Radio broadcast .. (1922-30)

Do Brains or Dollars Operate Your Set? By W. H. WORRELL THERE is more than one kind of person who likes to operate a radio set ; there are, to be exact, two kinds. The first of these recognizes in radio a fad which he would feel ashamed not to appear interested in; he does what he does because it is "done." Radio to him is also an easy means of entertainment, and a source of free music — especially jazz. Where the music comes from doesn't concern him much, if it is only strong enough — regardless of weather conditions — and always on draught. He wants to be able to turn a spigot and just let 'er pour forth. In short, such a man isn't a very good sport. He is the kind that generally doesn't like fishing unless he can get a boy to hang the worms on his hook and take off the fish. He would prefer catching bullheads to tempting trout, and might ask his dealer to guarantee the effectiveness of his tackle. He will not survive the first summer of static, nor the first week of experimenting with his receiving set. He will discover that radio is a game, in which a certain amount of patience and skill are demanded, and that a vacuum tube is more like a violin than a victrola. The other type of person is fascinated by radio as by anything that seems to be above or beyond common experience, and that, while apparently contradicting common sense, invites investigation and stimulates imagination. He seizes upon the apparently supernatural, or at least the unusual, as affording a change from the regularity of nature and of average human experience; yet he does so with the intent of rendering it some day both natural and familiar. It interests him intensely to discover new wonders and then to try to solve their mysteries. His unconscious purpose is to render space and time, and all that limits and thwarts human existence, as completely amenable to the will of man as in a fairy tale. This is the real radio devotee, whether he is a lawyer spending his evenings in the attic with his home-made set, or a boy tuning in at midnight for the signals of some distant comrade. The fascination of radio lies in its atmosphere of magic, which is the accomplishment of something out of all proportion to the means employed, or in seeming contradiction to natural laws and common experience. It lies also in the uncanny way in which time and distance — the natural obstacles to quick interchange of thought between human beings — are reduced almost to insignificance. Distance separates us from people and things. To reach them requires time. During the transition from one scene to another we ourselves are changed by the intervening time with its experiences. To some extent we may travel by telephone almost instantly to the presence of a friend at a given house in a distant city; but by radio we may, on a good night, pay flying visits to a dozen places between Schenectady, Detroit, and Atlanta. When we learn a little more about radio it appears to be the transmission and reception of pure form, without substance. And isn't it amazing to think that this form, this exchange of thought, is constantly passing about us — passing through us — from countless transmitting stations, at this very instant ! We possess no human faculty which can make us aware of this — but with sensitive enough instruments all this flow of ideas could be reduced to significant sound. At present, a tiny fraction of it— on a still winter night we may be inclined to think it is a big fraction! — can be made available for us by the intelligent use of such instruments as we may possess. All the fascination of a link between the physical and the spiritual is here, and it is far from easy to rid ourselves of the feeling that we are at the threshold of fundamental truths which have baffled humanjty throughout the centuries.