Upon submitting his senior thesis in April 1943, an elated Harold F. Van Ummerson 44 ran down to the Harvard radio station, inspired to do something unusual. For the next three hours, he played all of Beethoven's symphonies in numerical order, changing the 78 RPM records every three or four minutes.

Early the next morning, Van Ummerson left the station and walked down to the Charles River, where he threw a copy of the inspirational thesis off a bridge.

So began one of WHRB's oldest traditions, the musical "orgy," Van Ummerson is still remembered as one of the station's great innovators, and the marathon orgies he inspired have become a Reading Period standard at the station, focusing on more than just classical music and ranging from live folk music to reggae.

A week after his historical broadcast, Van Ummerson was drafted, and left Cambridge without knowing about the tradition he started. "The first I heard about [the orgies] was in an issue of the alumni bulletin in about 1960," he says now.

At the time of Van Ummersen's original orgy, the station was only three years old and could be received only inside Harvard buildings. But it had already come a long way.

On April 15, 1940, a small group of radio enthusiasts had broadcast along the University's heating pipes to a few of their friends with radios who knew when to listen.

The three students who started the project had persuaded the University to donate some rooms in a building on Quincy St. and to help fund the equipment for the station.

Electrical expert Charles W. Oliphant '41 built the transmitter, while William W. Tyng '41 did the paperwork and fundraising. Lawrence P. Lader '41, the station's programming director, recalls that Oliphant's transmitter was "only five or 10 watts--just enough to send it through the pipes."

"We had one studio and all we could afford was to buy a few turntables and microphones," says Lader. To block out sound, they covered the walls with blankets. The station's first broadcast was less than two hours long, but included a Jazz program, a discussion of classical music, and a news report.

Without a license, the station could not broadcast to the general public Oliphant found, however, that the signal was travelling illegal all over the Boston area through pipes and was connected to the University's steam system.

A few days after the first broadcast, the station was closed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and forced to find another way of transmitting.

While Oliphant searched for a better way to transmit, Lader and Lyng looked for funding beyond the University's initial investment. As executives of The Crimson, the two persuaded the paper to loan the station money for its daily operations.

"I got consumed by the station, and sort of gave up my editorial job at The Crimson," says Lader.

On December 2, 1940, the station began broadcasting through the electrical light wires as WHCN, the Harvard Crimson Network. The signal traveled along wires and could be picked up by radios located within a few yards of the University's electrical system. The signal quality improved and the transmissions could be contained within the University.

A number of students performed radio dramas, and the station carried interviews, poetry readings, and political debates. "We would have two people debating debates. "We would have two people debating in one studio with a studio audience," says Lader. "We literally almost had fights on the radio--people would scream and yell."