About the boss

MICHAEL N. MARCUS (here sharing a piece of pizza with corporate dog, Hunter), is the founder and president of AbleComm, Inc., and a journalist, advertising copywriter, author, and blogger.

As a kid, Michael spent many Saturday afternoons at Radio Shack (when there were only three Shacks in the world!) as an unpaid go-fer, asking lots of questions, building a vast library of catalogs and spec sheets, and studying war surplus treasure like tank intercoms and battlefield walkie-talkies.

He took apart almost everything he could find, and was usually able to put them back together. His skill and reputation grew; and on dates, he was sometimes asked by a girlfriend's mother to fix phones and small appliances before taking her daughter out.

He has given advice on telecommunications in his roles as phone equipment guru of the Home Office & Electronics Forum on MSN, and the Video & Home Electronics Forum on CompuServe. In the good old days (pre-web) at CompuServe, Michael was active in the Telecommunications, Broadcast, Journalism, and Working From Home forums. He is a contributor to the online Telecom Digest, and former contributing editor/columnist for Teleconnect magazine.

Born in 1946, he's a proud member of the first cohort of the Baby Boom, along with Donny Trump, Billy Clinton, Georgie Bush, Uri Geller, Dolly Parton, Candy Bergen, Loni Anderson, Tommy Lee Jones, Liza Minnelli, Linda Ronstadt, Sylvester Stallone, and Reggie Jackson. Michael was once interviewed on a radio program along with famed spoon bender Uri Geller, but has never met the other folks on the list.

Michael is the author of books on CB radio and business phone systems, and is contributing editor to "Newton's Telecom Dictionary." He has written hundreds of articles for general interest publications as well as electronics trade and consumer magazines, with a concentration on telecommunications. He's also an award-winning advertising copywriter who has worked on such brands as Pioneer, AR, Volvo, Castrol, and Perdue Chicken. Most of his recent copywriting is for his own company. After more than 30 years, he's still in business. Apparently, his words work.

Michael was attracted to electronics quite early. In first grade he and his father built a telegraph set; and later, with no parental assistance, Michael built a radio out of cardboard (well, at least it looked like a radio, and his teacher was impressed). He later went on to make fake walkie-talkies, fake phones, fake robots, fake computers, and eventually some real ones. In ninth grade he was involved in one of the first known efforts at Computer-Telephone Integration: he built a computer that used a rotary telephone dial to input numbers to be added and subtracted.

Starting around age 12, Michael supplemented his allowance by installing intercoms and public address systems, and was in the phone business before it was legal to compete with Ma Bell.

At the urging of a misguided guidance counselor, he went to Lehigh University to become an electrical engineer, and was quickly disappointed to learn that engineering was mostly math -- and slide rules were not nearly as much fun as soldering irons.

As one of the few literate people in his engineer-filled freshman dormitory, Michael built a lucrative business editing term papers; and got into trouble for such infractions as installing an intercom between his room and a friend's room two floors below, and having a pay phone in his suitcase.

At about 4am one day during his first semester, while studying for a calculus exam, a mighty voice from an invisible source said, "Michael, do you want to do this for the rest of your life?" Michael said "no."

Then the powerful voice said, "Michael, do you want to do this for four years?" He said "no," again.

And then Michael heard from the mystery inquisitor one last time: "Do you want to do this for the rest of the semester?" Michael shouted "HELL, NO!"

The next morning, he went to the counseling department, and switched from electrical engineering to journalism; and he has had a career that combines both fields of study.

While still in college, he formed a band booking and management company, "Positively Fourth Street" named after the Bob Dylan Song, and the street where Michael lived with friend and business partner Dave Evans. They worked hard, met girls, had fun and made some money, and became local semi-celebrities. The closest they got to real fame was managing a band that turned down the opportunity to record "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy, I Have Love In My Tummy," which later became a hit for Ohio Express.

Their apartment/office was served by a highly elaborate -- and highly illegal -- multi-line phone system which included an invisible telephone (clap your hands once to hear dialtone, clap again to hear "Operator, may I help you?"), plus a phone booth with a toilet inside. That booth has survived multiple moves and is now in Michael's personal phone museum, along with a "Lily Tomlin" switchboard, dozens of buttsets, payphones, and a punched-tape Telex machine.

Michael has written about electronic products for over 30 years, starting with editorial positions on Hi-Fi Trade News and Rolling Stone, and he also freelanced for many electronics and music magazines, ranging from Stereo Review to Country Music. Michael was one of the first writers to humanize the hardware, describing equipment with emotion, not math.

At Rolling Stone, his popular reviews of hi-fi equipment departed from the traditional laboratory tedium, and used humor and slices-of-life to describe the components. Instead of providing a frequency response curve for a Hegeman speaker he liked, Michael mentioned that a woman from the apartment across the hall banged on his door to complain about the person who was playing the piano late at night. Elton John's playing was recorded, but sure sounded live.

After Michael wrote that the waffle-faced JBL L-100 speaker can "knock you on your ass," JBL said they sold 10,000 pairs of speakers because of his comment. He still likes to spread the word about good stuff, and is very careful about what he recommends. Michael's father cautioned him long ago not to go to a restaurant until it's been open for a month. That's also good advice for phone equipment. Michael doesn't like to sell anything new until he's tried it on his own desk.