(Fireman’s Fund insures Aircall’s transmitting tower and radio station atop the Hotel Pierre, Fifth Avenue and 61st Street, New York City. The policy covers against "All Risk" with a few minor exclusions.)

At a recent wedding a guest who is a well-known New York doctor unobtrusively removed from his pocket a small plastic box, held it up to his ear for a moment, then got up, tiptoed out of the church and rushed to a hospital in time to deliver the baby of a patient.

About the same time, the New York Yankees were engaged in a struggle at the Stadium and among the thousands on hand were a veteran BOAC pilot and his navigator, confirmed baseball fans. At a tense moment of the game, the navigator drew from his pocket another small plastic box, listened for a time while his eyes continued to follow the play, then heard something that galvanized him.

"Let’s go," he said, and they took off for Idlewild, where their stratocruiser’s schedule had been altered. A British girl, hostess on the same plane, arrived as they did. She had been "called" off the sands of Jones Beach by the same mysterious box.

They, and 500 other New Yorkers, had been listening to KEA-627 which broadcasts (on 43.58 megacycles) from the tower of Fifth Avenue’s Pierre Hotel. The doctor, the air crew, and an arresting variety of other New Yorkers, subscribe to KEA-627’s "Aircall," a kind of one-way version of Dick Tracy’s two-way wristwatch electronic marvel.

A story goes with it.

Seems that 30 years ago a mustered-out World War I pilot named Sherman Amsden of Brooklyn decided to invade Manhattan. It wasn’t as simple as a subway ride. Amsden was from Brooklyn, Michigan. He had come to the big city to take over a "service" for which New Yorkers, the most "service-conscious" people on earth, were not quite ready—the telephone answering business.

Well, sir, he did fine. Has about 10,000 subscribers in New York now and has expanded to most other big cities in the country. "Telanserphone," one of the worst words ever coined, is a simple device. If you’re a subscriber and close shop or office for the night, or hie off to Spitzenberg to shoot spitz, a cheerfully impersonal voice answers your phone. Old friends who are at heart roues assume immediately that you have taken unto yourself a fresh squaw. But it turns out to be considerably less expensive—just an operator who takes down whatever messages you wanted to give your old pal, or firm.

The boy from Brooklyn, as we said, did real good with this. But he and his associates wanted to extend the service. Too many calls were piling up on absentee doctors, for instance. A means must be devised to reach them hurriedly, instead of waiting for them to call "Telanserphone" at their leisure to check on the calls their office had received.

"Aircall" is the result. Each subscriber is given a code number. If his phone is called and answered by "Telanserphone," and he does not call the latter within a minute to see if anything has been cooking, his code number begins to be broadcast over KEA-627. He is supplied with the above-mentioned plastic box, a two-tube receiver invented by Richard Florac, and is honor bound to listen in periodically. Within a minute, all "wanted" code-owners can be summoned.

It was not easy "service" to set up. Radio attorney Andrew Haley worked nearly 20 years getting a channel from the F.C.C. It finally was cleared chiefly because of a war-born opening of a new spectrum ultra high frequency in the broadcast range.

An odd assortment of subscribers swear by "Aircall" and, presumably, swear at it when it pries them loose from a good Broadway show, the skiing at Bear Mountain, the Westchester and Jersey golf courses. Private detectives go for the magic box, as do insurance company adjusters, elevator maintenance firms, etc.

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