We respectfully called him Blatt it was Mr. E.C.Anthony who hired him Dec.16, 1924. That young man held his position until he retired, this while KFI was owned by several other Companies, in turn. (Today KFI is the flagship for Clear Channel.)

While, in the late 40s, I was still a vacation relief engineer, I asked Blatt if I could be transmitter relief engineer each year. He said,” Why do you want to work out there? All you will see are some old men.” He was smiling. He was still smiling ten years later.

Blatt did a special thing for me. There was to be a week between the end of vacations and the opening of the new KFI FM. I wasn’t sure that I would be retained or assigned to FM. Blatt took me into the maintenance shop and showed me a small metal box and some parts. He asked me to build an impedance matching unit.* This would occupy me for the open week! This continuity of KFI service lasted another 33 years!

Mr. Blatterman lived near Pasadena and also in Corona Del Mar. He would spend one day a week at the 50,000-Watt transmitter. This was at Buena Park and on the way between his two homes. He spent the weekends at the seashore and one of his workdays at the transmitter. (This was a way for the Chief Engineer to observe the engineering staff and bridge the operation with the studio.) Over ten years, we spent many hours together at the shop bench. Blatt usually had an on going engineering project of his own. Several of these make up the stories that follow.

* The impedance matching box was switched and wired, so as to, efficiently couple a wide range of impedance to and from audio devices. Such as matching an eight ohm speaker to a 500 ohm line.

The HLB Tape Machine

Photos by Stan Kelton

We called it HLB for Blatt’s initials. He designed it. It was built at the transmitter and most of us had a part in it.

Blatt was an opera buff. He faithfully recorded a collection of works. He wanted the very best sound and was dissatisfied with the imperfections of the existing tape recorders, mainly the variance of tape speed over the heads. Blatt could hear the unwanted modulation, or vibrato that spoiled the recordings.

(As the armature revolves it picks up speed as it nears a magnetic pole. This causes a ripple as each pole is passed. Understand, the rpm is still synchronized but we have super imposed an audio warble into the recorded program.)

Blatt ‘ironed out’ this variation by also driving the tape with a second and separate drive system. The assembly became quite large, like a small table on wheels. (It was also quite heavy.)

Blatt took me with him on a visit to his Pasadena home. I was only shown his basement. Probably the part he liked best. The cemented basement wall rose about shoulder high. The house foundation was several feet above that.

The space between was filled with old, at that time, radio hardware. Blatt lifted out an ancient string drive belted turntable. Free standing, in black enamel like laboratory equipment. (This old rim drive had the advantage, of the belt’s resilience. The belt’s ability to filter out the poling problem described above.) It ran smoother than expensive tape systems on the market!

Blatt found that magnetic tape was not a good way to archive recordings. (In time, the magnetic material sheds off the plastic backing.) It becomes transparent where the sound drops off.)

The HLB recorder was used at the Vermont studios, mostly in studio E. An extra play- back, head was placed some seven seconds away from the record head. This delay was inserted to allow for censoring incoming speech. (This was used on talk shows allowing the operator to bleep when necessary.) The HLB was both recording and playing back the program at almost the same time. In use, the tape could be threaded so as to vary the delay time. The large tape reel was rewound or changed each hour.

This machine was used for many years. Three years ago, we found it resting under a blanket of dust, in the, now empty, high Voltage vault at Buena Park. Too old, it had been returned to its construction site. Here it is/was a visible reminder of Blatt. I last used it with Geoff Edwards when we recorded live answers to Geoff’s telephone questions, to later play them back as answers to another set of his questions. The tape had to be cued rapidly with no time for a rehearsal. (To work the machine, I had to stand and turn my back to the Announcer.)

It was both fun and extra work for us; it was like having a live guest in the little Emerald studio.

BLATT AND THE ONE EYE’D CAT

Blatt was sighted in only one eye. His neck was short. He was short too! When he spoke to you, it would be with his head tilted back and his eyes squinting above his smile. He drove one of Mr. Anthony’s Packard Motor Cars. This model had an automatic torsion bar that leveled the body, as the load was changed. We saw him driving up the road with his rear end high in the air, like a frightened beetle. The over riding switch was thrown and he couldn’t level it out! Perhaps, it was for this reason that he parked at the transmitter all day with his trunk lid up.

