Many of you probably remember the NORAD radar reports covering Santa's arrival over the USA. A brief history:
"24 hours a day, 365 days a year, NORAD tracks everything that flies in and around North America in defense of our homelands. On Dec. 24, we have the very special mission of also tracking Santa.
NORAD has been tracking Santa since 1955 when a young child accidently dialed the unlisted phone number of the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) Operations Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, believing she was calling Santa Claus after seeing a promotion in a local newspaper.
Air Force Colonel Harry Shoup, the commander on duty that night, was quick to realize a mistake had been made, and assured the youngster that CONAD would guarantee Santa a safe journey from the North Pole.
Thus a tradition was born that rolled over to NORAD when it was formed in 1958. Each year since, NORAD has dutifully reported Santa's location on Dec. 24 to millions across the globe.
Thanks to the services and resources generously provided by numerous corporate contributors and volunteers, NORAD Tracks Santa has persevered for more than 60 years.
Though the program began due to a misdialed number, NORAD Tracks Santa has flourished and is recognized as one of the Department of Defense's largest community outreach programs.
Each year, the NORAD Tracks Santa Web Site receives nearly fifteen million unique visitors from more than 200 countries and territories around the world. Volunteers receive more than 130,000 calls to the NORAD Tracks Santa hotline from children around the globe.
This year, children and the young-at-heart are able to track Santa through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram."
The original reports were made available to radio stations in the late 50's and early 1960's and have been a staple of radio Christmas programming for decades. Now with the internet etc. kids no longer tune to their local stations for these reports.
The reports were eventually released on phonograph records and send to radio stations and if you dig around on the internet you can find downloads of the reports off these records. However, they all sound like they were dubbed off old scratchy records.
I have the one of the original full track mono reel to reel tapes of these reports without the scratchy record sound! I have dubbed these to digital and uploaded them. One version is with flat e.g. and seems a bit muffled to me (the tape is 60+ years old after all) so I uploaded a second version with a bit of eq applied to punch it up.
You may feel free to download them and use and enjoy from the following links:
"Raw" version with no eq applied:
http://www.ironrangecountry.com/noradsantaflat.mp3
And the slightly tweaked version:
http://www.ironrangecountry.com/noradsantaeq.mp3
Which I find to be just bit clearer without feeling like I bastardized the original audio.
I dubbed this original full track mono tape on a fully restored Ampex 601 tape machine with full track mono heads installed that I use for archiving vintage recordings.
TIB