Reed, Oscar, Jr.

Biography of Oscar Reed, Jr.

Oscar Wellington Blucher Reed, Jr., was a lifelong resident of the Washington, D.C., area. He was born in the District in 1917 and graduated with a Bachelors degree in electrical engineering from the Catholic University of America in 1939. From August of that year until his retirement in 1984, Reed was associated with Jansky & Bailey, Consulting Broadcast Engineers, a company later acquired by the Atlantic Research Corporation (ARC). It became a semi-autonomous division of ARC in 1960

Reed began his career at Jansky & Bailey by assisting in the construction, operation, and maintenance of experimental FM station W3XO. Built by the company with the approval and assistance of Major Edwin Armstrong, it was only the third FM station in the U. S. and the first in the Baltimore/Washington area. Other prewar work consisted of teletype and facsimile signal analysis. During World War II, Jansky & Bailey engaged in defense-related engineering projects sponsored by the Office of Scientific Research and Development. Efforts were concentrated in the area of military communications, specifically jamming techniques and propagation characteristics of signals over a wide frequency range.

From 1945 to 1960 Reed served as head of the Jansky & Bailey Broadcast and Television Department. During this period he supervised and participated in the design of AM, FM, and television broadcast facilities; prepared engineering material submitted on behalf of numerous clients to the FCC; appeared before the FCC as an expert engineering witness on frequency allocation, station assignment and field strength measurement; and determined broadcast station coverage, and fair market value of broadcast transmission properties for tax purposes

After the purchase of Jansky & Bailey by Atlantic Research, Reed served as manager of the Broadcast-Television Consulting Department. He also acted for a time as head of the telecommunications division of ARC. Work continued in the broadcast field, but starting in the 1960s a new emphasis was placed on the growing area of community antenna television (CATV), better known today as cable television. J&B/ARC began consulting on system design evaluation surveys, as well as providing services to franchise applications, cities, states, and counties on cable television issues. Because of this experience, Reed was recruited as a member of the FCC Steering Committee on CATV Standards Planning.

From that time until his retirement, Reed both supervised and participated in many projects closely related to educational and public broadcasting. Representative contracts would include engineering studies for the development, design, specifications preparation, and implementation of many statewide educational television systems, most notably in Ohio, and planning for Instructional Television Fixed Service systems. He also served as an engineering advisor to the Educational Television Stations Division of the National Association of Educational Broadcasters and as a consultant to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting on Clear Channel Broadcasting matters, Low Frequency Broadcasting in the U.S., and for the Geneva World Administrative Radio Conference in 1979.

Reed was a member of the National Association of Educational Broadcasters and the Television Allocations Study Organization of the FCC. He was a board member of the National Broadcasters Club, a president of the Association of Federal Communications Consulting Engineers, and served on the editorial review board of Educational Broadcasting Review . He was also a longtime member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, who awarded him their prestigious "Centennial" medal in 1984.

In retirement Reed engaged in consulting work for various clients, and also made his expertise available to Montgomery Community Television, the local production and oversight entity for cable television in Montgomery County, Maryland. A lifelong "Ham" radio enthusiast, he continued to broadcast from his home-based "shack" in Silver Spring, Maryland. Reed died December 10, 2008.

About Janskey & Bailey

(The following first appeard in a J&B promotional brochure printed in 1964.)

Jansky & Bailey was founded in 1930 by C. M. Janksy, Jr., and Stuart L. Bailey, each of whom possessed considerable unique experience in the field of radio engineering. Radio-telephone broadcasting had its origins prior to World War I. At this time, Jansky was active in the establishment of an experimental broadcast station at the University of Wisconsin where he was a student. The station, perhaps the first in the United States, was operated under the call letters WHA[1] to explore the potential of radiotelephony as a communications medium and to gather data on radio transmission, reception, and propagation phenomena. Later, Jansky was asked to serve as a member of the radiotelephone conferences called by then-Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover. These pivotal conferences formed the basis for the Radio Act of 1927, which created the Federal Radio Commission (now the FCC). Bailey's activities prior to 1930 involved the study of field strength measurements, the evaluation of radio antennas and the development of automatic marine radio beacons and radio range equipment.

The first activity engaged in by the partnership of Jansky & Bailey was broadcast engineering. The firm was the first to represent broadcasters before the Federal Radio Commission. Pioneering contributions were made to broadcasting in these early days. The first practical mobile field strength measurement instrumentation for the broadcast band was developed. Coverage standards for broadcasting were developed which resulted in a "Standard Coverage and Market Data Service" used by many stations. The young company built the third FM broadcasting station in the country, W3XO, in 1938 and operated it until 1946. The first portable broadcast field strength set and the first field strength equipment able to measure radio frequency pulses of the Loran type were other Jansky & Bailey achievements. The company made extensive use of field measurements and equipped a variety of vehicles for this purpose. During and immediately after World War II, important programs were carried out for the Army in the study of propagation and vehicular antennas in the MF, HR, and VHF frequency ranges. Extensive development effort was also applied to the field of printed communications and early equipment was developed which would work through noisy circuits.

The partnership was incorporated in 1953 and became a subsidiary of Atlantic Research Corporation in 1959. In 1960, division status was achieved. As of 1994, after more than a third of a century of growth and expansion, Jansky & Bailey made up three technical operating divisions of Atlantic Research Corporation.

[1] The station operated as 9XM in its earliest, experimental days. -Charles Howell

From the guide to the Oscar Reed, Jr. Papers, 1928-1994, 1960s-1970s, (Mass Media and Culture)