The original WNYC Sunrise Symphony Clock Radio design by iceman Jack Bruce Mercer

Letter to WNYC director Morris S. Novik: 

Mill Lane

Bronx, N.Y.C. 

October 27, 1938 

Gentlemen:

The radio, as far as I am concerned, is WNYC. 

I work on the night shift, 4-12, in an ice plant.

At seven in the morning my alarm clock is rigged so that instead of a horrible ringing, the Sunrise Symphony switches on. (Want the patent fellow music lovers?)

So there I lie in bed, a working man enjoying a millionaire's comfort. By eight I'm ready for breakfast and the morning paper. At nine, another hour of good music. And so I am well fortified for a new day!

Sincerely,

Jack Bruce Mercer

P.S. Please send me the Masterwork Booklet.  

According to a news release issued a week-a-half later by the office of Mayor La Guardia, ​Morris Novik passed Mercer's diagram (pictured above) on to ​WNYC's Chief Engineer Isaac Brimberg who put the Rube Goldberg-like design to the test. It worked!

Sunrise Symphony was the station's daily morning program of recorded classical music. The Masterwork Booklet, ​which Mercer requests in the postscript of his letter, was actually The Masterwork Bulletin, WNYC's program guide.

Special thanks to the New York City Municipal Archives and to the La Guardia and Wagner Archives, La Guardia Community College/The City University of New York.