the
photo gallery
The factory in Cincinnati, with original WLW towers on top, and studios inside.
The Moon River organ is visible in back. A grill covers the pipes.
This acoustically-isolated room could easily hold a symphony orchestra.
Crosley wanted a really romantic show.
"Moon River" was the result, as opened by this famous instrument. It has nothing to do with that soppy tune written a generation later.
We know the organ wound up in a lounge. Could this be it, with a new console?
1930s or 40s. 'No radio "is" modern without pushbutton tuning.'
IBM used to advertise The Smart Desk. Here, Crosley starts the filaments at The 500,000 Watt Desk.
WLW geek apparently grabs some action out behind the world's largest modulation transformers.
Yet another publicity shot shows why we can't completely abandon Freud's theories. The, uh, output tube anodes have a large surface for water cooling.
Nice dramatic angle on the six 450-amp mercury-vapor rectifiers, all lined up and reporting for duty making serious DC.
The chief engineer gets to pose with Crosley's firebottles too, showing how the PA tubes are connected. I think the transmitter is off.
Thunderbolts reach both hemispheres of the world from WLW's diamond-shaped tower. The clock hand tunes AM and short wave, and WLW's frequency is marked above the Y in CROSLEY.
READO was Crosley's 1930s radiofax service sent late at night by WLW and other large AM stations. It used the Finch system, which printed a range of tones on strips of sensitized white pinfeed paper, synchronized from the AC lines. Old printout still looks surprisingly respectable today.
$75 got you this classy wooden box with the synchronized oscillating arm inside printing your celebrity dish a line at a time. It attached to your speaker output and used 5W audio for drive. Another $10 got you a clock timer, so you didn't have to stay up all night to see who eloped. Paper spat out the back.
WLW's rural audience knew what it liked.
Another good ol' show, probably rather hard on the transmitter.
Hard work, sweat, and 500 kW will get any nerd to the top.
The coming of TV will give you the best year ever. Technology had such promise...