Stray animals showed up at the transmitter site. Some dumped by owners that changed their minds about pets. One off-white, one-eyed cat was seen there for a while then disappeared. Later Blatt told me that when he got home, this cat was in his trunk. He thought that it had been put there as a joke, because he had one eye too. He kept the cat! I think that the cat had climbed in there during the day the car was left open. And un-intentionally, Blatt shut the trunk, with the hidden stow-away, inside.

TURNTABLE STROBES

KFI used two RCA transcription turntables in each mixer. We could check their speed at 33-1/3 RPM or 78 RPM by using a strobe template that optically matched the table speed with the 60-cycle light. (Regular house lighting.)

(Strobe effect is what you see when a movie pictures a turning auto wheel. As the auto changes speed, the wheel will appear to slow or even reverse direction. This happens in Old Western’s stagecoach scenes when the wheels appear to skid along as if stationary.)

When the turntable strobe appears stationary, the speed is exactly right. Of course, the paper strobe template couldn’t be used when the table was in use.

Blatt may have been the first to make the table, strobe itself. At least he brought the idea to KFI. The vertical edge of the turntable was about an inch high. Here he had machined precise sections around the circumference that responded to the 60-cycle light. The speed could be checked at any time the table was turning.

The KFI transmitter shop had a lathe and drill press. Now a milling machine was added.

Carl Sturdy, our best machinist, made up a master disk for the milling operation. All the studio tables were uniformly cut to strobe in this way.

BLATT’S IMPROVED TONE ARM

The tone arm positions the phono head with its stylus so as to track the recorded groove cut into the phono disk. The arm must allow the stylus to vibrate with the lateral movement of the groove, move freely up and down with any variation of the table or disk and to hold the head steady while its stylus vibrates. The arm also holds the head to a minimum tracking error as the groove carries it from the rim to center of disk. (The head is weighed and balanced to rest in the bottom of the groove without causing undue wear to stylus or disk.)

The pivot bearing is damped so that it readily allows the slow movement caused by tracking but does not to respond to the rapid movement of the modulated groove. (This damping is controlled by the choice of a lubricant of the proper viscosity.) Also should the turntable be bumped during play, the arm will stay in place and come to rest in the same track.

Blatt experimented with different greases. The pivot assembly had to be cleaned carefully after each test. It took about a thimble full of grease to fill the pivot chamber.

The grease chosen was made by the Standard Oil Co. It was not available in small quantities. I was told that Blatt eventually had to buy a full drum!

BLATT'S AVIARY

By this time, the RCA 50 water-cooled, transmitter had been replaced, partially dismantled and sold off. Left over parts included some of the huge disks used for the final tank capacitor. Blatt used two of these to build up a large circular birdcage. The disks, mounted horizontally, became the top and bottom of the tall cage. Blatt furnished six inch, rubber-tired castors so that the cage could be pushed about, on his patio.

Blatt belonged to a Corona Del Mar garden club. They specialized in exotic Geraniums. When he had his soil tested, the report said he needed everything but sand!

He remarked to me that the Geranium Club was mostly made up of, old ladies who wanted him there to move the heavy, dirt filled, planters!

ACOUSTIC BAFFLES

Blatt experimented with various baffles. These were used with a fifteen-inch woofer, cone dynamic speaker. We are reminded that low frequency sounds have time to reach the edge of the cone and cancel the sound from the speaker’s front. Baffles increase the distance and prevent this loss of bass.

Blatt brought a length of six-inch transite pipe. Carl sturdy made a resin/glass cloth, adapter to acoustically, join the speaker cone to the pipe.

This strengthened the bass response but “sounded like a culvert.” (Blatts words).

There were other wooden enclosures made with tuned ports and sound treated, reflex, chambers. These became large and heavy competition for the existing living room furniture in his home Note: This was before stereo broadcasts. Only one bass speaker was required. Even then, I found that one large radio and a second small radio, both tuned to KFI, would yield a fuller and more realistic sound.

