Frank Dresser wrote:


"Simon Mason" wrote in message
...



I remember that story, - it was KLEE -TV see he

http://www.bvws.org.uk/405alive/hist..._of_texas.html



"It so happens that the January 1950 issue of Radio Electronics magazine
has a rundown on all the television stations operational in the USA and
conveniently, there on page 53, is a sharp photo of the KLEE station
ident caption."

I have the Feburary 1950 Radio Electronics, but not the January edition.
Just missed it! Anyway, TV dx was a regular feature of the electronics
magazines of the late 40s and early 50s. They printed pictures of the
test patterns in the stories. The webpage says American electronics
magazines were distributed in England and it would be easy to convert
the picture for use in a flying spot scanner.

Oh, well. The cosmic repeater theory is yet to be confirmed.

Frank Dresser



Taking the story at the above webpage at face value, it would seem that
the only people to recieve the KLEE "signal" were the engineers and the
one man named in the article. Also the only thing recieved was the ID
slide and not any programming. These facts lead me to believe that it
was a joke among the engineers that got out of hand. It would not strain
credulity to imagine five or six bored electrical engineers who suddenly
come up with the idea of aliens (remember this was a time when the
public imagination was gripped with the idea that humans were being
"visited") rebroadcasting TV shows to Earth in an attempt to communicate
with us. So they dig up an old issue of Radio Electronics, select the
KLEE photo at random, scan it in, and broadcast it from one room to
another at work so they can photograph it on the screen. They get the
other guy in on the joke and get him to come forward a few days before
the engineers do to say that he too had recieved the mysterious signal.
When TV Guide publishes the "mystery" and has the American engineers
vouch for the "integrity" of the British engineers, the Brits realize
that they're in real hot water if they admit the prank. So they swear
each other to secrecy, and years go by and the concept gets woven into
novels and urban legends, and the original hoaxers don't want to admit
that it was a joke, so they take it to their graves. After fifty years
the smell of rat is still there, but nobody seems to notice it-like the
emperor's clothing.