The Archival Production Line

If you had 3,000 photonegatives sitting in acidifying cellulose sleeves, you'd want to rehouse them, wouldn't you? That's one of the challenges facing the Library, and a concerted effort this summer by archival assistants old and new has resolved it. The photonegatives in this case contain 4" by 5" images of the RCA Laboratories staff taken between in-house by Norm Newell, Tom Cooke, and Marty Zak from the 1950s to the 1980s. Everyone who needed a photo for a passport, an award, or a c.v. got a photo, and a sleeve with their name and the date it was taken. Everyone from A to S, that is, the last tray of negatives being absent when executive director Alex Magoun retrieved them from the Labs' abandoned photo laboratory. He put them in archival boxes designed for minimal chemical activity and the trapping of any reactive off-gassing from the photos. But who was going to remove those sleeves slowly yellowing as their translucent cellulose broke down?

The answer lay in the Library's crack crew of students from West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North and South Brunswick High School. Since this spring Adnan Khan, Kishore Riyali, Ujaas Barvalia, Harshal Patel, Samarth Patel, Pooja Mantha, Pranavi Vemuri, and Rajiv Putcha began the tedious task of copying the information on the old sleeve and removing each negative and sliding it into an inert polypropylene sleeve. They printed neatly, deciphered the sometimes flowing script and scrawls of the photographers, and most moved on to other pursuits this summer. Rajiv, however, brought his brother Rohith and sister Rohini to the Library, and they in turn recruited their friend Rahul Parekh. Halfway through the L-N box (R. P. Labe - F. Nyman), they caught a flyer, created an efficient system that still let them talk, and moved through the rest of the collection in jig time. Way to go, gang!

Summer Field Trips

While we await the response of several hundred school principals to our field trip invitation, two different organizations visited last week. Under the initiative of New Jersey state curator of natural history David Paris, the museum's Kaleidoscope summer science academy learned about some of the state's traditions in high-tech research and innovation, sound waves and their application, and data gathering techniques in the museum. Executive director Alex Magoun and docents Vrinda Nair and Swapnil Mhatre guided the 36 students and their chaperones through two hours of science and history, no small feat when your students run from 6 to 12 years of age! On Friday, through the initiative of Tia Clifton of Haven Home in Trenton, the Library hosted a smaller group of girls to learn about David Sarnoff's life and collect information from the museum exhibits. "With every visit we learn something new from the students and about our program, just as they learn a few things from us," says Alex.

The World's Youngest Archival Assistant?

Until someone proves us differently, Vivian Zhang is the world's youngest archival assistant. A hardworking fourth-grade student in Montgomery, New Jersey, she helps at the Library on holidays, thanks to her father, who works at Sarnoff Corporation. Since last spring, when Vivian helped dry out hundreds of color slides, she has also assisted with resleeving and relabeling the negative collection of RCA Laboratories staff and rehousing Jan Rajchman's publications series in archival folders. Vivian's attention to detail, clear handwriting, dedication, and good humor are a big help not only to us but to future researchers!

Looking back while Looking Ahead

We've just concluded an amazing week: four days of field trips for 200 third graders, and another jam-packed open house on Saturday. If the engagement of the children from Dutch Neck Elementary School is any indication, the American prospect is brighter than we think. They took in Alex Magoun's illustrated talk on David Sarnoff's immigrant experience, they collected data in a wide-ranging scavenger hunt in the museum under Sharon Chapman and Vrinda Kaimal's guidance, and they mastered the concepts of sound waves, propagation, and reproduction in some cool interactive programs run by Alex and musician Samantha Chapman. Several of them returned Saturday, parents literally in tow, to see and hear thereminist Kip Rosser and the electronic musicians of Brainstatik.

We'd like to thank all of the above, plus those who helped behind the scenes: Jeff Grabel for organizing this enlarged sequel to last spring's pilot trip; Dutch Neck principal Scott Feder; Carolann Churins, Sarnoff Corporation vice president for adminstration; educational consultant Jane Eilbacher; Forrest Bradbury of Princeton University, and Mike Bunting, Mike Kane, Dennis McClary, and Fred Vannozzi of Sarnoff Corporation for more technical support than you can imagine.

Radio Merit Badge Day at the David Sarnoff Library

We just qualified 55 Boy Scouts from all over the Central New Jersey Council for their radio merit badges today! The David Sarnoff Library, with the generous support of Sarnoff Corporation, hosts this wonderful event on the first Saturday of every January because it can provide the space for the Boy Scout leaders and their amateur radio volunteers to set up four work stations and four radio stations, as well as two or even three classrooms for the scouts to work through the requirements of the radio merit badge. In four years, over 250 scouts have qualified, and many of them have pursued their amateur radio operator's licenses as well.

