Radio broadcast .. (1922-30)

5io Radio Broadcast must know the why and wherefore. So they didn't rest with instruction in the building of sets, but quit their afternoon ball games to study theory. Boys began besieging the KYW station, the Chicago Tribune's wireless plant, and WBU. They were at the doors early and late. "And of all the visitors we have," a KYW guide said, in talking of the younger generation's passion for radio, "we get the most fun out of the boys. Grown men simply 'Ah !' and 'Oh!' or ask silly questions. The boys get right down to brass tacks. I've seen kids in short pants stagger our radio men with questions that went straight to the heart of things." School teachers had similar experiences. "For a while I was almost ashamed to go to school in the morning," one high school instructor confessed, " because the boys were shooting over my head. 1 had to do the hardest sort of grinding before I could face them. They took to the business like ducks, and were speaking the lingo with the fluency of experts before the radio fever was a month old." Radio clubs in the schools are supplementing the work in the classroom. Lane Tech's pioneer club served as a model and has, in fact, been instrumental in organizing the radio interest of other schools. George Frost, the 1 8-yearold president of the Lane club, has been indefatigable. Unaided he produced the first radioequipped automobile in Chicago and he serves at schools as a sort of unofficial instructor. ; Through the efforts of young Frost and others of the Lane club, radio clubs have been formed in most of the schools, until now the organizations include thousands of young wireless experimenters. The growth of Marshall High School's club illustrates the speed with which these organizations develop interest in their hobby. This club was formed in May, with a membership of 100. By June i the secretary had 400 names on his book. A set is now being built at the school. When it has been finished the club will have 750 members, the officers say. And before a year is out most of the 750 will have put radio sets into their own homes. Thus the wireless audience grows. The Chicago Association of Commerce has contributed fuel to the boys' enthusiasm. For several years the association has fostered civic-industrial clubs in the high schools. The clubs devote their energies to neighborhood work in Americanization, study of social and political problems and first-hand observation of Chicago industry, business, and government. Because the backers of these clubs foresee that the interested boys of to-day will be the informed men of to-morrow they are encouraging the radio hobby. The Association of Commerce wants to make Chicago the radio centre of America. To that end it is helping the high school enthusiasts by opening for them the doors to great electrical plants and laboratories. The boys' clubs are not the only ones. Although the popular excitement over radio is less than a year old in Chicago, a Chicago Radio Club already has been organized. It has a clubhouse near the lake shore and is bringing together men interested in wireless, not for technical purposes only, but for social ends as well. It uses radio just as the large athletic clubs use sports, that is, as a binder. But the sandlots have turned out more big leaguers than all the athletic clubs combined, and the radio experts of to-morrow are more likely to come from the high school groups than from the elaborate clubhouse on the lake front. Chicago's two great universities — Northwestern and Chicago — have been pretty well immune from the radio fever, probably because neither is a technical school and the students' ambitions and interests already were fixed in other directions. Armour Institute, Lewis Institute and the many lesser technical institutions in Chicago have noticed some increase in the demand for instruction in wireless, but there, as in the cultural universities, previous fixation of undergraduates' interest has had a restraining influence. The real fever will not reach the colleges until the high school enthusiasts begin graduating. None of the colleges has availed itself of the opportunity to broadcast helpful lectures. WBU, the city hall station, is the only broadcasting agency which has attempted education in anything except music, and WBU's efforts have had a political tinge. City officials lecture by radiophone six times a week on matters of importance to Chicagoans as citizens, explaining the work of the police department, the manner in which the streets are kept clean, ways of avoiding disease and accident, and so forth.