Midlands Chapter 74 History

Chartered September 10, 1980

Preface

In order to have a complete picture about the driving force that got chapter 74 started you need to know the following information about me, (Gale Totten).

IRE was good for Broadcast Engineers

I started at my first job in Broadcasting on July 4, 1949  at KJAY  in Topeka Kansas and became Chief Engineer about two months later. While at this job my boss, and owner of the station, owned a consulting engineering firm is San Francisco, (Radio Engineering Company). He introduced me to the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) in Kansas City. I drove from Topeka to KC for their meetings once a month and was able to learn a lot from that experience. The KC chapter consisted mostly of chief engineers and supervisors from the Kansas City stations. They were very helpful to me and I appreciated it very much.

IEEE moves away from Broadcasters (1961)

In 1961 the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) merged with the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) and changed the name to (IEEE). The broadcasters were a very small minority in this new organization and it's main focus was not about broadcast engineering any more. This made the broadcast engineers very unhappy.

First National SBE Meeting (1964)

Early in 1964 John Battison wrote an article and got Broadcast Engineering magazine to publish it as an editorial. The response to that article was overwhelming. That was Johns signal to push ahead with the organization of the SBE. Broadcast Engineering magazine volunteered to be the communicator to the masses of engineers. An organizational meeting was held in Chicago during the NAB convention in April 1964. The group formed an organization devoted to the needs and interests of broadcast engineers. John Battison was the first president.

Since the SBE records were later destroyed in a fire, no one knows exactly how many engineers attended that meeting, but I would estimate from 150 to 200. You did not have to sign up that day to become a charter member, I am not sure of the time, but I think if you signed up within three months you would be considered a charter member, I signed up just before the deadline, becoming a charter member No 308, and the only SBE member in Nebraska.

As time went on there were more and more chapters being organized all over the United States.

RCA helps get the Ball Rolling (1979) 

In 1979 the RCA salesman from Kansas City (Emerson Ray) was visiting me and I told him of my desire to get a SBE Chapter going in Omaha, and to my surprise, He said "I will help you". "I ask, how can you do that"? Then he told me that each year he had a certain amount of expense money that he could use at his own discretion, and he would be glad to use some of it to help get a SBE chapter started in Omaha.

We put together a list of all the engineers in the Omaha area, suppliers of broadcast equipment and  anyone else who we thought would be interested.

On October 8, 1979  (Betty Neller) (Emerson's secretary) sent out invitations to all the people on our list Inviting them to a meeting to be held on Monday, October 22, at the Nebraska Room of the Royal Inn, 108th and "L" Street, Omaha.  

 The meeting was a great success, there are 37 signatures on the sign up sheet and there were 3 people that I know of that did not sign in. Gale Totten who acted as chairman and conducted the meeting, Larry Steel who kept minutes of the meeting, and Hans Schmidt who gave the program.
Emerson and myself gave a  pep talk about the benefits of belonging to SBE and having a Chapter.

The second organizational meeting was held Tuesday December 18, 1979 at the KMTV studio with 50 people in attendance. A presentation on the application of Micro Processors to "Camera Setup" was made by Bob Hurst, Administrator of RCA Technical Training. We also discussed further the benefits of SBE membership and SBE certification. I have been unable to find minutes for this meeting so all I can tell you is what I know as I remember, Nominations for officers for the new chapter were made at this meeting, The nominations were: Chairman - Gale Totten, Secretary/Treasurer - Larry Steel, Vice Chairman - I don't remember.

The third organizational meeting was held Thursday February 14, 1980 at Technical High School with 20 people in attendance. Greg Silsby of Electro Voice gave a presentation on microphone care, use and design parameters, which was very interesting to both Radio, Television and Educational personnel. The attendance at this meeting was small because of bad weather conditions, we were surprised that anyone showed up.

The fourth organizational meeting was held Monday March 10, 1980 at Nebraska ETV Communications Center with 28 people in attendance, Bill Ramsay was our host. The Speaker was Roy Carpenter of Lighting elimination Associates of Santa Fe. California. This program was very timely with the Spring and electrical storm season approaching. 

A fifth meeting was held Tuesday June 10, 1980 at the KYNE studio with 30 people in attendance. The program was presented by Art Rancis of Tektronix. He introduced a new Distortion Analyzer and demonstrated  measurement techniques using the 1980 Answer System and discussed other measurement techniques of interest to both radio and television broadcasters.

Midlands Chapter 74 Chartered September 10, 1980

The next (sixth) meeting was held Wednesday September 10, 1980 at the Roadway Inn with 14 people in attendance. The program was presented by Fred Huffman of RCA Radio Sales Development. He showed Slides and talked about the BTA-5ss all solid state 5 kw AM Transmitter.

During the meetings to date  we have been receiving applications for membership and by this time we had enough to meet the SBE requirement for the issuance of a charter. The application for a charter was completer at this meeting.

This Charter was received a few weeks later.

SBE CHAPTER 74 CHARTER 

I Would like to thank all the people who helped get this chapter started and a special thanks to Emerson Ray for his help, without it our chapter number would probably be a lot larger than 74

INVITATION TO THE FIRST ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING

SIGN IN SHEET FOR THE FIRST MEETING,  Page 1

SIGN IN SHEET FOR THE FIRST MEETING, Page 2

Gale A. Totten CPBE