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Radio on Robinson Crusoe's Isle
IF ROBINSON CRUSOE, upon his first reconnoitering party after landing on the island, had been greeted with the menacing, whining, snapping voice of a i|-KW spark transmitter, he would undoubtedly have run back to the beach and swum out to sea again. He would never have found "the print of a man's naked foot . . . which was very plain to be seen in the sand." 1 n due time he would have succumbed to the undertow, and later on, poor Friday would have been served up as fricassee by his cannibal captors. In short, we would have been done out of one pf the finest adventure stories ever written. Fortunately, however, this did not occur and could not have occurred until some two hundred years after the events of which Daniel Defoe wrote. What put the whole idea into Defoe's head,
CUMBERLAND BAY, JUAN FERNANDEZ
Courtesy of Hi THE FOOTPRINT
you will remember, was the account of the exile of Alexander Selkirk on the island of Juan Fernandez. For four years and four months ( 1 7041709), Selkirk had lived there in solitude. The island where this took place, and which became in Defoe's story Robinson Crusoe's isle, lies about ^60 miles out in the sea, west (jf Valparaiso. It is at present owned by the Chilean Government, which maintains a radio station there, of sufficient power to communicate with Valparaiso.
Between Selkirk's time and the present, the island of Juan Fernandez has been the scene of many strange doings, in the eighteenth century, it was a favorite rendezvous of pirates and of the French and British sea rovers. More recently — in 191 5 — the hunted German commerce raider Dresden was sunk by British warships there, in Cumberiand Bay. The accompanying photograph, taken from the rugged mountains that surround this bay, shows the small fishing village of San Juan Bautista.
The radio station is situated on one of the high points some 1000 feet above the sea. It is operated by the Chilean Navy, which expects soon to replace the i|-KW "chispa" (spark) transmitter with more modern and more powerful apparatus.
oughton, Mifflin & Co. IN THE SAND
What Would You Like to Have in Radio Broadcast ?
The editors would he pleased I0 hear from readers of the magaiine on the foUoieitig (or other) topics:
1. The kind of article, or diagram, or explanation, or improvement you would like to see in Radio Broadcast.
2. IVhat has interested you most, and zvhat least, in the numbers you have read so far ?