Sunday, Mar. 03, 2013 | 08:15 AM
Question: I grew up in Fresno and recently found copies of The Radio Bee among some family papers. What is the history of this paper?
-- Edward Beaumont, Albuquerque, N.M.
Answer: The first transmission of the Radio Bee was on Feb. 2, 1939, according to a master's thesis written by Ruth A. Kassis at California State University, Sacramento in 2010.
In 1937, the McClatchy Broadcasting Co. applied to the Federal Communications Commission for an experimental license, becoming the first company in the West, and only the fourth in the nation, to try the new radio-facsimile technology, Kassis wrote.
McClatchy Broadcasting spent as much as $50,000 to buy a transmitter and to purchase 100 receiver/printers, which were placed in 50 Fresno homes and 50 Sacramento homes, Kassis wrote.
The Radio Bee was transmitted during the early-morning hours. Printed in a two-column format on eight manuscript-size sheets, the paper had news stories, photos and comics, giving readers in the two cities a glimpse of the news hours before McClatchy Newspapers' evening editions were delivered.
The content of the paper was written by the staff of McClatchy Broadcasting's Sacramento radio station and transmitted to its Fresno affiliate, KMJ Radio. The late Bob Long, longtime Fresno newsman, wrote a history of local radio for the 1986 book "Fresno County in the 20th Century," including a description of the short-lived facsimile experiment.
Kassis' research and photos in The Fresno Bee date radio facsimile in Fresno to 1939, although Long refers to a later start date.
The facsimile experiment "was intended to test the feasibility of transmitting newspapers into the home," Long wrote.
Longtime KMJ engineer Bill Wallace told Long the receivers "weighed a ton" and looked like a television set with a built-in printer. But the printing process was so slow that the technology never caught on, Wallace said. "It died out from a general lack of interest because it took all night to get just a couple of sheets of printed material," he said, far short of what was supposed to arrive.
Radio facsimile also was too expensive, Kassis wrote, and McClatchy Broadcasting dropped the project in 1940.
Q: When and where did the Fresno State marching band perform with neon-decorated instruments?
-- Dick Arnold, Fresno
A: The 78-piece marching band of then-Fresno State College performed in the halftime show of the Fresno State vs. San Francisco State football game at Ratcliffe Stadium on Nov. 22, 1958.
A Fresno Bee story the day before stated, "For the only time this year, will use neon lights on the bell lyres, trombones and Sousaphones."
The band performed music from the Broadway show "South Pacific," including a "percussion march routine" to "There Is Nothin' Like a Dame" and another routine to "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair."
The climax, to the South Pacific tune "Bali Ha'i," featured red cap lights, pep girls in fluorescent hula skirts and majorettes twirling flaming batons.
Two drum majors led the band that night: Alfred Shay of Chowchilla and Pete Van Gelder of Fresno.
Q: As a boy in the 1950s, I used to visit Martin's Cyclery, where Martin would let us watch him repair bicycles and taught us how to maintain our own bikes. He even allowed me to build a bike in his back shop for my newspaper route and showed me how all the parts were assembled. What happened to the owner?
-- Neil Williams, Hanford
A: Eugene Sadoian of Las Vegas said his father, the late Martin Sadoian, built the bicycle shop at 310 N. Fresno St. with his own hands in the 1950s.
The bicycles he sold arrived in crates and had to be assembled by hand. "He was one of the few guys in Fresno who knew how to lace wheel spokes," Sadoian said, and Schwinn was his father's favorite brand of bicycle.
The shop became a gathering spot for children and adults.
"He loved to help kids with their bikes and the kids just loved him," Sadoian recalled. His father's shop also "was a meeting place for his old friends. They'd sit around on boxes and talk politics."
Martin Sadoian also loved cars and as a young man had raced his Model T on the wooden track at the Fresno Fairgrounds. He and his wife, Viola, liked duck hunting, and Martin also was a fisherman.
The Sadoians' daughter, Phyllis Tamouzian, lives in Cutler.
Martin Sadoian retired in 1979 at age 76. The former bike shop became a key shop and then for many years was a mini-mart. Eugene Sadoian said he recently sold the building.
Martin Sadoian died in Fresno in August 1987 at age 84. He is buried at Ararat Cemetery.
