Despite this, I knew that many FM stations dated back to the 1940s and 50s. I wondered how a medium that was clearly superior to AM could have suffered such a fate, and I wanted to know the history of the situation. When I tried to research it, I quickly discovered something else. There was very little information on early FM. AM history was easy. There were many books and periodicals on the history of AM. The Crosley Empire was well documented as were the major networks. But FM was another story. I discovered that FM was only documented in periodicals. These publications had recorded the history of FM as it happened, but there was just not enough interest in FM development for anybody to have assembled the information into books on the subject.

 One publication that I was familiar with was High Fidelity. The local library had a subscription going back to Vol.1 Number 1, April 1951. In those pages I began to learn about early FM. The articles were often written by (and the magazine was published by) one man- Milton B. Sleeper. That is how I came to know Sleeper and his background. In 1954 his name disappeared from the masthead as publisher. I noticed two things about that fact. First, the coverage of FM radio began to drop off and second, I didn’t like the magazines as much without him. It morphed into a semi-snobbish classical music rag with equipment treated merely as a way to listen to opera. I appreciate that music to this day far more than most, but when Sleeper was there the magazine was aimed at listening to any type of music in hi-fi as opposed to trumpeting the superiority of one type over another. Further research led me discover his second audio publication, Music At Home.  

 Milton Blake Sleeper was born in Illinois in 1896 and spent his entire adult life in and around Great Barrington Massachusetts. He was married twice and had two children by his first wife, Ann Farris, in 1930. That marriage ended. Ann Farris lived until 1971.  Sleeper’s second wife, Ethel Mary Vonasek Sumi Sleeper was born in 1907 and survived until 2004. She was a registered nurse whose first husband was casualty of World War II. She married Sleeper in 1942. Her obituary states that she assisted Sleeper with “his several radio, TV and audio magazines in Great Barrington and New York City”. It also mentions that 2 stepdaughters, Sara and Mary Sleeper, predeceased her.

 Sleeper would have been around 18 in 1914, the start of World War I. While there is no record of military service he writes years later of working in Lee DeForest’s laboratory on technology that would be used to create the first military electronic aircraft navigation systems. Electronics were clearly his passion from a very early age. The Internet contains articles by him in long-forgotten magazines about early radio and circuit construction dating as far back as 1914. Working with Pilot Radio he co-designed an early sophisticated regenerative shortwave receiver called “The Wasp” which was regarded as a seminal piece of shortwave receiver technology.

In 1919, Sleeper formed The General Apparatus Company, which he renamed Sleeper Radio in 1922. He turned management of the company over to his brother, Gordon C. Sleeper and visited England. While he was away the company had financial difficulties. Milton withdrew and sold all his stock by 1923, blaming his brother for the misfortunes of the company. Gordon pressed on, selling nearly one million dollars of company stock and securing a million dollar contract with Music Master to manufacture their receiver line. Music Master folded, leaving Gordon Sleeper with a worthless contract. The company was eventually sold to Temple- a manufacturer of speakers- that was, itself, bankrupt by 1930. That was the end of Sleeper as a brand name on equipment but it was enough to create a life-long rift between the brothers. Gordon returned to the commercial insurance business. Milton had already returned to writing, publishing and design while making it a priority to notify his readers that he had “no affiliation whatsoever” with Sleeper Radio.

 In the midst of this turmoil and The Great Depression, Sleeper formed a lifelong friendship with Major Edwin H. Armstrong. It is merely accurate to say that radio as we know it would not exist without Armstrong’s technical contributions. He was the inventor of both the regenerative AM circuit that moved radio listening from attic-based headphones and onto living room loudspeakers and FM. Sleeper immediately recognized the superiority of Armstrong’s FM method over standard band AM broadcasting and became an enthusiastic supporter. This led to the formation of the FM Company in 1942 and the publication of FM (later FM/TV) Magazine. Considering the fact that Sleeper had started a publication specifically to champion Armstrong’s invention, it is not surprising that the two men became friends.

Sleeper was present when Armstrong demonstrated FM coverage from the Empire State Building in 1942. He received one of Armstrong’s REL 646 tuners as a gift. This tuner appears on the very first High Fidelity cover. FM magazine detailed the construction of several old band early FM stations. FM was on its way to establishing itself when World War II called a halt to station construction and receiver production. Following the end of hostilities, Sleeper joined Armstrong in vigorous protest of the FCC decision to re-allocate FM to the present 88 to 108 MHz band. Both men understood that the move would obsolete all existing receivers and transmitters- from a business and audience standpoint a complete disaster. From an engineering perspective, they understood that there was no transmitting equipment in existence for the new band and that the propagation characteristics of it were not well understood. Regarding this they were correct- the new band is, to this day, inferior to the old one. It requires more power to cover, is more susceptible to terrain issues. Tropospheric ducting, which plagues FM in many localities every summer, was apparently almost completely absent in the old band. Nevertheless, the FCC plunged ahead, forcing FM to rebuild from scratch. The first “new band” tuners were not sensitive and listeners seemed not to understand that they needed an antenna for FM. Then along came television.  RCA, who along with CBS, had done all they could to stifle FM development to preserve their 50,000 watt AM stations with their competitive advantage, adopted the FM system for television sound. The resulting patent infringement litigation and Armstrong’s unwillingness to settle the disputes eventually led to his suicide. The cumulative effect on FM was that, between 1951 and 1956 hundreds of FM stations permanently suspended operations and surrendered their licenses to the FCC, believing them to be worthless. In this environment FM Magazine soldiered on, focusing on FM two-way communications the occasional article on surviving commercial FM stations and the FM nature of TV sound.

Such was the deplorable state of affairs for high fidelity broadcasting in late 1950. Other media would bring about the birth of the hi-fi boom instead of radio. Columbia Records had introduced the LP record in 1948 with its quiet surfaces and wide range. Prior to that both Pickering and GE had- within weeks of each other- introduced the first magnetic phono cartridges. Tape had come into its own as the mastering medium in recording studio. Tape units for the home were beginning to appear. Better amplifiers with far less distortion were being made and Paul Klipsch, working in tiny Hope, Arkansas was manufacturing a wide-range folded corner horn loudspeaker he had patented. The Klipschorn shrank speaker enclosure size down far enough for installation to be practical in the average living room.

 In 1958, Sleeper expanded once again. He had continued his rather unorthodox business methods. He still lived in Monterey Massachusetts. He would commute to New York on Sunday nights and return home Thursday evening, closing the magazine’s offices every Friday.  That commute took him through Grand Central Station weekly. He heard a choir singing Christmas Carols one December evening. He decided that Grand Central, with its massive crowds, would be the perfect place to demonstrate high fidelity music to normal people who might not otherwise hear it. And he knew actually hearing high fidelity would be the only way to get the concept of hi-fi before them. They weren’t going to read his audio magazine or any other. Besides, no printed publication would sway them like an actual demonstration would. Thus plans were made to erect a building within the station which he named “Hi-Fi House”. The concept was that equipment manufacturers would pay to exhibit their equipment there. No sales would be made, but literature would be available directing customers to dealers. Each hour a program of music would be presented free of charge for people to listen to over a reference system, thus exposing them to the hi-fi concept.

 Construction on Hi-Fi House began. Sleeper ran articles on it and solicited advertisers for it in his magazine. It opened after costing three times as much as originally estimated because of building code requirements. Nevertheless it was well received and the magazine was, by this time, a formidable competitor to High Fidelity. Sleeper also made additional money by distributing regional “program” editions of the magazine with the program listings of local classical FM stations stapled in. Several of my copies list the daily fare of WASH in Washington, D.C.