On the Air And Under The Ground

Upon submitting his senior thesis in April 1943, an elated Harold F. Van Ummerson 44 ran down to the Harvard radio station, inspired to do something unusual. For the next three hours, he played all of Beethoven's symphonies in numerical order, changing the 78 RPM records every three or four minutes.

Early the next morning, Van Ummerson left the station and walked down to the Charles River, where he threw a copy of the inspirational thesis off a bridge.

So began one of WHRB's oldest traditions, the musical "orgy," Van Ummerson is still remembered as one of the station's great innovators, and the marathon orgies he inspired have become a Reading Period standard at the station, focusing on more than just classical music and ranging from live folk music to reggae.

A week after his historical broadcast, Van Ummerson was drafted, and left Cambridge without knowing about the tradition he started. "The first I heard about [the orgies] was in an issue of the alumni bulletin in about 1960," he says now.

At the time of Van Ummersen's original orgy, the station was only three years old and could be received only inside Harvard buildings. But it had already come a long way.

On April 15, 1940, a small group of radio enthusiasts had broadcast along the University's heating pipes to a few of their friends with radios who knew when to listen.

The three students who started the project had persuaded the University to donate some rooms in a building on Quincy St. and to help fund the equipment for the station.

Electrical expert Charles W. Oliphant '41 built the transmitter, while William W. Tyng '41 did the paperwork and fundraising. Lawrence P. Lader '41, the station's programming director, recalls that Oliphant's transmitter was "only five or 10 watts--just enough to send it through the pipes."

"We had one studio and all we could afford was to buy a few turntables and microphones," says Lader. To block out sound, they covered the walls with blankets. The station's first broadcast was less than two hours long, but included a Jazz program, a discussion of classical music, and a news report.

Without a license, the station could not broadcast to the general public Oliphant found, however, that the signal was travelling illegal all over the Boston area through pipes and was connected to the University's steam system.

A few days after the first broadcast, the station was closed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and forced to find another way of transmitting.

While Oliphant searched for a better way to transmit, Lader and Lyng looked for funding beyond the University's initial investment. As executives of The Crimson, the two persuaded the paper to loan the station money for its daily operations.

"I got consumed by the station, and sort of gave up my editorial job at The Crimson," says Lader.

On December 2, 1940, the station began broadcasting through the electrical light wires as WHCN, the Harvard Crimson Network. The signal traveled along wires and could be picked up by radios located within a few yards of the University's electrical system. The signal quality improved and the transmissions could be contained within the University.

A number of students performed radio dramas, and the station carried interviews, poetry readings, and political debates. "We would have two people debating debates. "We would have two people debating in one studio with a studio audience," says Lader. "We literally almost had fights on the radio--people would scream and yell."

Musical programs concentrated on classical music, but also included a great deal of jazz. In 1944, about a year after the first orgy, Richard L. Kaye '46 broadcast the second classical music orgy, which he called The Harold Ferdinand Van Ummerson Memorial Program.

Because the station had not built up a record library of its own, the Briggs and Briggs music store loaned records in exchange for advertising. Every morning, disc jockeys would go to the store, select the records they wanted to air, and return them the next day.

WHCN was run separately from The Crimson by 1942, when it paid back the paper's investment and became independent as WHRV, the Harvard Radio Voice, known as "The Listening Habit of America's First University," according to David R. Elliott '64, the station's unofficial archivist.

After World War II, a number of students trained as technicians in the Army returned to Harvard and helped move the station to the basement of the original Dudley House on Dunster St., where they rebuilt the studios.

The station was still small, with only a single studio and control room. "My principal memory of it was that it was a fire trap and we always wondered how long it would last," says former President Richard P. Kleeman '44.

On February 1, 1951, WHRV was incorporated as Harvard Radio Broadcasting, Inc. The same day, the station inaugurated new call letters and began transmitting as WHRB.

Since the station's founding, it had been prevented from broadcasting to the public by the difficulty of getting one of the limited AM frequencies. But in the mid-'50s, the FCC began regulating and assigning FM frequencies.

"FM in those days was an abandoned and unknown way of transmitting a radio signal," says Loren L. Wyss '55-8, a former station president. There were only two FM stations in Boston, and they "appealed to a few music freaks because of [FM's] high fidelity," Wyss says.

