L. Robert du Treil
The National Association of Broadcasters has named the engineers slated to receive this year’s Engineering Achievement Awards in radio and television.
L. Robert du Treil will be awarded radio award for lifelong dedication to the industry. A radio engineering expert with 50 years’ experience, du Treil’s work has involved all aspects of AM, FM and television allocations.
For du Treil, broadcast engineering is a family matter. His father L.J.N. du Treil was a broadcast engineer with the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Co. and the Federal Radio Commission who later started his own consulting business. A third-generation engineer, Bob’s son L. Robert Du Treil Jr., today works at du Treil, Lundin & Rackley.
Radio Honor Roll Past winners of the NAB Engineering Achievement Award are listed. Beginning in 1991, both radio and TV winners were named; the radio winners are shown here.
1959 John T. Wilner
1960 T.A.M. Craven
1961 Raymond F. Guy
1962 Ralph N. Harmon
1963 Dr. George R. Town
1964 John H. DeWitt Jr
1965 Edward W. Allen Jr.
1966 Carl J. Meyers
1967 Robert M. Morris
1968 Howard A. Chinn
1969 Jarrett L. Hathaway
1970 Philip Whitney
1971 Benjamin Wolfe
1972 John M. Sherman
1973 A. James Ebel.
1974 Joseph B. Epperson
1975 John D. Silva
1976 Dr. Frank G. Kear
1977 Daniel H. Smith
1978 John A. Moseley
1979 Robert W. Flanders
1980 James D. Parker
1981 Wallace E. Johnson
1982 Julius Barnathan
1983 Joseph Flaherty
1984 Otis S. Freeman 1985 Carl E. Smith
1986 Dr. George Brown
1987 Renville H. McMann
1988 Jules Cohen
1989 William Connolly
1990 Hilmer Swanson
1991 George Marti
1992 Edward Edison & Robert L. Hammett
1993 Robert M. Silliman
1994 Charles T. Morgan
1995 Robert Orban
1996 Ogden Prestholdt
1997 George Jacobs
1998 John Battison
1999 Geoffrey Mendenhall
2000 Michael Dorrough
2001 Arno Meyer
2002 Paul Schafer
2003 John W. Reiser
2004 E. Glynn Walden
2005 Milford Smith
2006 Benjamin Dawson & Ronald Rackley
2007 Louis A. King
2008 Thomas B. Silliman
2009 Jack Sellmeyer
2010 Steve Church Numerous papers authored by Bob du Treil have been presented to broadcast groups. He is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, the Society of Broadcast Engineers and the Association of Federal Communications Consulting Engineers, where he is a former president. Du Treil received his Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from Louisiana State University in 1961. Engineering firms for which he has worked include Jules Cohen & Associates, L. J. N. du Treil & Associates (founded by his father) and John H. Mullaney & Associates.
Du Treil now is a consultant with du Treil, Lundin & Rackley Inc., and formerly its owner and president. Among his most notable contributions is work on medium-wave (AM) directional antenna technology within the International Telecommunication Union in the 1980s.
“Bob has the reputation of being a very creative consultant, very adept at visualizing design possibilities for transmitting antennas and what might be accomplished with the modification of other stations’ facilities and/or revision of foreign station notifications,” the NAB wrote in its Radio TechCheck newsletter. “Many believe that there are radio stations operating today with facilities that would never have been built except for Bob’s ‘out of the box’ creative thinking and his deft ability to make innovative proposals to the FCC in cases without clear-cut precedents.”
Thomas B. Keller Thomas B. Keller will be awarded the Television Engineering Award for his achievements from 50+ years of service. Keller served as president of NAB’s Science and Technology department in the 1980s, playing a role in establishing the ATSC, and supervised the Advanced Television Terrestrial Broadcast Project, which gave demonstrations for the FCC and Congress on the capabilities of early HDTV technologies.
Keller is president of the technology consulting firm T. Keller Corp., which has led development efforts in broadcast equipment and practices. He engineered an early electronic field production program for network release and produced a computerized captioning system for the hearing-impaired. Keller is a senior member of the Broadcast Technology Society of the IEEE and is a Lifetime Fellow of the SMPTE.
Last year’s honorees were Steve Church and Mark Richer.
