The NBC Reel
In July of 2018 I was checking out a thrift store auction site and spied a 10" reel of tape that caught my attention because of the label on the box. It indicated that the box had, at one time, contained Part 1 of the "Air - Master" for the "Chase and Sanborn 102nd Anniversary" program from November 13, 1966. This was too much to pass up and I was the successful bidder, picking it up, with a 7" reel of blank tape, for under $20.
A label is no guarantee on the contents of the tape but once I received the tape and got my Tandberg TD20A-SE running again, I found that the recording was as indicated. It is recorded full track at 7-1/2 ips so the quality is excellent. It is about 55 minutes long and only contains Part 1 of the broadcast.
I copied the tape to my computer using a very old copy of Sound Forge with settings at 44,100 Hz, 16-bit, stereo. I saved as a .wav file which I converted to MP3 at 192kbps. The resulting file is excellent quality at 77 megabytes.
It is narrated by Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy and has lots of clips from NBC radio.
Click on an image for a closer look.
