It’s after 7PM on Sunday, March 11, 1888. We are on the roof of The Equitable Life Assurance Society Building at 120 Broadway in lower Manhattan.

The movement you’re hearing is coming from Sergeant Elias B. Dunn, New York City’s Chief Weatherman. He’s come up to the roof to take the temperature.

At the time, the Weather Bureau kept in touch with the Coast Guard through telephone, telegraph and carrier pigeons. Like other weather station chiefs, Dunn is linked to 170 regular government weather stations all over the country. Sunday’s forecast called for light rain.
Ordinarily, no one manned the Bureau on Sundays, but during the afternoon, the early Spring weather had suddenly and alarmingly taken a turn for the worse with the temperature rapidly falling.

Now, what was thought to be a passing rain shower, has turned into heavy sleet with almost gale-force winds.

After taking the temperature. Dunn’s rushes downstairs into his office below to worriedly telegraph the conditions to Washington DC.

 
He’ll get no response. 

All Communication for New York with the outside world was gone. Overnight the freezing rain turned to snow.

By daybreak Monday morning, New York was engulfed in a furious blizzard with winds as high as 85 Miles per hour and temperature conditions still rapidly falling. People were trapped inside homes, places of business, or most dangerously, stuck out on the streets.

The snow would continue with hurricane force until Tuesday evening, forty-eight hours after the storm began. In New York City, an estimated 200 people died.

Tuesday, April 15, 1947.

It’s a damp, overcast Tax Day. The smells of hot dogs, pretzels, popcorn, kinishes, and stale beer are in the air. 

We’re at Ebbets field in the neighborhood of Flatbush in Brooklyn, New York for a 1PM opening day National League baseball game between the visiting Boston Braves and our hometown Brooklyn Dodgers.

Right before the season manager Leo Deroucher was suspended for the entire year by the offices of Major League Baseball for “conduct detrimental to the team.”

at the last minnute, Burt Shotton, a calm, steady presence was called in to take the helm. 

The bums are expected to contend this year and the fans are excited.

The old Red Head, Red Barber is up in the press booth calling the action on radio for the Columbia Broadcasting System. 

The Ebbets Field celebrities are all here: 

There’s the Dodgers Sym-phony. Hilda Chester the cowbell lady. Gladys Gooding is on the organ...and like Brooklynite writer Pete Hammil one said, the rough democracy of the upper deck is filling up with restless natives.

There’s 26,623 total in attendance. Men, women, and children with all kinds of faces donning Dodgers caps, windbreakers, flannel jackets, letterman’s sweaters, sport coats, and suits. 

They’re Italian, African American, jewish, Irish, polish, Norwegian. It’s the proverbial melting pot, come to life. 

At 12:45PM, the Dodgers begin to trot out of the clubhouse as Second Baseman Eddie Stanky, Center Fielder Peter Reiser, Catcher Bruce Edwards, and pitcher Joe Hatten run out. 

Hatten warms up as the time ticks towards 12:50, and one by one the rest of the dodgers come out taking their positions for infield warmups.

Right fielder Dixie Walker. Left Fielder Gene Hermanski. Third Baseman Spider Jorgensen. Short Stop Pee Wee Reese. 

Finally, to the fans begin to buzz as the team’s new acquisition from Montreal of the International League jogs out to first base.

He was born in Cairo Georgia, the youngest son of a Share Cropper that grew into a four-sport letterman at UCLA, and a second lieutenant in the army during World War II. 

His name is Jack Roosevelt Robinson and he’s the first African-American to play in the Major Leagues since Moses Fleetwood Walker in 1884. 

He casually tosses his teammates infield practice until 1:01PM when Home Place umpire Babe Pinell signals for the start of the game. 

Robinson smooths the dirt in a playing path by first base and sets himself, knees bent, slightly crouched, with his oversized first-basemen’s mitt on his left hand on the ground and open. 

Boston Short Stop Dick Culler digs in as Brooklyn lefty Joe Hatton winds and delivers the pitch.

