West Peak (Or, “Radio Mountain”) by Frank Donovan - Y’S Men Storyteller Jan

West Peak (Or, “Radio Mountain”) by Frank Donovan - Y’s Men Storyteller Jan. 21, 2014

At an elevation of 1,024 feet, the talus-strewn rock cliffs of Meriden’s West Peak rise abruptly 900 feet above Connecticut’s Quinnipiac River Valley. As part of the Hanging Hills, West Peak and its companion East Peak are valued for their spectacular, easily accessible views north to Mt. Tom, Massachusetts and south to Long Island, NY.

West Peak is renowned well beyond Connecticut. I first learned of the Hanging Hills and West Peak 60 years ago while studying Geology at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. In 2012 our Y’s Men’s speaker, Wesleyan University’s Dr. Jelle Zeillinger de Boer, taught us that the Hanging Hills were formed over a time span of 20 million years during the Triassic and Jurassic periods, more than 200 million years ago. They are composed of basalt, an extrusive volcanic rock, also known as trap rock. Meriden’s basalt cliffs are the product of several massive lava beds hundreds of feet thick that welled up in geologic faults created by the rifting apart of ancient North America from Eurasia and Africa. Between eruptions erosion deposited deep layers of reddish-brown sediment in shallow seas between the lava flows. It’s a type of sandstone called arkose. The resulting “layer cake” of basalt and arkose eventually faulted and tilted upwards. You can readily observe these layers as you travel west on I-691 toward Cheshire.

West Peak is also famous for its role in broadcasting, especially for the pioneering development of FM radio networks. Indeed, there has been so much radio activity from atop West Peak that it has been commonly known as “Radio Mountain”. I still recall, back in 1954, the array of flashing lights on West Peak’s every tower as I drove down Route 10 on Sunday nights returning to Ft. Dix, NJ, on a weekend pass, from Phyllis’ Berkshires’ town of Chester, Mass. (No interstates, then.) It was a welcomed benchmark. Today only the one highest tower, WHCN, is required by the FAA to alert aircraft with a flashing beacon.

Now, some background. The very first audio radio broadcast of entertainment and music was, arguably, made on Christmas Eve 1906 by Reginald Fessenden a Canadian-born engineer using a 420 foot tall transmitting tower at Brant Rock, Marshfield, Mass. Aiming to improve upon Marconi’s 1890s successes, Fessenden had contracted with General Electric to help design and produce a series of high- frequency alternator transmitters. Fessenden’s critical idea was that the variation or “modulation”, not the basic radio signal, could contain the basic information to be sent. The high- frequency radio wave simply carried the information that was encoded in this modulation. He was modulating the volume, or amplitude, of the carrier wave. His system was known as “amplitude modulation”, or AM radio. The magical aspect of this system was that a modulated signal need not be limited, as earlier, to the dots and dashes of Morse code. Rather, by using a simple microphone it could be made to carry anything – music, the human voice – anything that was sound. The subsequent experiments with frequency modulation led to the creation of FM radio in the 1930s by Edwin Armstrong whose later ideas involved Meriden’s West Peak.

Edwin Howard Armstrong, born in New York City, has been called, “the most prolific and influential inventor in radio history”. Today, he’s virtually unknown. Why? Because his genius “was all substance and no style”. Among his several major inventions was his momentous creation of FM radio. Working in the basement of Columbia University’s Philosophy Hall, Armstrong invented wide-band frequency modulation (FM) radio. Instead of varying, or modulating, the amplitude of a radio carrier wave to encode an audio signal, his method varied the frequency. FM thus enabled the transmission of a wider range of audio frequencies, as well as audio free of “static” noise, a common problem in AM radio. Armstrong received a patent on wide-band FM on December 26, 1933. After hearing demonstrations of FM compared to AM radio, jazz and classical music lovers were enthralled.

West Peak has been used for radio broadcasting since 1936. In late 1938 W1XPW, licensed to Franklin Doolittle’s WDRC Inc., was given authorization for experimental operation. On January 4-5, 1940 Edwin Armstrong utilized Doolittle’s West Peak station for a chain of historic experimental FM relay broadcasts. Programming was sent from New York City to Boston via Yonkers, NY, to Alpine, NJ, to West Peak in Meriden, CT , to Paxton, Mass., to Mt. Washington, NH and finally to WNAC in Boston. The success of this important test paved the way for the proliferation of radio networks, including the now defunct Yankee Network. Armstrong had been hired in 1934 by RCA’s President David Sarnoff. Sarnoff’s vision was that radio’s real advantage was not point-to-point transmissions, but from one source to a very large audience. He was impressed with Armstrong’s FM system, but he saw FM as a threat to RCA’s large AM radio empire and Sarnoff’s own plans for TV broadcasting. He refused further support of FM. RCA then lobbied the FCC for changes in regulations and the re-allocation of the limited electromagnetic spectrum so as to prevent FM radios from becoming dominant. Financially broken and mentally beaten after years of legal ensnarement with RCA, Armstrong lashed out at his wife with a fireplace poker. She left him to live with her sister in Granby, CT. On January 31, 1954, remorseful and heartbroken, Armstrong stepped out of a 13th floor window of his New York City apartment building to his death, fully dressed with a hat, overcoat and gloves. He left a two-page suicide love note to his wife.

I have been personally engaged in live radio and television, including CPTV and WNPR, almost every year since 1949. As a student at UMass-Amherst, the very first FM radio signal I ever heard was from Meriden’s WMMW- FM from atop West Peak. It broadcast “Storecast” to stores and business offices. Shortly thereafter I became the student General Manager of UMass’ WMUA – 91.1 FM

In the 1960s and 1970s, I broadcast programs for many years from transmitters on “Radio Mountain”. When WMMW- FM became 50,000 watt WBMI at 95.7 FM its powerful GE stereo signal covered much of southern New England and Long Island. Phyllis and I broadcast “Donovan on Broadway: All the Music of Broadway and Hollywood, Too” which featured original cast albums, theatre reviews and interviews with the stars. We did that show for 90 minutes, three nights a week for 16 years on WBMI. My station ID was, “From out of the night to you, this is Music from Radio Mountain…” Simultaneously, WBMI was broadcasting Muzak on a sub-carrier from the same West Peak transmitter. WBMI was later sold and became WKSS 95.7 FM, but it is still broadcasting from atop West Peak. I later broadcast every Sunday afternoon for 12 years from 1:00 to 6:00 p.m. on WATR AM 1320 and WATR-FM 92.5. (The FCC banned simulcasting in the late 1960s.) WATR-FM’s transmitter broadcast from West Peak. Today it is “Country 92.5”, WWYZ, but it’s still atop West Peak. Currently, West Peak is the transmitting site for seven FM broadcast stations: WNPR, WDRC-FM, WWYZ, WKSS, WZMX, WHCN and WMRQ-FM. In addition, there is a wide AT&T tower, scores of two-way company radios and many cell phone relays.

To conclude, I never would have predicted in 1954 that today my family would enjoy a magnificent ever-changing view of West Peak and its flashing lights from my picture windows and deck high on Tulip Drive. We love it (and the fireworks at Castle Craig). Thank you.