[BC] Listening for the bells

[Broadcast List USER]

We built up bell counters.  I did this at several stations.  We were
not to modify the wire machines, so we wound a few loops of solid wire
around the coil that pulled the clapper on the bell.  It worked fine
for everyone but UPI.  For the longest time I couldn't figure it out.

Then, one day I was in the newsroom and noticed that the UPI machine
rang five bells, then only a few seconds later, five more.  A phone
call to UPI got it figured out.  ONE of their operators would send
five bells, and do it again to make sure they were heard.  It never
happened again.

--chip

On Oct 8, 2009, at 9:00 AM, broadcast-request at radiolists.net wrote:

>Message: 2
>Date: Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:21:37 -0400
>From: Charles Ring <w3nu at roadrunner.com>
>Subject: Re: [BC] Fine? 5k for eas botch?
>[...]
>The writer of that piece says hearing ten bells on Sat. morning
>grabbed
>his attention, as it was meant to do, however one of the reasons many
>stations missed that botched test/alert is that ten bells were sounded
>EVERY Saturday at the same time for the expected test. I suppose that
>the reason for ten bells even for tests was to test automatic
>bell-counting alarm devices too.