George Marti Dies; Iconic Equipment Maker
by Paul McLane - Radio World
on 12.14.2015
Ask any U.S. radio broadcast engineer above the age of 40 for the name
most associated with “Cleburne, Texas.” They’ll be sure to answer:
Marti.
Iconic radio manufacturer George Marti has died at age 95, according to
the Cleburne Times-Review.
Marti was indeed a central figure in that city — he was its long-time
mayor, for one thing — but radio people know him for the remote pickup
and studio/transmitter links he manufactured for many years.
His gear was so popular that for decades, his last name became both a
common noun and verb— engineers who wanted to set up a remote broadcast
and feed it back to the station would talk of doing a “Marti” or
“Marti-ing” the signal back to the studio. An early Marti RPU is part of
the collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.
In 1991, the National Association of Broadcasters honored George Marti
with its Radio Engineering Achievement Award.
“Texas has lost a giant with the passing of George Marti,” stated TAB
President Oscar Rodriguez, calling him “a man whose technical and
business acumen changed the course of the broadcasting industry
throughout the world and fueled scores of local, independent broadcast
operations serving communities across the state.”
His career had many layers. “Marti was known as one of the county’s
leading educational advocates,” the Cleburne Times-Review wrote today.
“Through grants from the Marti Foundation, hundreds of students have
earned college degrees. Marti was a renowned cattle fancier, having
negotiated the first importation of Charolais livestock from Canada into
the United States. He was famed for his accomplishments in radio. He
owned a bank and served as Cleburne mayor for six terms. He also served
in the Marine Corps. The Marti Elementary School, which opened in 2003,
was named after Marti.”
It quoted current Mayor Scott Cain saying that Marti led the city during
some hard times. “He had to personally guarantee payroll to see that the
employers were paid.”
The Texas Association of Broadcasters awarded Marti its 2010 Lifetime
Achievement Award. At the time it called him a “legendary Texas
broadcaster.”
According to the TAB’s bio, Marti graduated from Central High School in
Fort Worth at the age of 16 and attended technical school for nine
months. He received his radiotelephone First Class and Amateur Radio
licenses just prior to his 17th birthday (call letters: W5GLJ). TAB said
Marti cited his grandmother as influencing him more than any other person.
“He spent time at her house each day on his way home from the two-room
schoolhouse at Oak Grove. She told him when he was 12 that he needed to
make a business plan. He decided that his plan would involve
establishing a radio station in Cleburne.”
He worked in radio in the 1930s; in the Marine Corps studied in First
Radar School at the Naval Research Lab in Washington. He and his wife Jo
put KCLE(AM) on the air in Cleburne in the late 1940s; he built a
250-watt transmitter and audio console in his mother’s living room.
Later he owned more stations.
He sold KCLE in 1960 and began making RPU and, later, STL gear.
“An RPU is a portable radio transmitter specially designed for use
within a 10–15-mile radius from locations that lack broadcasting
capability,” the Smithsonian wrote in 2013 when it added one to its
collection. “A reporter covering a story in the field can use an RPU to
transmit to a local radio station from which the signal is rebroadcast
to the listening audience. Marti designed his first RPU in order to
broadcast live the Cleburne High School football games.”
According to the TAB, “Before he designed and built the units and
successfully lobbied the FCC to allow their use, radio stations had to
use telephone lines that were expensive and not always reliable. His
invention revolutionized the industry.”
Marti owned and operated Marti Electronics until 1994. Broadcast
Electronics purchased it and, according to Radio World coverage at the
time, moved Marti manufacturing operations to Illinois in 2003.
In the early 1990s, Marti and Jo purchased the Bank of Cleburne and
owned it for five years, eventually merging it with another financial
entity. The couple also created the Marti Foundation, which funded
$10,000 scholarships to help local graduates attend college.
Marti received TAB’s Pioneer Broadcaster of the Year Award. He was
inducted into the Texas Radio Hall of Fame in 2002.
Jo died in 2003, according to a Radio World story at the time. Marti
remarried his wife Margaret in 2004, according to the TAB bio.
“I first met George back in 1988,” said Lee Edwards, sales engineer for
ProAudio.com, told Radio World today. “What a wonderful man he was. One
of the nicest men this industry ever saw.” - See more at:
http://www.radioworld.com/article/george-marti-dies-iconic-equipment-maker/277707#sthash.wdGldTUP.dpuf
--
*================================================ Duane Whittingham -
N9SSN (ARES/RACES, EmComm, Skywarn & Red Cross)
http://www.radiodude.info ================================================*
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