National Affairs: Tingling Task

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In the long, narrow control room of Columbia Broadcasting Co., high above Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, are switches, plugs, tubes, grills, meters, other complicated instruments of broadcasting science. At 6 a. m. one cold, black morning last week, there stood brawny Harold Vivian, chief control room operator. He had been on duty all night making tests. Now he was watching the chief engineer and assistants inspect apparatus, establish contact with outlying stations. A hushed, nervous expectancy filled the room. In a half-minute they would begin broadcasting to 59 stations in the U. S. and Canada, a prime program.

Then an assistant tripped over a temporary wire connecting a motor generator and a rectifier panel. The wire broke. Swift inspection determined it would take several minutes to repair the break; unless it were repaired nothing could be broadcast.

Operator Vivian scooped up the loose ends of wire, held them tightly together in one hand. An arc burned his hand. To close the arc he squeezed harder. The harder he squeezed, the more current leaked into his arm, made it jerk crazily. Had he not been standing on a cork-insulated floor, had he not kept clear of a well-grounded duct a few inches from his foot, the 220-volt current would have killed him.

The electricians hurried a new connection, rerouted the current in two minutes. Released from the live wire, Vivian's arm stopped its mad, involuntary gesticulation.

Weak from the shock, Operator Vivian had his burned hands bandaged, went home to bed.

Throughout the land that early morning countless citizens listened at their radios to the benevolent voice of George V, King and Emperor, as he opened the London Naval Parley (TIME, Jan. 27). No Columbia System listener knew then that a good part of the current carrying the imperial voice over that hook-up had passed through the body of Operator Vivian, who was too preoccupied with his tingling task to hear the speech.