Tunis Augustus Macdonough Craven was Chief Engineer at the FCC from 1935 to 1937, an FCC Commissioner from 1937 to 1944 and also from 1956 to 1963. His award noted his work on directional antenna development as well as his participation in international radio conferences and leadership of the 1959 US ITU delegation.
Raymond Guy began his career as a broadcast engineer at WJZ in 1921. He joined NBC in 1929 to direct frequency allocations engineering and oversee the development of new NBC transmitting facilities and stayed with NBC until his retirement. His award also noted his participation in international conferences for broadcasting.
Ralph Newton Harmon was Vice President of Engineering for the Westinghouse Broadcasting Co. He began his career at KDKA, Pittsburgh in 1929, and worked on maintenance and improvement of Westinghouse radio stations until 1940, when he transferred to Westinghouse Electronics and became section engineer in charge of designing commercial broadcast equipment. He returned to the Westinghouse Radio Stations as manager of engineering in 1948 and was named Vice President of Westinghouse Broadcasting in 1954. A holder of a number of technical patents, his award noted his leadership in pioneering technical advancements.
George R. Town became a Professor of Electrical Engineering at Iowa State University in 1949 and was named Dean of the College of Engineering in 1959. He took a 20-month leave of absence in 1957 to serve as Executive Director of the Television Allocation Study Organization (TASO) in Washington DC, a group chartered by the FCC to study television frequency usage, culminating in a 700+ page report in 1959, laying out a sound approach for television channel allocations.
John (“Jack”) Hibbett DeWitt was President of WSM in Nashville. He was appointed as chief engineer for WSM in Nashville in 1932 and became WSM President in 1947. He grew WSM from a 5kW to a 50kW station, obtained the country’s first commercial FM license in 1941 and helped launch WSM’s TV station in 1950. He also headed the US Army Signal Corps Project Diana in 1946 to bounce radar signals off the Moon, which was considered the first experiment in radar astronomy.
Edward Allen joined the FCC in 1935. He became Chief of the Technical Research Division in 1946 and became FCC Chief Engineer in 1951. He was a member of Executive Committee of the International Radio Consultative Committee (CCIR) and served as a delegate to numerous ITU meetings.
Carl Joseph Meyers was Senior VP and Director of Engineering at WGN Continental Broadcasting Co. in Chicago. An authority on color television, he began his career at WGN in 1925 as chief engineer. He designed WGN’s studios in Tribune Tower, which were opened in 1935. He invented numerous telecommunications innovations including remote circuit design for sports and special event broadcast, two-way radios for police cars and general television research.
Robert Mills Morris began his radio career at NBC station WEAF in 1924. At RCA, he helped Edwin Armstrong develop the first FM radio systems, including the first television tower on the NY Empire State Building. He later worked for NBC prior to WW II and worked on the joint NBC-CBS-Bell Telephone development of the VU meter. After the war, he returned to NBC and worked on an improved disk recording method (Orth-acoustic) and then joined ABC in 1948 as a manager of radio and video facilities planning. He was a member of the first and second NTSC committees, as well as TASO. A staff consultant since 1959, he retired from ABC in 1967.
Howard Chinn was Director, General Engineering, for the CBS Television Network. He began his career at CBS in 1932 and was named chief audio engineer in 1936 and chief engineer in 1957. He pioneered techniques of analog audio recording as well as radio and television broadcasting practices and authored many magazine articles and books on the technical aspects of audio and broadcast engineering. Along with 1967 Engineering Achievement Award winner Robert M. Morris and engineers at Bell Telephone, he developed the VU meter in 1939. In 1966 he developed the NAB’s standard loudness reference recording, helping broadcasters to maintain proper audio levels of broadcast programs.
Jarrett L. Hathaway was a senior project engineer with NBC. He joined NBC in 1929 and worked for NBC for 40 years at the time of his award. He held 37 American patents, including a sound level control used in radio stations, an electronic system to produce artificial gunshots, wind noises and other sound effects for radio and television. Beginning in 1954, he devoted a large part of his time to work on ultra-portable camera systems and radio microphones used by NBC.
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