On Mon, 15 Oct 2007 15:53:39 -0400, AF6AY wrote:
It's a cool late February weekday in the year 1956. I am
23 and a month out of active US Army duty, having spent
the last three Army years in radio communications, I had
decided to get a civilian commercial radio operator
license two weeks prior. I've done the cram thing on over-
drive, practically memorizing all of the looseleaf notebook
FCC rules borrowed from a new friend at a broadcast
station. I walk several blocks from the train station to
the Federal Building in Chicago. I am alone, have never
been walking in downtown Chicago before...but I am
confident although a bit tired. The train ride was an
hour and a half and the flat Illinois prarie boring as usual.

The FCC Field Office is upstairs and I find it. Everything
seems to be utilitarian-government. World War II ended
11 years prior and all federal offices look "war surplus"
furnished. Three visible officials are brusque, bored, not
effusive; i.e., it's like being back in the Army. Familiar.
FCC guys are fussing with a paper-tape code machine

Believe it or not, in 1974 I took my General code test on the same
paper-tape code machine you saw the inspectors fussing with in 1956.

The pitch jumped briefly about halfway through. Didn't faze most of us,
but when the tape was over one of the guys being tested protested loudly &
insisted on being tested again. Don't know if he passed on the second try.

(the rest of us all passed on the first try, even with the jumping pitch)

By the time I took the 20wpm for the Extra two years later, they were
using a cheap portable cassette player. It worked, but most of the "soul"
was missing.

The train ride was from Milwaukee; I suspect the Federal Building was
somewhat taller; and there was a Sears Tower along the walk from the train
station, but I suspect it was a similar experience.