The name Doherty was misspelled in the print edition of this article.
While we normally publish historical images in their original glorious black and white, I just couldn’t resist the urge to “colorize” this photo.
The image is a merger of two side-by-side black and white views of the Western Electric 407A2 50 kW water-cooled Doherty transmitter at KRLD in Dallas, taken sometime during World War II. The colors are accurate where known, and a best guess was made when they were not.
Of additional interest are the “8-ball” microphone on the desk and the gun rack on the wall, an indication of the wartime security conditions that existed at many major broadcast facilities during those years.
The photos were taken at the KRLD site on Saturn Road in Garland, Texas, still in use today. The site was built in 1940 when the station was authorized to increase its power from 10 kW to 50 kW.
These images are two of a number of old KRLD images that were rescued and posted on the Internet by Andrew K. Dart, reproduced here with his permission. They originally were provided to him by Leslie Turner.
You can see many more of Andrew’s KRLD images at www.akdart.com/vtr/vtr.html. There are also images of this same transmitter model at WHAS in Louisville at www.qsl.net/wb4wsb/whasam/am.html.
John Schneider is a lifetime radio history researcher. This is one in a series of photo features from his collection. Write him at [email protected]. Comment to [email protected].
