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KING ELECTRON
Tells About Detection
By R. H. RANGER
Engineer, Radio Corporation of America. Author of "The Radio Pathfinder." Trade Mark "King Electron" for illustrations registration pending, R. H. Ranger.
Illustrated by TOM MONROE
WILL it ever be possible to hear radio signals directly without the need of receiving sets?" Maybe, — provided broadcasting keeps up for the several thousand years sufficient to develop in successive generations of radio enthusiasts an ear attuned to the new waves in space. But let us hope not, as one of the chief advantages of radio broadcasting is that the receiving set may be shut off when not desired.
The ears we have are attuned to air waves. The air waves in which we are interested are those caused by the vibrations of our vocal organs or musical instruments. Unfortunately, many other happenings in every day life always give rise to sound waves which we usually characterize as noise.
The piano scale affords a fair idea of the useful range of sound vibration. The lowest note vibrates back and forth at a frequency of some twenty-seven times a second; the highest note at some 4,200 vibrations a second. To produce sounds by the ordinary telephone, electric cur
rents vibrate back and forth in the telephone wires at the same frequency or time of vibration as the corresponding sound. But it has not proved practical to send out radio waves in space at these low rates of vibration. Vibrations of the order of a million per second are necessary in order to broadcast in an economical manner from the transmitting station to many receivers, and this is much too fast for the ear to hear. So for the next few thousand years it would seem to be necessary to have radio-receiver ears.
These radio ears consist of receiving apparatus which will translate the radio vibrations of about a million cycles a second in ether into sound waves in air. This explains the need of a "detector", to detect the changes in these radio waves which correspond to the sound frequencies.
King Electron and his band of many million runners are at the service of the radio man. At each receiving station they stand ready to rush around in the approved manner to produce music out of the fast-vibrating radio waves coming through the ether.