Culler swings and slaps a ground ball towards third base. He digs out of the batter’s box as Spider Jorgensen charges in to his right and fields the ball on a high hop, throwing slightly off balance towards first base. 

Robinson, right foot on the bag, stretches as far as he can, catching Jorgensen’s throw and getting Culler out by a step.

And just like that, a fifty-year old gentleman’s agreement between changing owners and the commissioner’s office, that had barred any dark skinned men from playing in the league, was dead.

It died here in Flatbush at 1PM, on a Tuesday afternoon as 26,000 watched.

And wildly cheered.

Jersey City, New Jersey - July 2, 1921.

We’re at the National Boxing Association’s heavyweight title fight between the champion Jack Dempsey and the challenger Georges Carpentier taking place at Boyle’s Thirty Acres. 

We’re sitting next to the Radio Corporation of America’s new general manager David Sarnoff. To his right is Major Andrew White of RCA’s Wireless Age magazine. 
 
This venue was built specifically for the bout. There’s 80,000 raucous people here with us. The arena is swaying with the cheers of the crowd as first Dempsey in round one, and then Carpentier in round two have led the action. 

RCA has borrowed a General Electric transmitter destined for the Navy, and installed it in a railroad shack in Hoboken.

White is narrating the action audibly, speaking into a phone line leased from AT&T, thats traveling two miles to that railroad shack that’s been converted into a broadcasting station. RCA has obtained a one-day license, broadcasting as WJY. There, a technician named Pierre Boucheron is repeating White’s words into a microphone. 

A 3,500-watt transmitter is feeding a signal into a long wire that Sarnoff’s men have strung between a steel tower and the train station’s clock tower. That wire is carrying the action to listeners in a 200 mile radius. 

Here in the fourth round the bloodied french fighter, Carpentier, looks almost puny next to our American heavyweight. The ring announcer stated Carpentier’s weight at 175 lbs, while Dempsey has weighed in at 188lbs. 

Dempsey is now on a constant attack, circling his foe. slipping straight right hands past Carpentier’s guard. The Frenchman’s leaning against the ropes. 

Not only has Dempsey weathered Carpentier’s best shots, a 2nd round punch from the frenchman broke his own right thumb, crippling his best weapon.

With less than a minute to go on the round, Dempsey has landed a shot that’s sent Carpentier to the canvas. He’s laying there, until the count of nine when he springs to his feet, charging Dempsey! Dempsey is ready for the attack and boom, he’s connected with a straight right hand to the frenchman’s jaw. 

Carpentier goes down. The referee counts 10, and the bout is over. The challenger, Carpentier lasted only four rounds… and so did the transmitter. It blew only moments after Dempsey’s knockout, but the broadcast was a sensation.

It reached over 300,000 listeners in eastern theaters, ballrooms, and other halls. All who heard paid admission, with proceeds being donated to the French post-war relief effort.

This was in effect, the world’s first closed-circuit sporting event, and David Sarnoff has proven that such a thing is technically possible. 

Take a trip to Coney Island at the turn of the 20th Century. Walk along the boardwalk and hear the many inventions, rides, tricks, shows, fun, and frights at Steeplechase park. 

April 14, 1912, 375 miles south of Newfoundland, on board the RMS Titanic. At 11:40PM lookout Frederick Fleet spotted an iceberg immediately ahead and alerted the bridge. First Officer William Murdoch quickly ordered the ship to be steered around the obstacle and the engines to be stopped. 

It was too late.

The vessel suffered a glancing blow that buckled her right side and opened five of her sixteen compartments to the sea. Although not ripped in one continuous tear, the impact snapped off or popped open many iron rivets creating narrow gaps through which water flooded. There were an estimated 2,224 passengers and crew members on board. The Titanic was carrying only enough life boats for 1,178 people.

The ship began to flood immediately, with water pouring in at an estimated rate of 7 long tons per second, fifteen times faster than what could be pumped out. Because the ship’s boilers were still full of hot high-pressure steam there was a substantial risk that they would explode if they came into contact with the cold seawater flooding the boiler rooms. The stokers and firemen were ordered to reduce the fires and vent the boilers, sending great quantities of steam up the funnel venting pipes. They were waist-deep in freezing water by the time they finished their work. 

