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There were plenty of devices that would pull a stylus down. My wife said, “Well, what you need is a solenoid.”

I was just going to ask you if you collaborated with anyone on this.

And I said to her, “What's a solenoid?” I had forgotten the term and she said, “Well, in physics it's the magnetic field that pulls something up.” And she says, “All you do is wrap the wire around a spool of thread, there's a hole in it, and you put a little piece of metal in it, and when you put the current on that field, it'll pull the metal plunger up.” That was the rudimentary instruction I got. And so she contributed the solenoid idea to -- The solenoid wasn't a new idea. It was just that I was ill-prepared to know what it was she knew. She was a good physics student anyway.

So then we wound our own little solenoids, made our own castings, machined our own parts, and made the machinery; and I then went out and rang the doorbell and put them in and so forth. And that's a long story. But that's how I got to CBS, because they thought that was the answer to some of the questions they had to measuring audiences -- because at that time --

Who were you in contact with at CBS about this? How did you initially gain their interest?

Well, I must've read it in a trade journal or seen something with a man's name on it. The man's name was Kesten --K.e.s.t.e.n. -- Paul Kesten. And I wrote him a letter. And I