North Hall

 

 

The AMRAD radio tower

 

 

I learned early on that there was no end to interesting things to study in vision. However, I also found out that there was a curse.  Due to the need to control lighting in most vision experiments, it was very seldom that there was ever a window where I worked.  Most times, daylight wasn’t even close.

 

The Visual Perception Laboratory in North Hall at Tufts was no exception.  Besides being eminently lightproof, the dank concrete walls that were cut into the side of the hill also had quite a history.  On March 8, 1916, they enclosed Harold Power’s American Radio and Research Company as the first continuous radio transmission in the world was broadcast from what would be later called North Hall.  Radio station 1XE had a number of firsts: first to maintain a daily broadcast schedule and first to transmit university lectures, weather reports and bedtime stories.

 

Unfortunately, aided in part by the thick walls acting as an oven, North Hall and the last vestiges of station 1XE burned to the foundation on February 16, 1972.