Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 74. Sunrise is 5:15 and sunset 8:33 for 15h 18m 02s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 25.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Involvement and Cable TV Commission meets at 5 PM and the Public Works Committee meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1935, inventor Edwin Armstrong gives the first public demonstration of FM broadcasting in the United States at Alpine, New Jersey:
In June 1936, Armstrong gave a formal presentation of his new system at the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) headquarters. For comparison, he played a jazz record using a conventional AM radio, then switched to an FM transmission. A United Press correspondent was present, and recounted in a wire service report that: “if the audience of 500 engineers had shut their eyes they would have believed the jazz band was in the same room. There were no extraneous sounds.” Moreover, “Several engineers said after the demonstration that they consider Dr. Armstrong’s invention one of the most important radio developments since the first earphone crystal sets were introduced.” Armstrong was quoted as saying he could “visualize a time not far distant when the use of ultra-high frequency wave bands will play the leading role in all broadcasting”, although the article noted that “A switchover to the ultra-high frequency system would mean the junking of present broadcasting equipment and present receivers in homes, eventually causing the expenditure of billions of dollars.”
In a state and nation seldom bipartisan, Wisconsin saw a bipartisan vote yesterday: Bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission unanimously chooses Democrat as chair for 2 years. Scott Bauer reports:
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The same Democrat who led the Wisconsin Elections Commission during the contested 2020 presidential election will be back in the helm in the swing state this year after being unanimously elected Monday by the bipartisan panel.
Ann Jacobs was the only commission member nominated to serve as chair, reprising the role she had from 2020 to 2022. The unanimous vote included one from a Republican commissioner who attempted to cast Wisconsin’s electoral votes for Donald Trump in 2020 even though he lost the state.
The six-member commission administers and enforces Wisconsin election laws, but elections are run locally by more than 1,800 clerks in towns, villages, cities and counties. State law requires that the chair of the commission alternate between a Republican and a Democrat every two years.
Two key departures from normal yet persist on the commission (assuming anyone can define normal, let alone recall when that condition last held sway).
First, Bob Spindell remains a WISGOP commissioner. Yet, he is one of ten fraudulent presidential electors who admitted under a civil settlement that their actions were part of an attempt to overturn wrongfully the 2020 presidential election results. Spindell wouldn’t belong on the elections board of the smallest hamlet on the planet, let alone this state’s elections commission.
Second, Wisconsin’s elections administrator, Meagan Wolfe, remains a holdover employee in her full-time state position. A well-ordered politics would not have holdovers, as the appointments & confirmation process would not be intermittent.