Each bulkhead could be sealed by watertight doors. The engine rooms and boiler rooms on the top deck had vertically closing doors that could be controlled remotely from the bridge, lowered automatically by a float if water was present, or closed manually by the crew.These took about 30 seconds to close; warning bells and alternate escape routes were provided so that the crew would not be trapped by the doors. 

The Titanic had suffered damage to the forepeak tank, the three forward holds and No. 6 boiler room, a total of five compartments. The ship had been designed to stay afloat with four of her forward compartments flooded but no more, and the crew soon realized that the ship would sink. Within 45 minutes of the collision, at least 13,500 long tons of water had entered the ship.

Alarm bells were ringing, a commotion of surging human energy was heard. Crew members shot distress flares and took to the Marconi Wireless transmission device that had been installed on board. Jack Phillips, one of the ship’s wireless operators began frantically sending distress signals. Operators at the Marconi Station at Cape Race received the news almost immediately after the collision, as did two other liners The Parisian and the Virginian, who were unfortunately twelve hours away. 

The only nearby ship to receive the call was the RMS Carpathia, and that happened by a fluke. The Carpathia’s operator, Harold Cottam, had finished his work for the evening, but had returned to his wireless room to verify a time check with another ship. Had he not been there, no one nearby would have heard a distress signal until morning. This was a consequence of not having a loudspeaker, worker shifts, or a distress alarm for a sleeping operator. The Carpathia was 58 miles from the Titanic and when it arrived at the scene three and a half hours after hearing the distress call, it could only rescue those who had managed to get into the life boats. The nearest ship, The California, was less than twenty miles from The Titanic when the accident occurred, But the California’s only wireless operator was asleep when the titanic broadcast its distress calls. Another ship, The freight steamer Lena was within 30 miles of the titanic, but not equipped with wireless telegraphy. 

By 01:20, the seriousness of the situation was now apparent every passenger above decks, who began saying their goodbyes, with husbands escorting their wives and children to the lifeboats. Distress flares were fired every few minutes to attract the attention of any ships nearby and the radio operators repeatedly sent the distress signal CQD. Radio operator Harold Bride suggested to his colleague Jack Phillips that he should use the new SOS signal, as it "may be your last chance to send it”.

By 01:30AM on the morning of April 15th, The Titanic's downward angle in the water was increasing. The dire situation was reflected in the tone of the messages sent from the ship by Marconi operator Jack Phillips: 

01:25 - ”We are putting the women off in the boats"

01:35 - ”Engine room getting flooded"

01:45… "Engine room full up to boilers.”

This was Titanic's last intelligible signal, sent as the ship's electrical system began to fail; subsequent messages were jumbled and broken. The two radio operators nonetheless continued sending out distress messages almost to the very end.

John Jacob Astor IV was a passenger on the ship. At 01:55AM he saw his wife Madeline off to safety, but even though 20 of the 60 seats aboard were unoccupied, he was refused entry to the life boat, a sign of the chaos and disorder as seats were being saved for women and children. 

The last lifeboat to be launched left at 02:05 with 27 people aboard. At this point, the sea had reached the boat deck and the forecastle was deep underwater. Veteran captain Edward Smith carried out a final tour of the deck, telling the radio operators and other crew members: "Now it's every man for himself.”

At about 02:15, Titanic's angle in the water began to increase rapidly as water poured into previously unflooded parts of the ship through deck hatches. Her suddenly increasing angle caused what one survivor called a "giant wave" to wash along the ship from the forward end of the boat deck, sweeping many people into the sea.Marconi junior operator Harold Bride managed to escape at the last possible moment trapped under a life boat, but safe from the sweeping wave. 

Eyewitnesses saw the Titanic's stern rising high into the air as the ship tilted down in the water. Many survivors described a great noise. One passenger, Lawrence Beesley, described it “partly a groan, partly a rattle, and partly a smash, and it was not a sudden roar as an explosion would be: it went on successively for some seconds, possibly fifteen to twenty.”

