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54
Radio Broadcast
case of experimental or demonstration stations and moreover they would have been in competition with both wire telegraph and wire telephone. I believe those officers never did agree to the California plan, however, as the
BIRD S EYE SKETCH OF CATALINA AND
THE ADJACENT MAINLAND OF CALIFORNIA
saying is now "We got away with" the California plan.
Work on the wireless instruments was started in November, 1901, in a little Denver shop belonging to Messrs. Carstarphen and Wallace. By the first of the year 1902, Mr. W. P. Carstarphen had interested capital, moved to a
larger place, and changed the name to the Carstarphen Electric Co. I furnished the designs and supervision and the employees of those companies built the apparatus.
WHAT APPARATUS WE HAD
THE induction coil, vibrating interrupters, and the coherer detectors used in wireless sets in those days were not so bad for demonstration purposes, but they were obviously unreliable for giving public telegraph service. The vibrators would stick and stop. The coherers wouldn't work when they should, and would work overtime when they shouldn't, and the tape recorder made the same dots for static that it made for signals. So I designed an interrupter consisting of a motor driven disc with two insulating segments and two brushes pressing against it. That interrupter was effective and more reliable. We built coherer receivers, but in the meantime I built and tried out numerous contact point detectors with telephone receivers for sound reception. In those receivers static did not make the same sound that signals made. I bought watch case receivers like the " Hello girls" wore, rewound them with fine wire and mounted two on one head band like head sets of to-day.
I hired one of Mr. Carstarphen's men, Mr. G. T. Swenson. as an assistant and in April, 1902, we took the completed instruments to California and started construction of a station above Avalon on the Island and another at White's Point on the mainland near San Pedro and about twenty-five miles from Avalon. White's Point was the nearest point and located there was a dance pavilion which we made into a station. At Avalon we had to blast off part of the hill and build a station house.
THE FIRST STATION
A REAL, practical and continuous demand existed for telegraphic communication between Avalon, Santa Catalina Island, and the mainland of California. The demand for a service that would be more suitable than carrier pigeons and two or three daily boats had existed for some time and the needs for such service were growing. Not only was the demand there but the interfering static was more pacific on that coast than on the Atlantic Coast of the United States, and the distance was short enough for day-and-night, all-theyear wireless service. In addition to those