SBE history

The origination of the Society of Broadcast Engineers goes back to April of 1964.  TV’s were no longer being manufactured with VHF tuners only and Bakelite converters that once sat next to the clock on the family TV were dealt a slow but sure death blow.

John Batison, now retired and living in Ohio, had the idea for an organization of  TV engineers on April 5, 1964.  The Institute of Radio Engineers was the organization that broadcast engineers had in common at the time.  The Binghamton TV and radio engineers had started meeting monthly.  TV stations had a staff of four to five engineers in these times so attendance was good.  Unlike GM’s and Sales, the engineers met to help each other and share things like test equipment and emergency parts stock.  A list of test equipment was at hand so that if somebody needed a piece of equipment he did not own, he could borrow it from another station’s engineer. It was at such a meeting in the fall of 1964 that Charlie Hallinan became the first President of the SBE.  There was no distinction between National and local at this time.  Binghamton was the national headquarters.  Charlie ran The SBE, as he would say, “from my kitchen table”.  Charlie had a supply of caps in his garage and if some other AM station needed one, he would likely have one.  Maybe he would charge for the cap, maybe he would not.

Engineers met monthly at a local restaurant for lunch.  One of this original group’s innovations was to use Conel-Rad 2-way radios to tie the Broome Community College bomb shelter to WKOP and WNBF.  This later turned into EBS.  Joe Risse did up the first newsletter.  Chapter Two in Scranton became the second chapter.

These early lunch meetings tended toward 2.5 hours and that is when they became dinner meetings.  The recollection of one of these early dinner meeting is rather amusing.  The lights had flashed briefly (hint) and all the Chiefs got calls from their stations one by one.  The complaints were that the records (remember turntables) were spinning slowly.  The only solution was to wait it out because at most two stations had generators.  Most of you will remember this as the great black out of 1965 that affected much of the East Coast.

Charlie Hallinan was the first SBE president in 1964 and was President until 1968.   This point marks a great transition.  Charlie took the records from his kitchen table to Indianapolis.  Binghamton was no longer the national headquarters.  Charlie had run the operation on peanuts from his now famous kitchen table.  Charlie went to every national convention.  He had wanted the SBE to be like the ARRL with local divisions like SMPTE and Charlie would confront the national representatives with animosity.  Charlie was enthralled when an SBE engineer was on the Commission.

The first and second regional convention was in Owego NY starting in 1970.  The third one in 1972 was at Syracuse NY,
and hosted by Chapter 22. It had remained in Syracuse until 1999 when it moved 30 miles east to Verona NY.  Charlie had wanted to move this regional convention back to the Binghamton area.  Chapter 22  will appreciate the fact that we at Chapter One successfully talked Charlie out of it.

Chapter One has a frequency coordinator available for area stations.  All the churning in spectrum usage makes such coordination more vital than ever.  The SBE has filled this need since the earliest days.  Much is owed to Charlie Hallinan and people like him; it was their concern for fellow engineers that resulted in, among other things, the Society of Broadcast Engineers.