electricity.
Listen to the SPARC Internet radio station here, where you often hear past editions of "Vintage Oldies", produced by Jack Watson.
The 2010 Conference of the Western Association of Broadcast Engineers (WABE)
SPARC has an excellent collection of vintage broadcast equipment, mostly donated by Vancouver area radio stations. It's the gear that brings radio programs to your homes, cars, and MP3-FM players. This year we received a generous invitation from the host WABE organization to set up a display of our items on their exhibition floor, at their cost, as part of their four-day conference. Nostalgia welled up with the engineering attendees visiting our booth, comparing how far technology had come. Many promises were made to help SPARC preserve our broadcast heritage.
Our display included two of our favourite remote consoles, one made by a Canadian company, McCurdy (in the red case), and a Collins (to the right). The laptop there had an internet connection that meant we could play at our booth the audio stream from our audio server, and browse our webpages for visitors.
Three examples of early field tape recorders were there on the rear table; one of them utilized a "wind-up" motor and fly-wheel mechanism for tape motion. The electronics have not been restored, but the machine "rolled tape".
At the lower left can be seen two units (with the four meters), and still working, that were used by AM stations (CKWX in our example) to transmit "AM stereo", an under-rated broadcast technology from the 90s that foundered, owing to a "standards-war" such as you've heard about concerning VHS versus Beta - with the difference, in the AM-stereo war, that no-one won! In this case, the customer lost!
Every item we displayed had a story, and every visitor had their own stories to contribute to make the convention rewarding for SPARC.
Thanks, WABE!
As explained elsewhere on our pages, we often take a sampling of our museum display items into the community, and enliven the day with our own vintage music and chatter in the form of a "broadcast remote", the way radio stations did it in the 50s and 60s. Vintage broadcast gear from our collection is used for these shows. Often, we make a recording of the show and play it later on our internet broadcast. To see what's playing, go to our Net Broadcast webpage.
As in previous years, we transmitted music to the speakers throughout the Place des Arts complex. Peter was at the mike, and Jack was there too!
Our mobile "studio" was set up in Mackin House, with our 'transmitter' site in a car parked outside. The studio consists of equipment donated by CKWX (the Collins mixer, used for broadcasts from Nat Bailey stadium), CJAV in Port Alberni (the Revox tape machine), and an Ampex tape machine from CKNW (it broke at the end of the first day, so it's not in the picture - we had to put a laptop into service). The programming included vintage commercials and station breaks from old master tapes.
Red Robinson has topped himself - Donates his own tape collection to SPARC.
Red's radio broadcast career has spanned more than fifty years, from which he has carefully saved many tapes - almost 400 - and he has put them into SPARC's hands. There are celebrity interviews, old radio shows, station jingles, and some priceless airchecks. You should be hearing some of these over the next while on the museum floor! To think we were adjusting to having received Cullen's collection (see below)...
The late adored broadcaster, Jack Cullen, had accumulated a huge collection of LPs, 78s and other recorded rarities over six decades. After his passing, most of his treasure was sold off to the corners of North America. We're happy to report that a large number of Jack's private archive of recordings did not meet that fate and fell to the care of Red Robinson. Red is also a veteran and current broadcaster who is passionate (and very knowledgable) about radio history. Red has shown his support for SPARC by donating this collection to us. There are over 700 tapes and a two-foot-high stack of 16-inch transcriptions. We have listened to a sampling of these, and what we've auditioned are really engaging. We hope to be sharing these somehow, as audio archives on our website, or by streaming them on our audio server. Visit our Internet Radio page at Program Schedule and link to learn of our progress.
Thanks doubly, Red!
As you can see, SPARC often takes items from our collection into the community to promote awareness of the history of radio, the part it plays in our culture, and how we are preserving the artifacts of radio. Whenever we are able, we do this by staging a "remote broadcast", as radio stations often did, playing live music from dance halls, and recorded music on location from malls and even furniture stores! In our case, the music is played over the antique radios on display.
To see more photos of these remotes, go to the Studio News page - the link for it is... SPARC Remotes
The Philco Wreck
An interesting acquisition at the museum (Really! It is an acquisition!) is a Philco Model 20. Our restoration volunteers are truly gifted, but there are limits. We loved this example of the ravages of a leaky barn so much, that the decision was made to make it a display item as is. The photo here of the chassis layout is pasted on the tube shield at the left in the view from the back. The remains are resting appropriately in a child's "Radio Flyer' wagon. We have two other hopeless cases of this model at SPARC that are pristine by comparison!
For those of you who are hams or SWL (Short-Wave Listener) addicts, the items in the shortwave section are always being added to and reorganized. Existing display items are being electrically restored as nearly as possible to the original factory-operating performance, so that radios of different vintages can be compared. This will allow us to gain a perspective on engineering improvements over the decades.
One group worked on was our fairly complete Hallicrafters product line. Two wonderful items are the SX-42 and SX-62 from 1947 - they are big, heavy, but impressive radios. Also, an SX-100 has just been restored to factory operating condition; as a museum visitor, ask for a demonstration. This late-50s model was Hallicrafters' first set to be aimed at the SSB (single-sideband) user. Pictured on the table, left, is the SX-62, and right, is the SX-100. By the way, after having done the work on the SX-100, there was an SX-96 in storage that we thought was ready for the dumpster. Since it is almost identical to the SX-100, it seemed convenient that we give it a thorough workover. It absolutely came to life. In spite of it not being of display caliber, the lesson is that old items that appear unrepairable can live again!
We should develop a page dedicated to this absorbing section of the museum.
A friend of the Museum came across this curio, and thought it should have a place at SPARC. It is an old record cleaner, carrying the "Nipper" logo. Notice that the company name is The Gramophone Company -- it does not say RCA Victor, or even Victor. It is much older than we first thought, perhaps from the 20s. Apparently it is British in origin, as was the artist who created the 'Nipper' painting.
We've put this in the glass case at the museum entrance, and leaned it up against one of the turrets on one of our excellent Atwater Kents. (Thanks, Peter R.)
We have an internet audio server running, so you can hear SPARC's vintage music and radio shows on the Web. High-speed access is now running at the museum. We are using a radio microwave shot to link with the world. Trials are being carried out on streaming software. Here's the link for news, what's playing, and the link to Listen Live...
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