Indiana antenna company, whose CEO climbs the Empire State Building, marks 80 years
CHANDLER, Ind. – It was 1943 and America was in the depths of World War II, with no certainty of the outcome.
Among the avenues for achieving victory was to develop radio beacons to aid in bombing raids on German targets. Two engineers, John B. Caraway and Robert Silliman, were among those hard at work on just that at the Radio Research Lab at Harvard University Laboratories in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Because of concerns that German submarines off Boston Harbor were spying on their beacon tests, Caraway suggested they conduct research measurements out of a hangar at the airport in his adopted hometown of Evansville, which couldn’t be reached by submarine or German aircraft.
That’s how Caraway helped found Electronic Research Inc. (which later moved into the former Evansville Ordnance plant in the one-time Chrysler auto plant on North New York Avenue). His friend Bob Silliman traveled from Boston to Evansville several times to help test the radio gear during the war.
America and its allies won the war, of course, but that wasn’t the end of ERI, which turned its attention to manufacturing antennas for commercial radio (and, later, TV) stations. This year, ERI, now based in Chandler, Indiana, is observing its 80th anniversary and still going strong.
“When you watch WFIE, that’s our antenna, or Channel 44,” ERI Vice President of Marketing Bill Harland said during a tour of its plant. ERI also designed, manufactured and installed WNIN’s tower and supplied its FM antenna.
But ERI isn’t just a local concern. It’s the nation’s No. 1 producer of antennas for FM radio station and ranks No. 2 in producing antennas for TV broadcasters. Its antennas stand atop some of the tallest buildings and towers across the country and abroad.
“And we make the best product,” Harland said of the company’s antennas.
It eventually also got into the tower fabrication and construction business, building towers as high as 2,000 feet.
Moreover, its president and CEO, Tom Silliman has been featured in newspaper, magazine and TV stories for repeatedly climbing the tower atop the Empire State Building to, among other things, replace the light bulb in the aviation beacon – some 1,500 feet above the street.
Indeed, while ERI has a distinguished and respected legacy, Silliman has led a colorful life that extends well beyond his expertise as an electrical engineer.
'Some of the products I developed in high school we still sell today'
Thomas B. Silliman was born in 1945, as World War II approached its end. His father moved to the Washington, D.C., area where he started an engineering consulting firm. Among other clients, Bob Silliman helped design antennas for Electronic Research Inc.
“When I was 12, my parents were having a party and a fellow asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said I wanted to be a professional engineer and a designer,” Tom said. “Everybody laughed. Of course, that’s what I did.”
Not long afterward, his father pulled him from public school and enrolled him in the Bullis School, a Navy prep school in Maryland that included “mandatory six-day-a-week classes and mandatory four-hours-a-night homework.”
Back in Indiana, Carraway, who became president of ERI in 1957, died from a massive heart attack in 1962. Without his leadership, the company faltered and had to lay off all its employees.
Collins Radio Co., which produced equipment for the AM radio industry, asked Bob Silliman to go to Evansville to discuss buying the company, which he did for some $15,000, making some senior employees and attorneys minority shareholders while he held majority ownership.
At their home in the D.C. area, Tom Silliman said the family "converted our basement to an R&D (research & development) lab” where he gained insight into ultra-high frequency television bandwidth.
“Some of the products I developed in high school we still sell today,” he said.
Tom Silliman was also eager to use his athletic skills, serving as captain of the football team and playing lacrosse and competing as a diver on the swim team. He graduated first in chemistry and math studies from his school.
Young Silliman’s lacrosse skills caught the eye of a local alum of Cornell University.
At Cornell, however, his academic advisor was convinced that his spending time on the school’s lacrosse team would doom him to flunking out. “If you ever want me to succeed, tell me something like that,” Silliman says now.
In 1964, Tom Silliman said, he “was learning computer science at Cornell University. I came home for Thanksgiving and spoke with my father about using computers to do the analysis that he was doing on AM towers as well as applications for license. He took my book, and when I came home for Christmas, his entire consulting business was computerized.”
Silliman went on to earn his bachelor’s degree in 1969. “I told my father, ‘It’s time for you to hire me’” at ERI, he said (though he would return to Cornell in 1980 to earn his master’s degree).
By then, Tom Silliman was already involved in ERI’s design, production and installation of what was then the most powerful FM antenna in the country, atop the Shell Building in Houston. And that project gave him experience in something for which he would gain fame: climbing.
Tom Silliman's climbing habit
“When I was a kid, I climbed trees all the time,” he said. “I had friends who thought I was crazy. I was climbing trees they couldn’t."
As an electrical engineer, he was started performing field work — climbing towers hundreds, even thousands of feet high to install, repair or perform maintenance on broadcast antennas.
“All the other engineers were mad,” he said, saying it wasn’t appropriate for trained engineers to risk working at such heights. He became an expert climber who estimates he has ascended 2,000 towers of varying, but often dizzying, heights. Much of that was done before the advent of safety harnesses that not only secured a climber to a structure, but helped break their fall if they slipped.
Silliman also learned the art of rigging — figuring out how to prepare large loads to be safely lifted to great heights — both by reading and working with tower crews.
But he was also earning a reputation in engineering.
