Word: controlman
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...destroyers is an impersonal war. The chief ingredients are radarscopes, computers, control panels, microswitches and radios-plus movies in wide-screen color. The only time the ammunition is touched by human hands is when it is loaded into the automatic hoist. Deep in the bowels of the ship, Fire Controlman Second Class Jim Fagan of Miami holds the portable trigger in his hand, nonchalantly squeezing the lever when he gets the signal over his headphones. "I don't feel like I'm part of this war," says one sailor. "I never see what we're shooting...
...Where's your first cut?" barked the outgoing controlman. And with that leisurely beginning the show started...
...WHRB likes it controlmen, and they like their job. The members have no desire to replace men with machines. There are many WHRBies, in fact, who know very little about music, (at least when they come, and before they have spent hundreds of hours in a controlman), but whose interest is purely technical. Bob Kalayan '67, this year's head controlman, does nothing but technical work, and, he says, "the more complicated it is, the more fun." It takes only five or six hours to train a controlman to minimal standards, but beyond that, there is all kinds of scope...
...idea is to make things as complicated as possible without committing a "feep"--a mistake that goes out over the air--a heinous crime for any good controlman. And the emphasis is always on "elegance"--such as determining the point at which a record should be started down to the exact groove...
...orgies, the controlman's devotion to complication and elegance, and the station camaraderie are all steps to remaining happy while esoteric. And if few members stay active throughout their college careers, there is a steady procession of candidates who want to work and who have real technical skill and who have real technical skill and musical interest. The station has both devoted members and devoted listeners, and if it does not have a large Harvard-Radcliffe audience, WHRB considers that one of its minor worries. The college is there, but it is incidental...