At The Tone: A Little History of NIST Radio Stations WWV & WWVH (1955-2005)

September 20, 2012 10:32 PM

At The Tone: A Little History of NIST Radio Stations WWV & WWVH (1955-2005)
"At The Tone" is the first comprehensive audio survey of NIST Radio Stations WWV and WWVH: two legendary shortwave radio broadcasters whose primary purpose is the dissemination of scientifically precise time and frequency.

Offered publicly for the first time after 20 years of research, the set represents a huge cross-section of the stations' "life and times," including recordings of obsolete formats, original voices and identifications, special announcements, format changes, "leap seconds," and other aural oddities from 1955 to 2005.

After unfathomable years of delays, I've decided to launch this project as a simple online stream. Originally intended to be a full-color book and 74-minute CD, the project now lives as a SoundCloud stream with textual notes for each track. (The project can still be ordered as a custom CD burn with printed notes.)

Role: Producer and curator

posted by mykescipark (8 comments total)

Listened to most of this last night, and I'm planning on many frequent returns. An excellent collection, Myke, thanks!

However, if I understood correctly there's accompanying text for each track? I was interested to read those, but couldn't figure out where to see it after I set the playlist into motion. How does that work? Or am I mistaken?
posted by carsonb at 9:57 AM on September 21, 2012

It's somewhat annoying, but you have to go into each track to read the notes, rather than simply listening to the playlist.
posted by mykescipark at 10:16 AM on September 21, 2012

It's as I feared then. I'll be sure to do that next go-round. Thanks!
posted by carsonb at 10:17 AM on September 21, 2012

I've loved the non descript mission of WWV and WWVH since I was a ham radio operator banging out morse code. I love it that there is something called the NIST and the US Naval Observatory Master Clock.
posted by CollectiveMind at 8:37 PM on October 1, 2012

So, I was delighted to hear #45 on that playlist.
posted by solarion at 12:28 AM on October 12, 2012

#39 is actually the one used by Negativland :-)
posted by mykescipark at 9:51 AM on October 13, 2012

This is so cool. Thanks for linking it.
posted by benito.strauss at 10:33 AM on April 22, 2015

Thought I'd update anyone still watching that I've now made this available on Bandcamp, remastered and with even more tracks... :-)
posted by mykescipark at 11:50 AM on November 3, 2015 [1 favorite]