New Waldorf-Astoria to have largest centralized radio

The largest centralized radio reception system ever designed, capable of intercepting and delivering six selected radio programs to loudspeakers in the 2000 rooms of the new Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, will be in operation when the building is opened to the public, according to the designer, J. J. Kuhn, of the Bell Telephone Laboratories, New York. The entire installation will cost nearly $200,000, and besides the speakers in the guest rooms there will be thirty-nine large horn speakers concealed in the walls or ceilings of the fifteen public rooms. The largest power amplifier ever designed, consisting of twentyone separate panels, larger than any similar broadcasting station equipment in the country, will be used to intensify programs received over the radio or the addresses or music picked up from a function held within the hotel. More than 1,000,000 feet of wire, in the form of strands in metal shielding, will convey the programs from the amplifier to each of the rooms Telegraph & Telephone Age. (Sept. 1930)