As well as my print activities I did a certain amount of radio work, for the AP and others, during my time in Paris. It was basically a bit of pocketmoney, though at one point I optimistically started a “Porsche fund” into which I put, or was supposed to put, radio money. What I saved might have bought a Porsche steering wheel …
AP paid $10 for a 45-second spot – later cut to 30 seconds as it was judged the attention span of the average US listener had dropped.
It was pretty tough to summarize a G-7 meeting in 30 seconds, but the trick was to take it in small bites, topic by topic, which of course also increased the earnings. They liked sound bites if possible, so I became a dab hand with a portable tape recorder and the way to feed the sound. Just like early computers, you had a double wire from an output socket with two small crocodile clips on the end.
You unscrewed the telephone handset mouthpiece, which was easy with the old ‘phones.
(They were usually black, but this is all I could find).
Simply pushing the internal microphone unit against the contacts, you called the radio headquarters in Washington, spoke your piece with an appropriate pause, then clipped the croc clips on to the terminal and pushed the play button – having previously made sure you were at the start of the soundbite.
Then you unclipped, pushed the mike back, completed the call, and Washington edited it together. Of course, there were times when a “modern” hand set wouldn’t come apart. Then, because this often happened in a hotel room, you scrabbled under the bed to find the telephone wall connection point, unscrewed the cover, clipped on to the terminals, and you were done. With this set-up you could talk on the handset and simply cover the microphone when you transmitted the clip.
The same techniques were used for portable computers when they used acoustic modems. These translated the machine’s digital signals into analogue audio (telephone) tones which you fed down the line. A modem at the other end translated them back to digital for the receiving computer.
I remember helping a friend do this from a call-box phone in the arrival lounge when we got off a plane in London. He had something he had to file super-urgently.
Sometimes the acoustic modem was external, and you fitted the old style phone into the rubber cup at each end.
Because it was acoustic, outside noises could garble the transmission, making the story unreadable. Try using an acoustic coupler at the Le Mans 24 Hour race, with 55 racing cars streaming past the open press grandstand non-stop. One learned to pile sweaters and coats over the unit to try to muffle the noise.
I seem to have digressed from radio reporting. I did some work for a London independent news station, some for a Canadian radio show that liked to interview journalists on the scene of a big story to get lots of detail – someone will remember the show, it was quite high profile.
But the vast majority of the work was for AP. And I discovered a strange thing. When friends heard me, they never remembered what I had been saying.
And they heard me, thanks to the US Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS) and other networks which bought the AP radio service and used it around the world. One friend, with whom I had lost contact, wrote saying that he had heard me while installing an FM radio transmitter on the top of a mountain in Taiwan. Another heard me on a beach in New Zealand.
And one chap said he almost drove off the road in the Nevada desert when my dulcet tones came in the news break of a C&W station.
When friends heard me, they never remembered what I had been saying.
Which implies that you, rather scarily, asked them.
This is a very interesting series you’re doing on technology of the recent past. It has all vanished so quickly, or maybe it only seems quick because I’m getting older.
the old ‘phones
Ahem. Here is the receiver of the telephone I keep on my computer desk. Here is the phone receiver disassembled.
Nijma – Wow! Cool! Useful! (oops, I feel like a spammer)
M. Hack – Wow! [Maybe my vocabulary needs seeing to] – I thought my “history” was in print media, but you are stirring up some depths. I may be able to mention names soon…. but it’s just WONDERFUL. Tell all!
Useful!
There were some techs who liked to unscrew someone’s telephone when they weren’t around, reassemble it without the internal microphone, then watch and giggle from a distance when they tried to answer the phone. (I don’t think they really did it though, they just talked about doing it.)
two small crocodile clips
Stateside, those are “alligator clips”.
Nijma: That’s the phone disassembled, exactly. I heard about those techie tricks too ..
Catanea: More to come soon !
AJP: We are getting older, but it did indeed vanish quickly, in the time scale of previous technology. Ah, the smell of a real hot-lead composing room, makes the printer’s ink rush through the veins…
Nijma: Now it occurs to me – why do you keep the phone on your computer desk these days ? Do you still have to use dial-up ?
When friends heard me, they never remembered what I had been saying.
Which implies that you, rather scarily, asked them.
Rather scarily ? No, when someone said they had heard me, my instinctive response was: “What was the story?” Just a newsman’s normal reaction.
Like them, I would have been listening to the voice, not the story.
why do you keep the phone on your computer desk these days
Until very recently it had better sound quality than digital phones, also you can use it with your hands free. For years I resisted digital phones, seeing them as yet another example of planned obsolescence designed to separate me from the contents of my wallet. The proliferation of “press 1 of English” type telephone entry systems has now made it impossible to use a rotary phone exclusively, so I have another digital phone next to it on the desk, but can switch very quickly when I want to be online, typing with both hands, and talking on the phone at the same time.
The acoustic coupler is quite familiar, but only as office equipment, not for home use; the DEC office had one, used mostly for playing Dungeons and Dragons. I did have a dialup connection when I first returned from Jordan, but with that you plug the phone line directly into a modem module in the back of the pc.
Do you still have to use dial-up
Dialup is still available for less than $10 a month, but a few years ago the phone company started offering a low speed broadband that is as cheap as a phone line plus dialup.
“press 1 for English”