re history question in article qnroe d n usenet ins cwru edu wb foz skybridge scl cwru edu david lesher writes an now deceased prof told us willing students about a project he had worked on during wwii they needed a mega power pa with very clear audio quality the purpose was to bellow at refugees from aircraft their solution was a giant compressed air source and a horn with parallel shutters worked by a small audio system i think he said it worked very well thus the war dept cancelled the project gee i got the idea from somewhere that devices like this were in common use in wwii so that commanders on board ships could bellow at the troops landing on a beach for example which reminds me of an anecdote from the mid s at a communications conference a marine corps communications officer said he didn t care much for all the spread spectrum multi access expensive communication systems that people were talking about at the time what he wanted was a kilowatt broadcast transmitter on the ship and a japanese transistor radio stuck in the ear of every marine hitting the beach haynes cats ucsc edu haynes cats bitnet ya can talk all ya wanna but it s dif rent than it was no it aint but ya gotta know the territory meredith willson the music man