In the FM radio world, a problem existed with existing antenna designs going into “corona," or discharging an electric arc or plume of fire in foggy conditions. Silliman pioneered a fatter, alternative design, which ERI trademarked as the Rototiller. When put on display at a National Association of Broadcasters convention in Chicago, “People said, what the heck is that?’” he said.
But one radio station in Baltimore bought and installed one. During the brutal winter of 1977-78, when ice coated radio broadcast antennas around that city, “Every station went off the air, even if they had (antenna) heaters. Except the Rototiller,” Silliman said. “The following year, we sold a (lot) of Rototillers in Baltimore."
And beyond. Variations of that antenna remain a mainstay of ERI’s business today.
Work on the Empire State Building
For the Empire State Building in 1994, Silliman said, “I made the proposal for a two-level three-around radiating element design with reflector screens that worked extremely well and has continued to work well for 12 FM stations." It's since expanded to 16.
The Sillimans, father and son, gained fame in the broadcast industry. Robert M. Silliman received the National Association of Broadcasters’ lifetime Radio Engineering Achievement Award in 1993. Tom Silliman earned the same award in 2008, becoming the first father and son to each win the honor.
Broadcast antennas also existed atop the World Trade Center. After 9/11, ERI was selected to study whether antennas atop the Empire State Building could accommodate all of the New York-area radio stations’ signals without interfering with one another.
But Silliman's expertise extended beyond that of an electrical engineer’s work on broadcast antennas. As he worked with the towers that held antenna high in the sky, he developed an understanding of structural engineering and says he had a hand in establishing industry standards for wind-deflection calculations that aid engineers in planning for the use of gin poles in raising segments of a tower.
Silliman’s side pursuits have also been noted. He is an expert kayaker who has tested whitewater rivers in the U.S. and beyond as well as an accomplished downhill snow skier. He also works cattle on a 100-acre ranch near Lynnville.
To keep himself fit, he for years adhered to what he once called a Spartan lifestyle of running and weightlifting. And he has a gravelly voice that he blames on a viral throat infection he believes he contracted from an underwater spill while kayaking on the Wabash River.
The National Association of Broadcasters newsletter Radio TechCheck in 2008 said Silliman as “is often called a Renaissance man due to his varied passions.”
'King Kong' changing a bulb
All of this might have meant Tom Silliman’s fame would be restricted to antenna engineering and broadcast circles.
But in January 2001, The New York Times ran a feature story – "Where is King Kong When a Bulb Goes Out?" – describing how Silliman, accompanied by two employees, periodically climbs the tower atop the Empire State Building to replace the light bulb in the aviation beacon and perform welding and other maintenance.
The men ride up to the 105th story, 1,250 feet above the street, and climb out into the winter air through a hatch. To reach the beacon they must climb 204 feet, or about 20 stories. The first 117 feet offers enclosed ladders and steel platforms.
“(The) spire grows narrower and narrower until a crow’s nest is reached about 87 feet from the bulb,” the Times story explained. “The crow’s nest is less than four feet wide and has no railings, and it is a straight plummet to a certain death.”
“There are few sounds besides the howling of the wind,” which was blowing around 30 mph, the story continued.
The temperature hovered around zero. The work had to be performed in the dead of night because four television antennas atop the tower had to be shut down to avoid frying the men as they worked.
“The weather had to be ignored and fear left on the ground,” the story said.
Leaving the crow’s nest, the men free-climbed the remaining 87 feet on 4-inch bolts, then tied themselves off with ropes to begin their work, which included some welding. They did this climbing and work while carrying around 100 pounds of equipment each, including safety harnesses that weigh in at about 40 pounds apiece and tool buckets — all while wearing insulated coveralls and heavy freezer jackets to ward off the cold.
Other news media flocked to the spectacle of such daredevils. Acclaimed photographer Joe McNally climbed with Silliman and crew to capture a photo for a National Geographic magazine feature called “The Power of Light.” ABC’s “20/20,” the “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” television show and the Discovery Channel did segments as well.
Today at age 78, Silliman said he still does some climbing, although infusion treatments he’s been taking for a viral infection in his throat, possibly contracted years ago when becoming submerged during a kayaking trip on the Wabash River, have forced him to curtail such exertion lately.
But he’s still on the job, overseeing ERI’s operations on about 100 acres along Gardner Road outside Chandler, where it moved from Newburgh in 1992. The operation is spread among seven buildings that encompass about 250,000 square feet, including the headquarters, antenna and tower fabrication plants, and specialty buildings that contain virtually no metal that would interfere with antenna testing.
Including Silliman, ERI employs five licensed Professional Engineers, and a sixth engineer is scheduled to take his PE tests in 2024.
ERI’s 102-employee workforce includes a lot of seasoned employees. One reported that he has been in the antenna business for 51 years.
“I’ve been here 21 years and I’m one of the junior employees,” Harland said.
Having celebrated its 80th anniversary, ERI continues to look to the future.
“We’re very comfortable with how stable our customers are as an industry,” Silliman said. “I don’t see why we can’t continue be one of dominant suppliers to the broadcast industry in the world.”
And Silliman could be around a while himself. His father worked until he was 83 and lived to age 87, and Silliman said he had a grandfather who lived to 103, dying from a heart attack while chasing a bus he had just missed.
But does he have a retirement plan?
“Death,” he said.
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: With CEO who climbed skyscrapers, Indiana company marks 80 years
