I have been doing some reorganizing lately and came across several photos from the 1960s. Back in 1969, I left the police department for the corporate world. I had received a lot of national and even international publicity in the late 60s, such as this Saturday Evening Post Magazine article. For you younger guys, that was the magazine Ben Franklin started and later Norman Rockwell's paintings were on the cover. In November of 1968, after six months of having a patrol car with an ever-present reporter and photographer riding with me, the magazine was released. It seemed that St. Louis at that time was the highest crime city in America per capita and the magazine wanted to do an article on the worst area in the city. It happened to be my area. Here is the magazine with a really young Bob on the cover.
There had been many local and statewide articles preceding it, but this was the first nationwide article. The Saturday Evening Post was a 20+ page article and at the time it had the largest circulation of any magazine in the world, more than 8 million copies were printed. This was followed closely by more magazines doing stories on what they called a young idealistic cop working in the worst hell hole of crime in America.
Anyway, to the story. As all this publicity was being printed, it caught the eyes of several large corporations who thought it would be cool to have me in their employ. When one of them offered me 400% of my salary, plus a secretary and private office as well as a new car every year and an unlimited expense account, being placed in charge of 40 offices in a dozen states, guess what guys, I dropped all my ideals and caved! I left the department and bought a lot of three piece business suits and set out on a new career. That was in January, 1969. I was 27 years old.
I managed to do quite well in the corporate world, but there was something missing. As early as I can remember, I have always needed, (Maybe obsessed would be a more appropriate word), excitement, adventure and especially ongoing challenges. The corporate world was exciting in a definitely different way, but no adventure and no major challenges. So, I made a challenge of my own. During that period, I had been interested in stereo which was just being explored by people like me as a hobby. I had built two small systems previously, but I had imagined a true scratch built monster. I was a Star Trek fan and loved the colors and textures used on the bridge of the original Enterprise. I know, it looks hokey today, but back then it was cutting edge sci-fi.
I began making drawings and reading up on electronics at the time. After about a year of research, I started making prototypes. In the beginning, they were quite simple, but especially the speaker system had to be designed just not for aesthetics, but to produce what I wanted to be the ultimate sound. I was experimenting with partially sand filled chambers on both sides of either speakers to absorb and reduce vibration. I was using two types of bass systems in each speaker, several horn mid range and high frequency speakers as well as hypersonic and ultrasonic tweeters. I created electronic circuits using silicone controlled rectifiers to bring precisely the exact frequency range to the speaker best capable of reproducing it. I scratch built several of the components in the console as well as most of the light displays and color organs. Those too, were controlled by rectifiers in circuits fed by a HeathKit computer I built. Really crude by todays standards but a real WOW factor back then. Here are some pics during the build.
These pics are really old and were taken on the old Polaroid cameras. This is one of the earlier prototypes I built, rejected and started over.
These were the final prototypes and became a permanent part of the system. They were 7 feet in height, 3 feet in width and 2 feet deep. They weighed about 200 pounds each.
Then I made them pretty with Black and smoked plexiglass with snow white and orange formica with aluminum trim throughout on the main console, dropping the orange on the speakers..
Below is a couple of photos of the console. It was 7 feet wide, 7 feet in height and ranged from 2 to 3 feet in depth.
A closeup of the controls.
Another view.
Back then, there was a large electronics retail outlet that specialized in this kind of stuff. I showed them some photos, they wanted to see it and test it in person. They came to the house with equipment galore. At the time, the state of the art speaker system was the Bozak Concert Grands. A speaker system that I could have never afforded and was made for the filthy rich. My speakers stood up pretty well in testing results against them. Then the magazines came calling. Here is an article in Stereo Review magazine. I don't even know if it still exists.
To end the story. I eventually became bored out of my socks with conferences, dudes in meetings doing their blah, blah, blah to impress the bosses and the corporate mentality at that time altogether. I actually quit three times, the first two, they flew some suits down to St. Louis from Chicago and talked me into staying. The last time I refused to meet them and returned to my much lower paying, but really exciting precinct. I was made a detective a few months after I returned and that is a whole 'nuther story.
There had been many local and statewide articles preceding it, but this was the first nationwide article. The Saturday Evening Post was a 20+ page article and at the time it had the largest circulation of any magazine in the world, more than 8 million copies were printed. This was followed closely by more magazines doing stories on what they called a young idealistic cop working in the worst hell hole of crime in America.
Anyway, to the story. As all this publicity was being printed, it caught the eyes of several large corporations who thought it would be cool to have me in their employ. When one of them offered me 400% of my salary, plus a secretary and private office as well as a new car every year and an unlimited expense account, being placed in charge of 40 offices in a dozen states, guess what guys, I dropped all my ideals and caved! I left the department and bought a lot of three piece business suits and set out on a new career. That was in January, 1969. I was 27 years old.
I managed to do quite well in the corporate world, but there was something missing. As early as I can remember, I have always needed, (Maybe obsessed would be a more appropriate word), excitement, adventure and especially ongoing challenges. The corporate world was exciting in a definitely different way, but no adventure and no major challenges. So, I made a challenge of my own. During that period, I had been interested in stereo which was just being explored by people like me as a hobby. I had built two small systems previously, but I had imagined a true scratch built monster. I was a Star Trek fan and loved the colors and textures used on the bridge of the original Enterprise. I know, it looks hokey today, but back then it was cutting edge sci-fi.
I began making drawings and reading up on electronics at the time. After about a year of research, I started making prototypes. In the beginning, they were quite simple, but especially the speaker system had to be designed just not for aesthetics, but to produce what I wanted to be the ultimate sound. I was experimenting with partially sand filled chambers on both sides of either speakers to absorb and reduce vibration. I was using two types of bass systems in each speaker, several horn mid range and high frequency speakers as well as hypersonic and ultrasonic tweeters. I created electronic circuits using silicone controlled rectifiers to bring precisely the exact frequency range to the speaker best capable of reproducing it. I scratch built several of the components in the console as well as most of the light displays and color organs. Those too, were controlled by rectifiers in circuits fed by a HeathKit computer I built. Really crude by todays standards but a real WOW factor back then. Here are some pics during the build.
These pics are really old and were taken on the old Polaroid cameras. This is one of the earlier prototypes I built, rejected and started over.
These were the final prototypes and became a permanent part of the system. They were 7 feet in height, 3 feet in width and 2 feet deep. They weighed about 200 pounds each.
Then I made them pretty with Black and smoked plexiglass with snow white and orange formica with aluminum trim throughout on the main console, dropping the orange on the speakers..
Below is a couple of photos of the console. It was 7 feet wide, 7 feet in height and ranged from 2 to 3 feet in depth.
A closeup of the controls.
Another view.
Back then, there was a large electronics retail outlet that specialized in this kind of stuff. I showed them some photos, they wanted to see it and test it in person. They came to the house with equipment galore. At the time, the state of the art speaker system was the Bozak Concert Grands. A speaker system that I could have never afforded and was made for the filthy rich. My speakers stood up pretty well in testing results against them. Then the magazines came calling. Here is an article in Stereo Review magazine. I don't even know if it still exists.
To end the story. I eventually became bored out of my socks with conferences, dudes in meetings doing their blah, blah, blah to impress the bosses and the corporate mentality at that time altogether. I actually quit three times, the first two, they flew some suits down to St. Louis from Chicago and talked me into staying. The last time I refused to meet them and returned to my much lower paying, but really exciting precinct. I was made a detective a few months after I returned and that is a whole 'nuther story.
