St. Petersburg Times "Action" column February 9, 1995 I read in your Jan. 17 Action column that NBC officials said the chimes used for network identification are the musical notes, G, E, and C and originally stood for General Electric Company which was part owner of NBC. I think if you research this a little further you will find that the chimes really originated in Atlanta, Ga., at radio station WSB. In the late 1920s, WSB station manager Lambdin Kay began using a miniature xylophone to hit those same three notes to signal station breaks. Later, when WSB joined the NBC network, WSB cut in one day during a Georgia Tech football game with the chimes. NBC liked it so well that it got permission to use the chimes for its own identification. --PAUL TERRY RESPONSE: We were very sorry to learn that Paul Terry died two days after phoning in the above message and a day after Action's conversation with him. His wife Martha said he was happy to be able to talk about his memories and looked forward to seeing his comments in this column, so we'll go ahead with our response because we know he would have approved. We asked Terry how he knew so much about the history of the chimes. Terry, 87, said he started hanging around radio station WSB when he was 14 whenever he wasn't working (he had gotten a job with American Telephone at age 12 and retired from that industry 52 years later). Another young man who stopped at WSB on a regular basis, Perry said, was Marcus Bartlett. Bartlett was working his way through college by playing the background music for radio stories. Eventually, he worked his way up to be manager of WSB and then vice president of Cox Broadcasting. Elmo Ellis who retired 10 years ago as general manager of station WSB confirmed Terry's story. "Bartlett hired me 50 year ago," Ellis said. "When I started in 1940, they still had a miniature device like a xylophone that had three notes on it," he said. "The notes were struck to signal the end of a program." In the early days there was no Federal Communications Commission and little regulation of radio, Ellis said, but there also were very few radio stations. WSB, which went on the air in 1922, was, for a time, the only station in the South. You could hear its signal for quite a long distance, Ellis said. Stations would cooperate so their signals would not interfere with each other. Sometimes when WSB went off the air, the announcer would encourage listeners to stay tuned for another station, such as KMOX in St. Louis or to a station in Kansas City or Cincinnati, Ellis said. Then the WSB chimes would ring three times to let listeners know it was signing off. The chimes would also let listeners know when the station staff was going off the air for a dinner break or to make repairs. The staff was small, and the equipment was primitive and fragile, Ellis said. The tubes they used would overheat and sometimes blow out. In the summertime the station engineers used ice to keep them cool. According to Ellis, the president of NBC at the time radio station WSB became an affiliate was Niles Trammel, a man who had been reared in Atlanta and who grew up hearing the WSB chimes. Ellis said he was sure that Trammel's familiarity with WSB had something to do with NBC's decision to adopt the chimes as the network's identifying symbol. >Newsgroups: rec.antiques.radio+phono >From: billhar@spaceworks.com (bill harris) >Subject: NBC Chimes, a history of >Date: Wed, 29 Mar 1995 05:40:47 GMT >Organization: SpaceWorks, Inc. A History of The NBC Chimes I am sure that most, if not all of you collectors of vintage radios, have heard the famous sound trademark of NBC, the three chimes. The announcer would say, "this is the National Broadcasting Company," and then you would hear the three note chime. I became interested in learning more about the chimes when I discovered a book in the library titled "The Fourth Chime" by NBC. I had never heard of a fourth chime so my curiosity was aroused. The book, however did not tell much about the fourth chime, other than it was used as an added fourth note to the three chimes to announce special news bullitens, but dealt primarily with the role that NBC played in reporting world events, mostly during World War II. I had to find out more about this fourth chime. After writing several letters, making phone calls, and inquires, I was able to gather the information I was seeking and even the history of the chimes and how they came about. I hope you find it as interesing as I did. The NBC Chimes America's first nation-wide network, the National Broadcasting Company, began broadcasting on November 15, 1926, with WEAF in New York as the key station, and ninteen affliate stations. The corporation was jointly owned by RCA, General Electric, and Westinghouse. There was some confusion amoung the stations at the conclusion of network programs on the hour and half-hour and some type of coordinating signal was needed to alert the network stations for station break purposes. Three men at NBC were appointed the task of developing such a signal for station identification on the hour and half-hour; Earnest la Prada, an orchestra leader; Phillips Carlin, and NBC announcer; and Oscar Hanson, who later became an NBC vice-president in charge of engineering. These three experminted on the air with a complicated seven-note arrangement (G-C-F-E-G-C-E) in 1927 and 1928. The announcers found that the seven-note chimes were too complicated to remember to strike consistently in the correct order so the number of notes was reduced to four (G-C-F-E) and that was reduced to three notes. On November 29, 1929 the three notes (G-C-E) that became the tradmark of NBC were broadcast. The chimes were struck at 29:30 and at 59:30 past the hour. The chimes consisted of three note bars finely tuned to exact pitch, mounted on a wood sound box with leather bumpers padding the ends. The bars were mounted in striking order and the box had an aluminum handle on the side so the announcer could hold it up to the microphone while striking the chimes. Beninning in 1932 the chimes were generated automatically by means of finely tuned metal reeds that were plucked by metal fingers mounted on a revolving drum, much like a music box operates. The reeds formed part of a capacitor in an oscillator circuit. The notes were amplified and then sent out to be broadcast. Now all the announcer had to do to sound the chimes was push a button. The fourth chime was initiated to announce special news bullitens. It was first used to announce the crash of the Hindenburg at Lakehurst, NJ., in 1937, and used again during the Munich crisis in 1938, with the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, and during the D-Day invasion. The fourth chime was a second sounding of the note "C". The chimes announced the beginning of NBC television broadcasting on April 1, 1941 with the sign-on of WNBT TV in NYC. NBC registered the chimes with the U.S. Patent Office in 1950, the first audiable trademark to be registered. Below is the discription as filed with the Patent Office. Serial Number: 72-349496 Type of Mark: Service Mark Description of Mark: The mark comprises a sequence of chime-like musical notes which are in the key of C and sound the notes G, E, C, the "G" being the one just below middle C, the "E" the one just above middle C and the "C" being middle C, thereby to identify applicant's broadcasting service. Owmer Name: (registrant) National Broadcasting Company Inc., The Owner Address: 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, New York The chimes were discontinued on both radio and television on September 12, 1971, but in celebration of NBC's 50th anneversary, the chimes were once again used following all broadcast from November 1976. References: The Chimes You Hear From Coast To Coast: A History Of The NBC Chimes, by Rod Phillips, The Michigan Radio Chronicle, Vol. 6 #4, 1991. The Fourth Chime, by the National Broadcasting Company A Pictorial History of Radio, by Irving Settle I am now trying to find a recording of the fourth chime. If any of you collect recordings of old time radio programs and might have a recording where the fourth chime was used I would like to hear from you. Thanks, Bill Harris