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Like so many things in life that are familiar to us all, the NBC Chimes are known by everyone, but surrounded by myth and legend, some of it true, some of it with no basis in fact.

Another Urban Legend has grown over the use of a fourth chime; that it is used as a sort of emergency alert.  Although it has been used that way, the original purpose of the Fourth Chime, according to an NBC Interdepartmental Correspondence dated Apr 7, 1933, was nearer to a modern pager. “In anticipation of the Spring and Summer months, when many in key positions will not always be available at home telephones, the following Emergency Call System will go into effect…”  The memo went on to state personnel on an attached list were to contact the network operator when the four chimes were played. The list included NBC executives as well as members of the Engineering, Press, and Service departments. The four chimes would be played every fifteen minutes over WEAF and WJZ until the desired party contacted the network operator.

The first time the fourth chime was used was in 1937 in response to the Hindenburg dirigible crash. The fourth chime also sounded during the Munich Crisis of 1938, in response to news of the Pearl Harbor attack on Dec 7, 1941, and in the early morning hours of June 6, 1944, the D-Day invasion of Europe.  The fourth chime was used throughout WWII:

“The Fourth Chime will ring out again and again from the NBC News room in New York whenever events of utmost significance demand the intensive nationwide coverage of the news the American people have come to expect from the National Broadcasting Company.”

The last time the fourth chime was used was to signify the merger of NBC with GE in 1985.

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Like so many things in life that are familiar to us all, the NBC Chimes are known by every fan of old time radio shows, but surrounded by myth and legend, some of it true, some of it with no basis in fact.

G-E-C. Three simple notes. When we here them we all know that they mean NBC. Their origin is in the Station

Break. According to FCC Regulations, at the top of each hour a licensed broadcaster must identify itself by call sign and the name of the Community where its broadcast license has been issued, i.e.: “This is WEAF, New York.” When stations combine to play network programming, this becomes complicated. The simplest solution is for the network announcer to read the call signs of the individual stations, but this becomes cumbersome if there are more than four or five stations in the network. It is much more efficient to announce “We pause now for ten seconds station identification, this is the NBC Network.” But what happens if the local operator is asleep at the switch, or his clock isn’t synchronized with the network? The familiar three tones are an elegant solution.

There is some controversy over the origin of the G-E-C sequence. One story is that three NBC employees, Oscar Hanson, NBC Engineer, Ernest La Prada, NBC Orchestra leader, and Phillips Carlin, NBC Announcer, were given the task of finding a solution and audio cue to the station break problem. They worked with a set of hand-dinner chimes purchased in Manhattan for $48.50, and during the years of 1927-1928 tried several sequences of notes (as many as seven) before settling on the G-E-C sequence. There is also a claim the WSB, Atlanta, had been using the three notes on their own, using a small hand xylophone, through the late 20′s. After joining the NBC Network, WSB was broadcasting a Georgia Tech football game when the notes were heard in New York. Someone at the network liked them and the notes were adopted. WGY, Schenectady, and KFI, Los Angeles, which both went on the air in 1922, each claim to have originated the G-E-C tones.

There is no evidence that “G-E-C” were chosen to commemorate the General Electric Company, which was a major stockholder in the original National Broadcasting Company. This is an Urban Myth.

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