After another minute, the ship's lights flickered once and then permanently went out, plunging Titanic into darkness. 

Another passenger, Jack Thayer recalled seeing "groups of the fifteen hundred people still aboard, clinging in clusters or bunches, like swarming bees; only to fall in masses, pairs or singly as the great after part of the ship, two hundred fifty feet of it, rose into the sky.” Shortly after the lights went out the vessel tore in two, rotating on the surface. The Titanic disappeared from view at 02:20AM on the morning of April 15th, 2 hours and 40 minutes after striking the iceberg. 

Jack Thayer reported “with the deadened noise of the bursting of her last few gallant bulkheads, she slid quietly away from us into the sea.” Those in the lifeboats were horrified to hear the sound of what Lawrence Beesley called "every possible emotion of human fear, despair, agony, fierce resentment and blind anger mingled. – I am certain of those – with notes of infinite surprise, as though each one were saying, 'How is it possible that this awful thing is happening to me? That I should be caught in this death trap? 

Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon, a British fashion designer who was a passenger on the ship recalled, “the very last cry was that of a man who had been calling loudly: 'My God! My God!' He cried in a dull, hopeless way. For an entire hour there had been an awful chorus of shrieks, gradually dying into a hopeless moan, until this last cry that I speak of. Then all was silent.”

More than 1,500 people died this night, including poor cabin boys and girls, and the richest man in America, John Jacob Astor IV. Like the democratic nature of wireless telegraphy, death came equally for the Titanic’s Passengers.

In the aftermath of the disaster, the US government passed The Radio Act of 1912, which mandated that all radio stations in the United States be licensed by the federal government, as well as mandating that seagoing vessels continuously monitor distress frequencies. No longer would amateur operators be able to freely transmit wireless telegraphy. 

It represented a watershed moment. The point after which all individual exploration of wireless would diminish and corporate management and exploitation, in close collaboration with the government, would increase.

New York, April 15, 1912.

We’re aboard the 9th avenue elevated line, sitting next to Guglielmo Marconi. He’s just come to Manhattan via the RMS Lusitania. He’s here to pitch potential investors on an idea to expand the American Marconi’s Wireless base in the US. 

So far he had overseen construction of stations in Egypt and in Arabia at the mouth of the Red Sea, with plans to add stations in India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, and Africa’s West Coast. These stations were tied into the British Government and Marconi’s British Wing of his Wireless Telegraphy Company. 

By adding stations in the United States on the east and west coasts, as well as in the Caribbean and Hawaii, the hope was that his American investors would be linked with the entire network of communication and of profits. 

That presentation to investors was scheduled for tomorrow, but this evening, a knock on Marconi’s hotel room door from a New York Times reporter had interrupted his dinner and changed his plans. 

As their train reached Fourteenth Street, the Slaughterhouse district air was thick and pungent. 

Marconi had booked passage aboard the Titanic for its maiden voyage, but a change in plans forced him to cancel. He later wrote to his wife:

“I’ve witnessed the most harrowing scenes of frantic people coming here to me and to the offices of the company to implore and beg us to find out if there might not be some hope for their relations.” 

Very little could be done. 

The two men got out and finished their evening journey on foot, walking west towards the Hudson River. Soon Marconi began to see groups of distraught men and women. 

As they arrived at Pier 54, the two men walked past a young lady sitting on the lap of an older woman, both of them crying as the older woman kissed the younger one’s forehead and stroked her hair. The times reporter noted that Marconi had begun to tear up himself.
 
They climbed aboard the RMS Carpathia and headed for the upper deck towards the Marconi Wireless room. 

He sat with heavily bandaged feet, tapping away on his telegraph key. Bride recognized the boss he had yet to meet and stopped working. The two men shook hands. Bride, at the time only 22, began to tell Marconi the story of the tragedy that would forever alter the course of Guglielmo Marconi’s career.