The station applied for a frequency but immediately ran into difficulties. "The chief problem was a legal one--the FCC didn't want a bunch of kids who changed every two years to be responsible for a radio station that broadcast rather widely across the Boston area," says Wyss. But with the help of a number of WHRB graduates who worked for the FCC, the station was given an FM frequency.

Another station donated a 500-watt transmitter and on May 17, 1957, WHRB began broadcasting all over the Boston area. "We would get cards from people who had heard a 'strange signal' as far away as 100 miles west of us. It forced the station to become much more professional and to mature much more quickly," says Wyss.

The station still aired mainly classical music, but also played jazz, opera, and newly popular folk music. WHRB also concentrated on its news programs, just at a time when inexpensive portable tape recorders were being introduced. For the first time, reporters could play tapes of events or interviews in addition to describing what had occurred.

When President-elect John F. Kennedy '40 came to Harvard in early 1961, WHRB news director James F. Flug '60 managed to be the only reporter to interview him that day, by talking to him in his limousine. As a result, Flug was the first reporter to find out about Kennedy's plans for starting the Peace Corps.

"When [Kennedy] got out into the Yard, there was a total mob scene," says Flug. "As he passed by, I said, 'I'm from WHRB and I'm supposed to interview you.' He said 'Hop in!'"

Earlier, Flug had interviewed Kennedy in West Virginia, where the candidate had refused to answer some of Flug's questions about his media campaign. Flug recalls that Kennedy's "people told me later he had in fact remembered the Harvard reporter who had given him such a rough interview."

Flug says that at the time "we really had a running competition with The Crimson" in news coverage. WHRB began to issue a summary of its 11 p.m. newscast and would pass it out every morning in the dining halls.

WHRB was only slightly affected by the militant mood of the 1960s, says former President James B. Porter '70. "The time that I was president was a very quiet time for WHRB," he says. "There were still an awful lot of traditionalists at the station."

Perhaps the only exception was the Garbage Orgy, during which "some people would play or do whatever seemed to fit their fancy." This included talking, playing sports tapes, and listening to music that wouldn't have been played otherwise.

But classical music continued to be the backbone of the station. "From what we could gather, we were one of the top two or three FM classical stations," says Porter. At the time, the FM market was very small. "That's where you found the hard core classical music and the real traditional jazz and folk," Porter says.

Stereo radio, though still a novelty, was gaining listeners. Porter says he thinks "the ability to broadcast in FM stereo was a real plus. At that time, stereo equipment was being made that was affordable to college students and we were able to be a part of that time."

Since the early 1970s, says Elliott, the greatest change at WHRB has been the increase in rock programming. In the early '70s, popular rock music was aired more and more frequently. In the mid-'70s, the rock show "Plastic Passions" began and became one of the station's major shows. Within a few years, "The Darker Side" and other shows devoted to music ranging from reggae to soul to jazz took to the air.

The technical quality of the broadcasts remains high. WHRB still uses reel-to-reel tapes instead of the simpler but lower-quality carts most stations use, says President Stephen H. Shenefield '85. "People visit here and can't believe we don't use, these machines," he says of the carts. The station avoids another common proactive of cutting down on signal quality to increase range. In addition, the denizens of the Memorial Hall basement use high-quality turntable cartridges

A recent addition to the station is the "Compact Disk Monitor" program, focusing on new high-quality laser disks.

From the beginning, the station has carried live broadcasts of many major Harvard sports contests. A large number of Harvard alumni and students in the area listen regularly, according to Program Director Michael I Rosenberg '85, and only recently, he notes have other stations carried the games.

But WHRB does more than produce quality programming, says Elliott. Under the terms of the guidelines written during the station's incorporation, it also serves to educate its members in the functions of a commercial radio station.

WHRB requires compers to master two fields, which can be on-the-air, such as classical music or news announcing, or off-the-air, such as business or technical engineering. All of the approximately 100 active members, even those who do not broadcast, have learned to use the studio controls. In some music areas, such as rock, compers must also have a good knowledge of the major musicians and bands in the field.

In its capacity of teaching students, the station has been successful. A number of the approximately 1500 WHRB alumni have gone on to careers in broadcasting, including NBC television newscaster Chris Wallace '69.

"I probably learned as much from my experience at WHRB as from anything else at Harvard," says Flug.