Paul Stories (the last): Big Silver Tubes

During my freshman year at college, I worked the weekend sunrise shift as an engineer at a radio station in the suburbs of Boston (the chief engineer of which reads this column, which is why I name neither him nor the station).

Like many engineers, I was not scrupulous about taking the hourly transmitter readings on the hour.  By 1970, the federal requirement to do so was a relic, as modern transmitters were so stable.

Well, except this one day. It had been 90 minutes since my last reading. I was sitting a few feet away from the transmitter when I noticed something. Or rather, something missing. I realized it was the steady drone of the fan which dissipated the enormous heat from the tubes inside. By the time I got to the panel, all the meters were pinned, in a way that indicated it was shorted out.

I called the chief engineer at home and woke him up. He mentioned that there was supposed to be a fan interlock that shut the transmitter down, but it had obviously failed. He asked me how long the transmitter had been cooking; I couldn’t say.

“Open the back,” he said, walking me through some diagnostics. “Do you see two big silver tubes?” “All I see is two big black tubes.” I had contributed to the most extensive cookout I would ever attend; those fried tubes cost a whole lot of money to replace. Partly the fault of the failed interlock. Partly my fault.