Radio broadcast .. (1922-30)

296 Radio Broadcast but in fairness it should be stated that an appreciable number of amateurs handle their keys as well as commercial operators; they are, in fact, distinguished from the latter only by the fact that they receive no pay for their work. 1 am a great admirer of virtuosity in traffic dispatching, and am glad to pay my compliments to these men. For every good operator among the amateurs there are, however, ten bad ones. The percentage may be the same among commercial operators, but the latter are at least restricted in the degree of badness they can reach, by the certainty of getting fired by the company, or having their licenses revoked by the Department of Commerce. An amateur, on the other hand, is free to send a string of CQ's as long as a Beverage aerial, to prolong a conversation interminably, and to send the code with such misspacing and mangling of the characters that reading his traffic is simply guesswork. The recent introduction of an amateur extra-grade license may do something to improve conditions, but personally I feel that the issuance of transmitting licenses should be limited to applicants who can pass the first class commercial requirements, and who have acquired a decent "fist" in sending. The good men in the ranks would not be affected by such a ruling; most of them have such licenses already, or can get them whenever they like. As for the others, let them prepare themselves, or do without; that is the rule everywhere. This proposal, incidentally, has been put forward by leading amateurs. Charles Proteus Steinmetz By J. H. MORECROFT FEW radio listeners have any idea of the contributions Charles Proteus Steinmetz made to their hobby; his name .was practically never mentioned in connection with radio, and it was probably unknown to the greater part of the multitude which nightly tunes-in the broadcast programs. His death had no particular significance for them. But every trained radio engineer realizes that radio is only a small branch of the electrical engineering profession, and that it is only the engineers well schooled in general alternating current theory who will get far ahead. The large companies, by whom most of the future radio development will necessarily be carried out, seldom care whether or not an applicant for their engineering staff has had radio experience, but they always want to know the extent of his training in general physics and electrical theory. This idea cannot be too strongly emphasized by those who are occupied in guiding boys who expect to enter the engineering profession; the fundamental electrical actions must be thoroughly mastered before great progress can be made in any special branch of engineering such as radio. Having in mind, then, that the ultimate progress of radio cannot depend upon the relative merits of one circuit compared with another, or high vacuum tubes versus sodium tubes as detectors, but that it is rather based on those broad principles which guide the undertakings of all our large electrical industries, then in the death of Steinmetz we can well say radio has lost one of its most resourceful contributors. Steinmetz' contributions to theory and development in the field of general alternatingcurrent electrical engineering stand out more prominently than those of any other single man. To many Americans, Edison serves as the most prominent expounder of the electrical science, but this is only because some of his achievements, notably the early electric generators and the incandescent lamp, come more closely into contact with the everyday life of the general public than do the achievements of Steinmetz. In the record of the proceedings of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, for instance, no engineer has to his credit more important work than has Steinmetz. Much of the material he wrote will always remain inaccessible to the general radio public; alternating-current theory, even in its simpler phases, is not easy, and Steinmetz was generally busy with only the more complicated aspects of it. He could, however, and did often get down to the level of the embryo engineer and talk interestingly and instructively on the elements of his science. His progress and attainments in our country must often serve as an inspiration to other immigrants. Landing at Castle Garden as a