Gem of the Sound

From a new orange and white steel tower, 410 feet high and clean-cut as a Sheeler painting, Columbia Broadcasting System's WABC, without any increase in power, last week made itself heard with doubled intensity over a large section of the Eastern seaboard.

At 10:14 on Saturday night, after Civilian Defense Chief Fiorello LaGuardia had described the new 50.000 watt transmitter's insurance against wartime interruption (if power lines fail, it can run on its own generator, pick up the studio by micro-wave), the shift was made from WABC's old antennae near Wayne, NJ.

Secret of the new intensity: the 182-ton steel tower of the transmitter rests on four porcelain insulators set on concrete pedestals on an island poured between a few rocks in Long Island Sound off New Rochelle, N.Y. (TIME, Sept. 2, 1940), and is completely surrounded by salt water, the ideal "surround" for radio projection.

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