Charles H. Singer was an American communications expert.
Background
Singer was born on March 17, 1903, in Bayonne, New Jersey, the son of Barnet Singer, a painter who also operated a picture-framing shop, and Bertha Levin. Singer had seven brothers and sisters. He had no middle name at birth; he adopted his middle initial during his youth to distinguish himself from a contemporary writer also named Charles Singer.
Education
Singer attended public school in Bayonne and trained to be a wireless radio operator at the Marconi School of Radio.
Career
Singer worked initially on several seagoing vessels, one of which was the yacht of press magnate William Randolph Hearst. He was also a wireless operator on the Clyde Line passenger steamship Comanche, which caught fire and sank off the coast of Florida on October 17, 1925. He stayed in the radio room sending out SOS messages; he remained at his post until just before the ship went down, and then left with the captain. As a result, there were no casualties.
Singer became a registered professional engineer in the 1920's, one of the few persons to do so who was not a college graduate. During the late 1920's, he helped construct land-based radio operations. With his assistance, Lt. Vincent Doyle of the Bayonne Police Department installed radio communications between the Bayonne Police Headquarters and its patrol cars, one of the first such police radio systems in the nation. Singer later worked for WOR, in New York City, then one of the major radio stations in the United States. He started as assistant to John Poppele, WOR's chief engineer, and later succeeded him in that position. He worked on the station's technical operations, constructing the towers and transmitting systems that broadcast from antennas situated atop the Empire State Building.
During World War II, Singer was appointed the Army Signal Corps' assistant director of operational research. Stationed in Washington, D. C. , he was responsible for developing operations and maintenance procedures for military communications systems; he also helped write several maintenance manuals for the newly developed radar systems. After the war ended, Singer returned to WOR, which had obtained a license to begin transmitting television broadcasts. He helped design, construct, and maintain the station's new television transmission facilities. An experimental broadcast antenna he constructed in Carteret, New Jersey, was unsuccessful, because most of the area's television audience already had their home antennas pointed toward the Empire State Building. Singer left WOR in 1955, after the station was acquired by the General Tire and Rubber Company, which was expanding into radio, television, and motion pictures.
He became vice-president and director of operations for Page Communications Engineers in Vienna, Virginia. His new employer was a subsidiary of the Northrop Corporation, a large aerospace firm specializing in defense contracts. Headed by Northrop executive Herbert H. Schenck, Page Communications was set up to construct and operate the long-distance communications systems tied in with the nation's military apparatus. Singer worked on projects involving the North American Radar system (NORAD) and the Distance Early Warning (DEW) Line, constructed with the participation of American Telephone and Telegraph Company and various defense agencies. In 1960, Page Communications formed a consortium called the United States Underseas Cable Corporation with several other firms, including Phelps Dodge Corporation, a major copper producer; the Northrop Corporation; and Felten & Guilleaume Carlswerk Aktienge-sellschaft, a West German cable company that had developed a new type of Styroflex cable especially suited for undersea use. The consortium designed and constructed long-distance submarine cable systems. Singer was involved in setting up one such system between Cape Canaveral, Florida, and various islands in the Caribbean and the South Atlantic, for monitoring and reporting American missile launches.
When American involvement in the Vietnam War escalated into full-scale participation, Singer helped Page Communications install and maintain undersea cable communications systems linking American bases in Vietnam with existing military command centers in the Philippines, Taiwan, Okinawa, and other bases in the region.
His last project involved the creation of an undersea communications system between the USSR and Japan, which was linked with other non-Communist nations of Asia. He died of cancer in Sibley, Virginia, on March 26, 1972.
Achievements
Membership
Member of the Institute of Radio Engineers (later the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers), member of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, member of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Associations, member of the Navy League, member of the Veteran Wireless Operators Association
Connections
Singer married Betty Schnitzer on March 18, 1928; they had two children.