When the 10th Amendment was real
Reviewing Graybill's Law:

The people of Free-Trade countries are therefore driven into the few occupations which are left, by reason of the destruction of their formerly more varied pursuits. Hence those diversified talents with which men are endowed are not developed but remain latent and unused, an incalculable detriment to the prosperity of their respective countries.

Graybill works the same way at ALL SCALES, from cells to worlds.

I've previously discussed how modularity in a city helped develop and maintain the skills of black people. When all ethnic groups have to compete in the same global market, only a few skills are favored.

In the realm of radio, I've discussed how distinct local stations developed and maintained the talents of local musicians and actors, who couldn't possibly make it in Hollywood.

Here's an example of modularity helping to develop engineering skills.

Globalism requires each module to know what the others are doing. Modularity frees up each entity to perform its duty with full attention. But Nature sometimes forces globalist knowledge into a localist situation. Do you surrender to globalism and break all the boundaries? Do you let the biggest and nastiest element have a total monopoly?

No, you don't have to surrender. Federal radio regulators in the '30s were devoted to maintaining localism and balancing big vs small, despite the physical limits imposed by the ether. There were only about 100 bandwidth channels in the broadcast band, which meant that many stations had to be assigned to each frequency. Low-power stations could be safely assigned to the same freq without interference, but higher-power stations posed a problem. One solution was time-sharing. There were dozens of sharing arrangements, some of which lasted into the 2000s.

One such arrangement linked KFAB in Lincoln and WBBM in Chicago.

From a modern book about the history of radio in Nebraska.

Having to leave the air during prime network programming in the evening hours was a problem that needed to be solved. A break came at the end of 1931 when KOIL 1260 dropped CBS and snatched the more popular NBC Blue from KFAB. It turned out to be a fortuitous move for KFAB. KFAB engineers and management realized that with CBS, programming during the restricted 7:30 to 10 p.m. hours would match that of WBBM, the Chicago CBS affiliate with which KFAB shares time. KFAB conceivably could remain on the air during the evening hours, but only if the audio and the radio frequencies of the two stations could be perfectly matched. Any slight variations between the two stations on the air at the same time would create annoying interference for listeners in areas where the signals overlap.

WBBM and CBS were on board with the idea. KFAB took over the less popular CBS network on January 8, 1932, and CBS engineers went to work to find a way to get the nighttime signals and audio of the two stations synchronized.

Synchronization was necessary because, in an area where the two station’s coverage overlaps, the two signals beat against each other producing an audible note that’s equal to the difference in the signal frequencies. That note can range from a low growl to a high tone. The greater the frequency difference, the higher the note. If the signal frequencies are within a cycle of each other, the note is too low to be audible.

Also to be synchronized was the program feed. It takes 26 milliseconds for the network audio to travel from Chicago over phone lines to Lincoln. This difference would be heard in the overlap area as an annoying echo.

The frequency problem was solved with a dedicated phone line that carried a tone, its variations being commands that would adjust the two transmitter frequencies together, but the audio delay was a harder problem. With CBS and WBBM footing the bill, engineers worked on a way to create a 26-millisecond delay at the Chicago transmitter in order to match the audio arriving 26 milliseconds later at the Lincoln transmitter.

For several months while the electronic delay system was being perfected and constructed, a relatively primitive non-electrical delay was developed. It used a 23-foot pipe with a speaker at one end and a microphone at the other. The distance the sound traveled through the pipe created the delay. The audio output of the acoustical delay was a bit narrow but acceptable for the time being and was used successfully for about nine months. The electronic audio delay when completed consisted of a lengthy series of filter circuits, equalizers, and fourteen amplifiers.

Those engineers were having fun. The FEDERAL REQUIREMENT OF LOCALISM gave them a reason to develop a unique solution, transferring KNOWLEDGE between the modules through a singular dedicated channel, without turning all variables into top-down global variables. Note especially that WBBM, the bigger station in the bigger city, paid for the work and compromised its own signal to let KFAB gain profit.

Now KFAB's loyal listeners could leave the dial on 770 during the important prime-time hours, and receive CBS with a strong local signal.

Labels: defensible times, skill-estate

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