Comments on: N. B. C. Studio Marvels at Radio City (Nov, 1936)

By: djkrugger

djkrugger — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 05:41:11 +0000

“over 500 feet height prohibited by government as aviation hazard” LOL, surely lobbysts did their work!

By: Jim Wood

Jim Wood — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:49:33 +0000

Yes, a ribbon mic is generally a velocity mic, although ribbon mics that employ internal baffling to change the directional characteristic may tend to respond more to pressure gradients than the air velocity component. There were velocity mics that were not ribbons, but these were not common in broadcasting.

I’ll bet that the NBC installation depicted in that artist’s concept sounded a lot better than AM radio does today, and was a good deal more varied and interesting in content as well.

By: Casandro

Casandro — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 06:17:12 +0000

Bu isn’t a ribbon microphone mostly a velocity microphone? I mean most microphones work on velocity, only a few purely work on pressure.

By: KD5ZS

KD5ZS — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:56:06 +0000

Velocity and ribbon microphones get confused. Both were made by RCA and had a rather iconic shape. 75 years later some of these mikes are still in use.

By: Casandro

Casandro — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:19:10 +0000

Well obviously they had cables back then. VHF/UHF feeders weren’t in widespread use till the 1950s I think.

What’s more interresting is the “velocity microphone”. I don’t think many people know what that is. In a nutshell, it’s a directional microphone.

By: KD5ZS

KD5ZS — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:04:34 +0000

They didn’t have satellite communication in those days, only radio and telephone lines. I believe that VHF/UHF was still a research frontier.