155
DisasterMan
I had a very interesting year at the new Colton & Foss, Inc.
offi ces at 15
th
and K Streets NW, learning to be a consulting
engineer designing AM and FM broadcast stations. I
participated in the design of broadcast stations and preparation
of engineering reports for applications to the Federal
Communications Commission for the following stations:
AM at Great Falls, Montana; AM at Renton, Washington;
AM and FM at Fort Worth, Texas; and AM and FM at Seattle,
Washington. I appeared as an Expert Witness in a FCC
hearing which was a frightening experience, as the opposing
lawyers tried to show that I was not qualifi ed to design the
AM antenna system to avoid interference. Fortunately my
MIT background impressed the Hearing Judge and saved the
day, and the FCC approved our application.
I became a Registered Professional Engineer in the
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1947 because we had a
contract to oversee construction of a radio station in Warren.
In 1951 I became a Registered Professional Engineer in the
District of Columbia also.
I had taken a graduate mathematical laboratory course
at MIT in graphical computation (pre-computer days). I was
doing some acoustical design of broadcast station studios
at Colton & Foss and had a paper published in the journal
Electronics in April 1947, entitled "Reverberation Time
Nomographs." It was included in a book, Electronics Manual
for Radio Engineers by Vin Zeluff and John Markus, published
by McGraw-Hill in 1949.
General Colton built a small laboratory and got a contract
from Motorola to design a Citizen's Radio at a new frequency
of 470 Mhz. I was making progress and built a model, but it
was really too large and too heavy. At the end of the fi rst year
the General called Jack and me in to his offi ce and told us that
he couldn't give us a raise as the fi rm was barely surviving.
We accepted the situation but persuaded him to buy a big ad
in Broadcasting, the industry's trade magazine. We designed
a clever ad, with my picture and Jack's picture and words