Source:New-radio-tower
Si Steinhauser. "New radio tower is completed: WWSW prepares to dedicate plant within city." Pittsburgh Press, Oct. 5, 1939, p. 20. Newspapers.com 141368609.
Sunday, Oct. 15 WWSW will go on the air with its new transmitter and tower antenna, nearing completion on Fineview Hill, North Side, just off the Federal Street extension. The site is a former cemetery.
A tubular tower rises 350 feet. It weighs 40 tons with its steel cable stays and rests on a porcelain insulator base, one foot high and weighing just a few pounds. Radio engineering is that clever.
Six miles of copper wire, buried under the ground will be part of the antenna system.
Atop the tower is an aviation beacon light three and one-half feet tall. Its red beam is clearly visible miles in all directions. Yet when one stands at the foot of the tower and looks up the light seems but a few inches high, above the steel tube.
WWSW was the first Pittsburgh station to build a tower antenna within the city limits. Its present plant on Gazzam Hill off the Boudevard [sic] of the Allies has been taken over by a Federal Housing Administration project. The new antenna is clearly visible from the WWSW studios atop Keystone Hotel. The station thus, becomes the only one in the city whose transmitter is visible from its studios. Frank Smith, former WJAS salesman, is the guiding genius and manager of WWSW.
A second important radio event of Oct. 15 will be the dedication of KDKA's new pipe organ. NBC is planning a "round-robin" broadcast of famous network organists, as a salute to Bernie Armstrong and his new instrument. Hollywood, New York and Chicago stations will join in the broadcast and Bernie will respond to them with a musical finale.
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Pittsburgh's Margaret Daum, long a network and opera star, will be married Saturday at noon to Louis Charles Daum of New York City. The ceremony will be read at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, New York.
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Walter Huston will play Joe E. Brown's role of "Elmer the Great" on tonight's Good News program.
Meredith Willson's orchestra will feature a symbolic presentation of Schubert's "Serenade."
That takes us back a good many years for it was our taking exception to Rudy Vallee's singing (?) of "Serenade" that started a "feud" and brought Rudy's threat to horse-whip us.
Tonight Rudy will be missing from his regular spot for the first time in just about ten years. One Man's Family will take his first half hour and Those We Love the second.
Rudy is growing a mustache, now that he's off the air.
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Referring back to Joe E. Brown, he drops from the picture tonight and will be succeeded on WJAS at 7:30 by Vox Pop, long an NBS feature.
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Paul Laval, dance band leader, often on the WCAE network, was Joe Usifer until a few months ago. He couldn't make the grade with that tag, so changed it.
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A wisecracker wants to know "Since Mrs. Johnny Greene presented her maestro hubby with a child why isn't his program renamed "Mrs. Johnny Presents?"
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You'll be hearing a lot of "The Missouri Waltz" on the radio because it was composed twenty-five years ago this month.
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Abbott and Costello, stars of the stage hit "Streets of Paris," will return to the air with Kate Smith, tomorrow night. Curtain time for the show will be delayed to give them a chance to do the broadcast.
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Secretary Henry L. Stimson will discuss "Neutrality" on WJAS at 10 o'clock tonight.
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Betty Winkler, star of "Girl Alone" married a couple of weeks ago and now she's being auditioned for a title role in "Dangerous Marriage."
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Monday starts "National Doughnut Week," so Gracie Allen, who's a nut with lots of dough will press a button in Hollywood and start 5,000,000 (more or less) doughnut making machines from coast to coast.
