Back

---

Bob Orban comments on the picture - July 2000
That was the 1962 science fair at Butler High School, Butler, N.J. I was 
a junior then, age 16. The project topic was electronic music using 
tape music (musique concrete) techniques. 
Butler has an excellent science program at the time. (Public schools 
weren't always the mess they have become today!) The faculty adviser 
to the Science Fair, physics teacher R. Kennedy Carpenter, actually got 
some technical staff members from Bell Labs in Murray Hill, N.J. to serve as 
judges. Although that picture was used in an ad for Optimod-AM, I didn't 
actually do my first AM processing chain until 3 years later when I was 
involved with WPRB, Princeton University's radio station. WPRB had a 17kW 
commercial FM license at 103.3MHz, and also operated a carrier current 
AM service for the various dorms around campus. The carrier current 
service  consisted of local AM transmitters at the dorms, driven by local 
copper pairs. The processing chain, for the carrier current AM service, 
consisted of a HF equalizer to overcome the line and receiver rolloffs, 
a handmade copy of a Gates Sta-Level compressor, and a Collins 26W1 
limiter donated to the station by WLIB, New York. As I recall, it sounded 
quite good -- the Sta-Level was actually a very smooth compressor. 

Regards, Bob Orban

WWW.261.gr