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![]() September 12, 2008
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But
the present setup - a Harris MW50 for backup, a newer Harris
3DX50 Destiny as the main transmitter, and a rack of STL and
processing gear - is just the latest incarnation of a very long
history at this site.
While it's located in the town of Rotterdam, this is the famed "South Schenectady" site that General Electric began developing in 1923. WGY was just a year old then, but GE was already experimenting with "superpower" operation that would have been impractical at the station's original location on the roof of GE Building 40 at its Schenectady plant.
The South Schenectady site was designed as a 54-acre laboratory for broadcast transmission, with multiple towers, plenty of available utility and generator power, and lots of space for transmitters and antennas.
By 1925, the site housed an operating 50,000-watt transmitter; by 1927, a 100,000-watt unit was being tested, and in 1930, GE briefly experimented from here at the 200,000-watt level.
GE was experimenting beyond the medium waves, too: 1928 brought its first tests of television (soon moved to the nearby Helderberg Mountains, where WGY's former sister station, WRGB, still transmits), and regular shortwave broadcasting from this site began in the late twenties as well, continuing through World War II and shortly thereafter.
In 1938, WGY installed the current tower at the site. Publicity materials at the time claimed that the 625-foot tower was the tallest in the nation - a bit of an exaggeration, considering that WSM in Nashville already had an 878-footer in place for a few years at that point.
It's still a massive tower, especially as viewed from ground level, looking up at the guy wires that support the tower from four directions.
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Alas, much of the history of this site is gone now. At some point along the line (possibly in the late sixties, though the time frame is unclear), the big transmitter building here was torn down. Today, all that remains is a grassless patch next to the current transmitter building, clearly visible in aerial views of the site but less obvious on the ground. Are there pictures of the old building and the transmitters that once filled it? I've never seen any, and with the succession of owners and studio locations that followed GE, any archives from those days appear to be lost, leaving only the majestic tower itself as testimony to what once was here.