First the staff had to set up their posts, like this one on the Library patio, bright and early in the morning.

Then the scouts and their parents have to appear and sign in, and when they've gathered in the auditorium, organizer Gary Wilson, K2GW, welcomes them and explains the day's schedule. The Library's executive director, Alex Magoun, introduces the crowd to David Sarnoff's amazing career in radio, starting as an office boy and wireless operator and ending as a seer of our internetworked wireless world in the 21st century.

With that story fresh in their minds, the scouts make their appointed rounds: to the Lounge,the patio, the office suite, and the museum, among others.

At the end of the day, the scouts gathered again in the Auditorium to receive their certificates (the badges are in the mail). But they received far more than they bargained for, because Princeton University's Dr. Joe Taylor, K1JT and Nobel Laureate, dropped by to explain how his radio hobby and experiments as a child got him started on a wonderfully fulfilling career in physics and radio astronomy, in which he and fellow Nobel Laureate Dr. Russell Hulse discovered the first binary pulsar. O, the places you can go in wireless!

Electromusic Chamber Orchestra Thrills Crowd

Suffering from Bach fatigue and intrigued by electronic multimedia made flesh, neither snow, nor rain, nor gloom of night intimidated nearly 50 people from attending the David Sarnoff Library's concert this evening. And what a concert it was, alternately soothing and stimulating electronic music and images synchronized on Sarnoff Corporation's stage in two fascinating sets. Brain Statik and Xeroid Entity opened while Hong Waltzer mixed a DVD and some software to project a shifting montage of imagery, patterns, and colors through an LCD projector, and Brain Statik's Ken Palmer provided arrays of fixed and fluid lighting on-stage. There was a little bit of everything--after all, you can do a lot with guitar, saxophone, drum, and piano synthesizers. When we have photos or links to the music, we'll post them, but take it on good authority that they were worthy heirs to the legacy of RCA's Harry Olson and the Mark I Music Synthesizer built at the RCA Labs in the early 1950s.

After an intermission where the audience adjourned to Grover's Mill Coffee and McCaffrey's cookies as well as the Library's museum, the chamber players also known as the Martian Radio Orchestra--Howard Moscovitz, thereminist Kip Rosser, and Greg Waltzer--joined Brain Statik, Xeroid Entity, and Hong Waltzer onstage for another fascinating set of improvisations that gained sustained applause and enthusiastic endorsements by the happy crowd. Once again, the Library provided a space where people from a wide array of backgrounds and interests could bridge C. P. Snow's two cultures of art and science, and learn something about both as well as their combination.

Will they be back? You bet; save Saturday night, March 15, for our spring equinox show! If that's too far away, make plans to visit during our open house and NJARC radio repair clinic on Saturday, January 19. Details will follow, but Brain Statik will be back, and Kip Rosser is a good bet to play the theremin. For now, let's thank them all for coming out, along with Library volunteers Sharon Chapman and Vrinda Kaimal for running the ticket booth and gift shop, and Dr. Rebecca Mercuri of the Princeton ACM/IEEE-CS group for making it all happen!

Kaimal Completes Broadcast Manual Index

It was a dull job, but someone had to do it, and that someone was Vrinda Kaimal. Like other volunteers she started with one day a week, and then as the pages turned and she kept typing into a spreadsheet the dot-matrixed printed entries from the RCA Broadcast Manuals Index (1930-1984), something magical happened. She began coming in two days, and then three, caught up in the lines of print, patiently tapping away at MI and IB numbers, and esoteric entries like this:

31535 B1 ES-561485/6/7 BTG-5AL/10AL/20AL/20AR AUTOMATIC LOGGING EQUIPMENT,

where 31535 equals the IB (Instruction Book) number, B1 the file cabinet and drawer that no longer exist, ES-561485/6/7 the MI (Master Index) number, and BTG-5AL/10AL/20AL/20AR the model numbers for a device related to Broadcast Transmitters.

Wouldn't that make your eyeballs glaze over before they fell on to the keyboard? Not Vrinda's. After all, this 20-year-old binder and its 61 pages of single-spaced entries represent the only control to the 25 file cabinets of manuals donated to the Library through the good offices of Stu Cooke. While the flood last spring dissolved all the marked archival boxes holding the manuals, this spreadsheet will enable us to inventory what's in the freeze-dried boxes. Then we can try to fill in for the water-ruined copies with the duplicates sorted by Phil Vourtsis in his quiet times in the basement in 2006:

So hats to Vrinda and to Phil for their part in the unending labors of establishing intellectual control over the ever-growing holdings of our archives!