KFI's Farm (Blatt was one of its good customers)

I must explain how this came about. During WW2, some foods were rationed, or just not available. I don’t know how it started. But, eventually, three or four pairs of engineers built and installed as many batteries of chickens between the garage and the KFI tower. These were identical, mesh sided, cubes. They stood about three feet off the ground. The floors were wire mesh too. They had roofs for shade and shelter.

Here, they raised / kept perhaps 200 or more, chickens. KFI Studio people bought them for food and / or bought their eggs. The engineers earned their profit by supplying the care and food the chickens required.

I saw this operation as it looked just after the war. Some of the batteries had disappeared, others stood there empty, but Lyman Packard was still selling eggs.

When I first worked the daytime transmitter shift, I saw Lyman and two of the older men working on the drip, water system for the chickens.

One line of pipe fed fresh water to and through each battery. This passed just above the upturned heads of the chickens. The water was available as a single drop. This at close spacing through the structure. (Most birds have to sip water and let it rundown their upturned throats!)

Doves are an exception and can swallow uphill!. The hens learned to place their beaks so that the hanging, drop would enter there. (When a drop is removed, another drop will form and hang there, until the surface tension is broken!)

Perhaps you knew all this? In this case the KFI men were installing very small ¼ inch galvanized pipe. It ran a long way from the garage to the far end of the last coup. On the way, many fittings were used. T’s L.s and couplings. (The friction of water against the pipe walls is additive in length and to changes in direction.) For a given water pressure, the flow is limited by the friction. (All this if no height is gained.)

We were there when the last connection was made and the water was turned on. NO water showed up.

This was the only time I saw this condition. When handling electricity, this is called a watt-less circuit. When the voltage cannot force a current thru the load.

In this instance, the condition was aggravated by running the pipe down, across an up the other side of the grease pit.* (Four turns equal the resistance of a 20 foot length of pipe.)

* This was dug between the garage and the chicken houses. (The men parked vehicles over it to drain and change oil.)

The mesh floor of the cages didn’t require cleaning and the eggs didn’t fall through to the ground. This unintentionally became a SNAKE TRAP.

I saw a snake inside the cage! He was small enough to have climbed up through the chicken wire floor. I could see that he had swallowed three eggs. (Whole) Now he was too large in three places to climb out!

-----------------------

This story is related to the size of eggs. One of a number of practical jokes (means, that they weren’t funny), were played on Lyman Packard.

Lyman kept track of how many eggs were produced each day and a scorecard record. Some of the men altered the facts by removing or adding eggs for Lyman to count. Sometimes the faked total would be over the capacity of the hens involved!

When a hen begins to lay, she may produce a number of very small eggs. Lyman was surprised to find small eggs on some days. One day he found a huge egg like no hen ever layed! Someone had added a goose egg to the clutch!

Blatt was impressed with the oversized egg in his dozen. I saw him take it home. He said it tasted good.

Blatt ‘s Steadfast Character

A personal aside;

Mrs. Blatterman was house bound. She seldom was seen socially. Blatt went alone.

We saw him alone at some twenty KFI Christmas parties. Where the KFI executive suite was opened for the festival. Carpets were covered, desks and furniture were draped, and Caterers set out food and drink.

Spouses were invited to meet each other year by year. Announcers and Engineers met each other in person. (They worked behind triple, glass.)

Later, new KFI owners reserved banquet rooms at nice hotels. Retired employees were invited and their spouses. There was food, drink, dancing and Christmas gifts.

Blatt enjoyed dancing. But for less and less floor time and he danced more slowly as the years added up.

------------------------------

Perhaps it was my 30^th year. I was on duty at the Buena Park transmitter. About dusk, Blatt made his usual stop on his way to Corona Del Mar.

His wife was with him in the front seat of his Packard! She spoke to me, for the first time! Blatt was not alone anymore. He had waited all those years.

Later Blatt and I had a private moment at the old KFI workbench. He said that in an unrelated event, the unexpected, permanent, dramatic change took place. (I’ll not say anything more private than that.)

I watched as the two, little people, now old and gray, drove out the KFI gate. Mr. and Mrs. Blatterman drove off at day’s end. Off together, to their Del Mar cottage by the sea.

Now, in the year 2007, I am remembering part of this WW2, English lyric;

Through fields of Clover,

We’ll drive down to Dover,

On our Golden Wedding Day.

nw