The Music featured in this piece is Metamorphosis No. 2 arranged by David DePeters for vibraphone and harp and played by Ms. Elizabeth Hainen. This composition is featured on her latest album, Home: Works for Solo Harp. It’s available on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, and Pandora. You can find out more information about Ms. Hainen at elizabethhainen.com

Monday, October 24, 1938. We’re sitting next to Howard Koch as he drives back to New York through New Jersey after visiting his parents on his day off. Who is Howard Koch?

Well, early in the autumn season of The Mercury Theater on the Air, the adaptation process got to be too much for John Houseman. He was forced to condense large victorian novels into 60 minute radio dramas in three working days each week. 

The first Sunday evening adaptation was Julius Caesar on September 11th. That was followed by Jane Eyre, Sherlock Holmes, and Oliver Twist. Around this time Howard Koch walked into Houseman’s office asking him for a writing job. Houseman hired him on the spot for $75 a week, grateful to turn the script writing duties over.

Koch’s first script was an adaptation of Hell on Ice, which aired on October 9th. It was from a book by Edward Ellsberg about the disastrous attempt by George W. De Long to reach the North Pole in 1879. The story told how De Long’s ship, the Jeannette, was trapped in an icepack. Only a handful of men survived, enduring horrendous conditions for nearly two years. 

The following two shows were adaptations of Book Tarkington’s Seventeen and Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 days. The last of which aired last night. 

Orson Welles wants a spook show… something appropriate for Halloween. He’s decided to dust off H.G. Wells 40-year-old science fiction fantasy, The War of the Worlds.

Koch is worried. The narrative tone of the novel is hopelessly dated, but he has his assignment. Orson has given him some general guidelines. He wants the story to be told in a series of news bulletins, with cutaways to first-person narrative. 

This won’t be any cutting job. Koch will have to write the entire story over as a modern tale. He’s only got six days to do it. On the way home, Koch stops to pick up a road map. 

***

It’s now Tuesday the 25th. We’re back at Howard Koch’s New York apartment. He’s opening the map. Koch closes his eyes and drops his pencil point. It’s landed in a village called Grover’s Mill in New Jersey. This is where the martians will land. 

Next he’s telephoning John Houseman direct. He needs some help. Houseman agrees to come over and work on the script with him. 

It’s now 2AM on the morning Wednesday the 26th. Houseman has finally arrived. Howard Koch is in better spirits. He’s starting to have fun with the script, laying waste to the entire state of New Jersey. He’s especially enjoying getting to destroy CBS. 

Houseman and Koch will work through the night and all through the day until Wednesday at dusk. Orson Welles is busy rehearsing a broadway play, Danton’s Death and unavailable.

On Thursday, the rest of the cast gets their first rehearsal, led by Welles associate Paul Stewart. Everyone felt it was a flop. It played too dull… it needed more of a spark.

Houseman and Koch got together and plunged in again… They worked all night, spicing it with circumstantial allusions and authentic detail. Eventually, they ran out of time. On Friday evening the script was in the hands of the CBS censor and Orson. 

The only censor requests were to change the Hotel Biltmore to a fictional “Meridian Room of the Hotel Park Plaza in downtown New York” and to change CBS references to a generic “Broadcast building.”

***

Sunday October 30th, the afternoon of the broadcast. Orson Welles has finally made an appearance at rehearsal, taking over for Paul Stewart and beginning to edit the broadcast script into one of his style of elocution. 

A strange fever has begun to take over the studio. The first to feel it are the actors. They know they’re about to attempt something never before done. 

Frank Readick, who’ll play the soon-to-be incinerated newsman Carl Philips is studying the transcriptions of Herb Morrison’s description of the Hindenburg disaster. He wants to capture the authenticity of Morrison’s voice.

Welles is putting longer cutaways back into the script. He wants the elongated tension of dance music scenes to force the audience to wonder what’s happening. He feels the tedium of the first portion of the show will add believability to the later portions. 

Men will travel large distances, cabinet meetings will be held, savage battles will be fought in the air and on land. They’re ready.

It’s now 8PM. Welles has mounted the podium, assuming the stance of both director and star.  

It’s time to go on the air.