Radio Broadcast (May-Oct 1922)

158 RADIO BROADCAST ©Underwood & Underwood Henry Ford listening to radio. He is reported to be a radio enthusiast and may well be thinking of a way to send crop reports to farmers with Ford tractors and "flivvers" We found out at once that the new marvel had already estabHshed itself among us like the flu — quietly and insidiously. We found out that hundreds of our youths had been "on the air" for some time. We found out that engineers were ready to install any kind of plant we wanted, either for receiving or for broadcasting. But what amazed and perplexed us, and still does, was that if we wanted anything in the radio line except copper wire and roofs to string our antennae on, we would have to go down on a waiting list as long as that of the Bohemian Club, and that we would be lucky to get service inside of three months. If we postponed action for three: days, we went to find that the waiting list had quadrupled in length and that six months or maybe eight was the best we could hope for. Naturally we thought someone was kidding us and we had to be shown that, for the better part of a year our local electricians, inventors, and manufacturers had been making radio stuff as fast as they could, working day and night, that they had enlarged their facilities twice, three times, ten times, and still were swamped, and that every one of them was shipping sets East. Perhaps this whetted our appetite for radio. At any rate, there isn't a complete receiving set of any sort to be had on the West coast to-day and there won't be for months, except for those who are on the list. If it weren't tragic to them, it would be comic to see the bafflement in the eyes of local radio men. "What's the present state of the radio business here?" they echo, vacantly. "You tell 'em! We don't know. We're out of our depth, and going down for the third time! We're working three shifts; we are fighting for raw materials; we are combing the country for men who know the business; and we are so far behind now that it doesn't look as though we'd ever catch up. Radio has caught on like grease in a Greek restaurant kitchen, and all we've got to fight it with is water in a teacup 1" The most amazing feature of it all to me is that, for the present at least, the only use for radio is "stunt" shooting. A few scattered receiving stations are making practical use of the radio in the matter of crop and weather reports and forecasts, the day's news, and so on. But practically all the activity now is about the dissemination of "concerts" played on the phonograph. The fact that every home that can have a radio receiving set can, and probably does, have a phonograph, seems to make no difference. People will sit for hours listening to Caruso sing or the Victor Band play through the air who wouldn't walk across a room and wind the old cabinet and get the same music home-grown. To this extent it is all a fad, and this phase of it will pass. But the potentialities of the business are interesting. It is certain that, for one reason at least, the West will find greater use for radio than the East; said reason being that out here our distances are greater. What does that mean? Simply this: that radio annihilates distance, and the more distance there is to overcome the greater and more important the feat. Concretely I mean something like the following: Along the Atlantic Coast 1 suppose there are comparatively few homes of the middle or better class without a telephone. No one is more than a few miles from a telegraph station. Few live outside the delivery zones of daily newspapers. You can reach ever\' human be