When Art and Science Collide. . .

O, the humanity! Here at the David Sarnoff Library we were gratified to have the Hunterdon Radio Theatre and the New Jersey Antique Radio Club, aided and abetted by the Martian Radio Orchestra, revive the genius of Orson Welles, Howard Koch, and the uncounted inventors, engineers, entrepreneurs, and marketers who made the 1930s the Golden Age of Radio in the United States. On Saturday, October 27, we hosted two shows of War of the Worlds for 250 men, women, and children. Everyone pitched in on the set-up

. . . balancing the voices at the period and contemporary microphones for the best output from the 16.1 monophonic AM surround sound generated by the NJARC's radios.

Before the main event, Howard Moscovitz, Kip Rosser, and Greg Waltzer donned their outré apparel and entranced the early arrivals with two keyboards, a Moog theremin, and electronically treated voices and noises to cast a dramatic mood we won't soon forget!

The matinee found some 30 members of the Encore Monroe retirement community reliving a space-age past! The crowd didn't go wild as the HRT hit the stage, but all enjoyed the theatrics on-stage and the sensations conjured between the ears by the surround sound. What lessons might we draw from the 1938 broadcast and panic? Oh, there are the usual issues of responsibility, by both broadcasters not to transmit an electronic version of "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, and citizens to inform themselves so as not to spread unfounded rumors (or urban or internet legends). And to this balance of power we should keep in mind Melvin Kranzberg's first law of technology: that it is neither good nor bad, but nor is it neutral.

Meanwhile, Library volunteers Sharon Chapman and Vrinda Kaimal were preparing the setting for the evening dessert reception, featuring Tracey's custom cookies, courtesy McCaffrey's Supermarkets








and gourmet coffee, courtesy Grover's Mill Coffee & Tea. We'd show pix, but everyone ate and drank everything before there was time!

A splendid time was had by all, including executive producer Alex Magoun and a small green friend:

So, until Saturday, October 25, 2008, stay tuned!

(photos by Sharon Chapman and Alex Magoun)

Madame Librarian!

This just in! Our super volunteer, Sharon Chapman, who has helped with everything from War of the Worlds to processing the Vladimir Zworykin and Harry Olson Collections to recruiting junior archivists to firing up this blog and our de.lic.ious account, has received official notice of Rutgers University's conferral of her master's degree in Library and Information Sciences:

MLIS October 2007
Program: LIBRARY AND INFORMATION STUDIES
Completed: N.A.S.D.T.E.C.
Approved Curriculum: EDUCATIONAL MEDIA SPECIALIST

We are extremely pleased to have both benefited from her degree-related projects and offered the Library as a site for her class work. Congratulations, Sharon!

Volunteers Brainstorming Session Monday, October 15th!

Remember to come to our fifth and final Volunteer Brainstorming Session of the fall on Monday, October 15th at 7:30 at the library. We will focus on the Archives, including cataloging, rehousing and storage of the collections of RCA broadcast manuals, technical reports and lab notebooks that were damaged during last April's flood. Please come for conversation and snacks, and feel free to bring a friend!

Future Docents Wanted!

Don't forget to come to Monday night's brainstorming session if you have any interest in being a docent or any ideas about how to make our emerging tour guide program a success!

Volunteers - Please Come To Tuesday Night's Fundraising Meeting

This week's volunteer brainstorming session will focus on Fundraising. We'll be meeting at the Library on Tuesday, October 2nd at 7:30 PM. Please come and help us start planning and budgeting for 2008 and develop ways to raise funds for all of the field trips, exhibits, and other great programs that we are in the process of developing!

Hope to see you there!

What They Did for Their Summer Vacation

The summer of 2007 was the summer of volunteers for the Library, and most of them are local high school students. What started with one in the fall of 2006 has snowballed into twelve. They hail from West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North and perform a variety of invaluable archival services, ranging from cataloging to sorting to rehousing to digitizing RCA collections of documents and periodicals.

Kunal Deopare, the pioneer, started scanning the lab notebook pages of RCA Labs staff who contributed to the invention of liquid crystal displays (LCDs) in the 1960s. Swapnil Mhatre joined him a few weeks later and after scanning to PDF format several hundred 1940s and 1950s RCA Princeton engineering memos and technical reports, he started in full-time last summer on scanning the 31 volumes of RCA Engineer, 1955-86. These illustrated magazines, published four to six times a year, contain articles by technical and managerial staff on new and old technologies, from radio and TV antennas to space cameras to solid-state lasers and computers, and how they fit in the company's changing strategies for return on investment.

