Radio broadcast .. (1922-30)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

Pioneering With De Forest in Florida 495 water. Then we dropped a new one hundred square feet of copper and buried it, feeling certain it would solve our ground difficulties. That evening we sent " D's" energetically and with renewed confidence in our success. It was a staggering blow to receive the following morning the old accustomed telegram from Dr. De Forest, "Heard nothing." This was followed by some suggestions of another change and an admonition to keep up courage. That day, when the clouds of despair were at their darkest, an incident occurred which, trivial in itself, was the turning point in our apparently hopeless battle with an unknown trouble. It was a drink of water that brought about the idea that solved the Pensacola problem. A DRINK OF WATER SOLVED THE PROBLEM WITHIN a few rods of the wireless station was a well from which we obtained our clear, cool drinking water. As I strolled over to the pump to get a drink on this day I met a Navy officer who reached the spot at the same time I did. After the usual greeting, I said: "This is fine drinking water. Wonder if it's a drilled well." To which he replied: "It is. I know because I drilled it." "How deep?" I asked, and little realized the tremendous importance of the question. "Fifty feet," came the answer. " But," went on the officer, "if I had stopped at forty feet or gone down to sixty feet, I would have had nothing but salt water." "How's that?" "Well, you see it's this way. This white sand around these parts is about forty feet deep, and below that is a stratum of clay and stone twenty feet thick, and beyond that is an indefinite reach of sand." "Ah, I see," was my rather inane comment. But I was too stunned by the idea that had flashed into my mind to carry on the conversation further. The idea was that perhaps that white silica sand, the body of which was greater than the thin film of seawater that seeped around it, offered too much resistance or formed a dielectric which prevented a good ground. I spent the rest of the day absorbed with this idea. It still had full possession of me when, in the evening, I went to the Western Union office to send a telegram. Before I left I asked the operator what kind of a ground he had. He replied that the ground they used consisted of an iron pipe driven down forty feet, and that using any less than that produced no electrical results whatever. That settled it. I was sure the solution of our baffling problem was at hand. The following day I bought about six hundred feet of four-inch pipe and engaged men to drive twelve iron pipes each forty-five feet long into the loose, moist sand. These were grouped in a small circle about two feet apart. The twelve tops were joined together with heavy copper cable and a large bus bar run into the spark-gap. The evening after this was finished we started sending " D's" promptly at 8 o'clock, and scarcely before I could realize it, the joyful news was received from Dr. De Forest that he had heard the first signals we sent out. To have success so suddenly thrust upon us after weeks of discouraging failures, was indeed a PALMS AND WIRELESS AT KEY WEST The palms hid the masts, but the station and its buildings took up an entire block. The insert at the right shows Dr. De Forest as he looked when he was doing the installation at Key West