Speer Electronic Service

Serving Sterling, Illinois since 1956, we install television antenna distribution systems and telephone wiring, and sell and service:

The History of Speer Electronic Service

TELEVISION ANTENNAS

Beginning after a freak ice storm during an Easter vacation in the 1960's, I worked with Bender and Burch Music Company, and then Sterling Music Company (same company under a different name) replacing television antennas. Shortly thereafter I became an independent antenna serviceman. I eventually sold and installed over 200 ChannelMaster Antennas and a dozen Rohn towers up to 60 feet tall, some with 20 foot antennas on top.

CABLE DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS

With the building of local nursing homes and apartment houses, and the remodeling of businesses dealing in television sales (Sears, Goodyear, Montgomery Ward), I installed amplification and distribution systems to provide TV signals. My largest installation was in the Rock Falls Colonial Acres Health Care Center.

WRITING BASIC SOFTWARE

Along with the teaching of BASIC at Sterling High School and Sauk Valley College, I found some local industries that had purchased Radio Shack Model-I computers and were looking for programming help. The early programs included the popular $20 Payroll Program for Small Businesses, and a dozen inventory, scheduling, production, mailing, accounting, and customer catalog programs. The most recent is a program to randomly select employees for drug testing.

THE MONTHLY MAGAZINE COLUMN

H& E Computronics Magazine, was written for Radio Shack Computers. I was a contributing editor for almost four years with my own "corner" of Level-II BASIC programs for beginners, over a hundred programs in all. Two very early BASIC programs were published in Popular Computing.