Over the winter of 2006-7, they were joined by Ujaas Barvalia, Adnan Khan, Kishore Ryali, Hamad Masood, and Kirin Masood, joined in the scanning and downloading of reports, and did the preliminary sorting and weeding of the collections of John Coleman, biophysicist and super-electron microscope designer, and Charlie Wine, Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at the David Sarnoff Research Center. Over the summer, with Jonathan Slawitzky, they removed the oxidizing (rusting) metal fasteners and foldered some 2,500 Princeton Engineering Memos between 1952 and 1969, and are gearing up for the Princeton and Zurich Technical Reports.

In addition this summer we saw Rohit and Renuka Reddy, and Vidya Nandarpurkar and Aleesha Shaik come on board. Rohit is busy digitizing and formatting for davidsarnoff.org the history of the invention of electronic color television at RCA's Princeton Labs, 1945-54, while Renuka is carefully typing into a spreadsheet the somewhat chaotic handtyped index to the Labs' newsletter, Radiations (so named in a contest by Labs staff member Lawrence Giacoletto to reflect RCA's use of electromagnetic phenomena in its products). Last but hardly least, over the summer Vidya Nandarpurkar typed in the annual tables of contents for RCA Review, the company's elite technical journal, 1952-86, into a spreadsheet and then scanned to PDF all the Reviews' contents from 1936-64 before school started. She recruited Aleesha Shaik to join her, and Aleesha has rehoused and relabeled in archival (acid- and lignin-free) envelopes some 2,500 4x5 photonegatives for the Carl Byoir RCA collection, before joining the PEM rehousing project. Executive Director Dr. Alex Magoun couldn't ask for a more productive and dynamic group of students, who are doing so much to preserve the legacy of invention and innovation at one of the country's greatest companies!

photo by Frank Wojciechowski

Volunteers At The Library

Last night was the first of our volunteer brainstorming sessions at the Library. We discussed the War of the Worlds event and the soon-to-be-announced YouTube contest, and came up with some exciting ideas.

Your next chance to be part of the fun is this Monday, September 24th, when we brainstorm about our developing field trip program. Anyone who wants to help out with these trips or anyone who has ideas about how to make these programs more intriguing for youngsters is welcome to attend.

Hope to see you then!

Remember To Come To The Library Tonight!

Come to the David Sarnoff Library tonight at 7:30. We'll be brainstorming about this year's War of the Worlds event - come and be a part of the fun!

If you've never visited the Library before, this is a great opportunity to look around, visit our displays, and see what makes the Library such a special place.

Directions to the Library can be found here.

Hope to see you at the meeting!

Calling All Volunteers!

These are exciting times for the David Sarnoff Library. We have big plans for the future - as more people have become aware of us, we're planning on serving the community in all sorts of unique and interesting ways.

With big plans, however, comes the need for manpower. With that in mind, we're holding five Brainstorming Sessions at the Library so that its Friends, old and new, can meet likeminded people dedicated to education and history, and help develop the programs that will shape the Library's future. Out of these sessions, we expect to form committees that will help executive director Alex Magoun expand the scope and scale of the Library's activities in accord with its mission.

All of these meetings will be held at the Library, will begin at 7:30, offer refreshments, and last approximately one hour -

1. Tuesday, September 18 - The annual War of the Worlds Broadcast fundraiser takes place on Saturday, October 27th. Help us plan and generate publicity, solicit sponsors for the Program, and promote the YouTube video contest!
2. Monday, September 24 - Field Trips. Our 3rd grade program on David Sarnoff, sound, and electronic communications needs docents and publicity. We also want to develop programs for middle school students in electricity, light, magnetism, video, and digital logic. If you like working with and inspiring children, or have ideas for hands-on activities, this is for you!
3. Tuesday, October 2 - Fundraising. We need to raise funds for field trips and exhibits, based on a strategy proposed by Library friend Michael Lundy and on our online store at cafepress.com/davidsarnoff: help us develop a Superfriends network and create popular RCA- and Nipper-related items!
4. Monday, October 8 - Tours. We expect an increased demand for tours this fall: can you help us prepare tours and schedules, or serve as a docent?
5. Monday, October 15 - Archives. We want to catalog, rehouse, and organize the collections of RCA Broadcast manuals, RCA technical reports, and lab notebooks recovered from April's devastating flood. Can you help?

We are looking forward to seeing many of you at these sessions. Come to as many as you think you can help with - we greatly appreciate whatever time, thought, and muscles you can offer.

If you have questions or suggestions, contact the Library by email or phone at (609) 734-2636.

The Library is located on Sarnoff Corporation's campus at 201 Washington Road, Princeton NJ 08540-6449. Directions can be found here. At the company's entrance, follow signs to the left for the Library and its "Private Entrance."