Q & A with Stuart Elliott (Published 2008) (2024)

A couple of recent Q & A sections of the newsletter have discussed the concept of aural logos. A mention of the NBC chimes as an example of an aural logo generated many e-mail messages. Some of them follow below.

Q: (Reader)

In your e-mail newsletter, you talk about aural logos and mention the NBC chimes. According to Wikipedia, the chimes of the National Broadcasting Company radio network were the first-ever audio trademark to be registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The chimes, which are the notes G-E-C, signifying NBC’s parent company, General Electric, first aired on Nov. 29, 1929.

Q: (Reader)

There was a bit of misinformation about the chimes in the discussion. One reader states they were registered in 1971, but they were actually registered with the patent office (serial number 72-349496) in 1950 as the first registered sound trademark.

Also, the story that the notes G-E-C were chosen because of the General Electric Company being one of the owners of NBC is an urban legend. I have done quite a bit of research on the history of the famous chimes. There are several versions of how the chimes came to be. If interested, you can read about it on my Web site.

Q: (Reader)

You claim that the NBC chimes (G-E-C) stood for the General Electric Company. This is a fable that has been proved to be false, and we have published exhaustive research including recordings and details of the notes that would have been available on the chime-sets in use.

The earliest forms of chimes used by NBC two years after its formation were seven-note and then five-note sequences. NBC did not settle down to a three-note chime pattern until late 1931, which was after General Electric was forced to sell its share of RCA in 1929.

Even in 1931, NBC did not use G-E-C. The hand-struck notes were C-A-F. The earliest use of G-E-C came in October 1932 when the mechanical Rangertone chimes were installed, but even after that there were examples of hand-struck chimes using C-A-F.

Thus it is impossible to consider that the NBC chimes were a tribute to RCA’s ownership by General Electric, because that relationship had been long over prior to the first use of G-E-C.

The proof of this is available at Michael Shoshani’s NBC Chimes Museum. I provided most of the early recordings of the sequences before the three-note sequences, and he provided the actual chime-set models used at that time.

Q: (Reader)

Prompted by your report of a connection between G.E. and RCA earlier than 1985, I checked with the David Sarnoff Library. I picked up the history of the two companies from the 1920s through before the ’80s of which I had no prior knowledge. I’m not sure just when the three-tone chimes were introduced as a symbol of NBC.

Personally, while engaged in broadcasts over NBC from Chicago’s Merchandise Mart from 1937 through 1945, I have distinct memories of waiting to start a broadcast until the “standby announcer” (among them, Hugh Downs, Charley Lyons and Louis Roen) came into the studio where just inside the sound-lock entrance’s inner door there was a small wall-hung desk with a microphone, an electric clock, a number of buttons and lights and a small set of three chimes with a felt or yarn-wrapped mallet.

The announcer would come into the studio perhaps 60 to 90 seconds before time for the station break and, punching up the button for the “on air” line, would listen for the conclusion of the then-concluding program from another studio or from the New York line.

As he heard the program end, he would punch a button to turn on his microphone and then watch the second hand on the electric clock as it passed the 15-minute, 30-minute, 45-minute or 60-minute point. When it did, he would softly stroke the chimes -- yes, they were, I’m quite sure, G, E and C interval notes -- and then announce, “NBC ... the National Broadcasting Company.”

With this done, the announcer would punch “off” his mike and the engineer -- in the glass-fronted booth behind the rest of the space on that wall -- would turn on the mikes in the studio and cue the program announcer in the studio to start his program.

But the NBC chimes do not qualify, in my judgment, as an aural logo, although their mellow tones became a welcome part of memory’s lane for millions of us. I’m focused on aural logos that in themselves convey both tonal pitch and actual product or maker identity rather than just in the form of mind association. My examples would include products like Bromo-Seltzer, Lava soap and Rinso White soap powder.

A: (Stuart Elliott)

Thanks to all who wrote in. As you can see from the variations in details, the provenance of the chimes remains somewhat murky.

An article in The New York Times in 1985, when General Electric bought RCA, the parent of NBC, describes how the deal “would rejoin two companies that fueled each other’s growth from the closing days of World War I and then diverged.” According to the article, G.E. “played a key role” in 1919 in the formation of what was the Radio Corporation of America.

The article goes on to say that the two companies “were inextricably entwined” for a decade, which would mean through 1929, but then mentions that G.E. was forced by a federal court in liquidate its holdings in RCA in 1933.

So if the chimes in the three-note, G-E-C pattern were first used in 1929, or even in 1931, there may have been some residual influence of the G.E. parentage. The nbcchimes.info Web site mentions that WGY in Schenectady, N.Y., a radio station owned by General Electric that went on the air in 1922, is said to have started the following year to use the notes G-E-C played on a piano.

However, the NBC listing in Wikipedia states that “contrary to popular legend, the three musical notes, G-E-C, did not originally stand for NBC’s current parent corporation, the General Electric Company, although G.E.’s radio station in Schenectady, N.Y., WGY, was an early NBC affiliate and G.E. was an early shareholder in NBC’s founding parent RCA.”

For many years, a radio station in New York used to give the time of day by calling it the “chime time.” Dear readers, I have enjoyed our time pondering the chimes.