Radio broadcast .. (1922-30)

NOVEMBER, 1925 ANTENNAS WERE UNFAMILIAR IN 1912 49 two inches in diameter, wound with No. 24 enameled wire, and provided with two sliders making contact with a bare swath the length of the winding. This constituted a conductively coupled system, with a tuned antenna and approximately tuned secondary or detector circuit. It was quite effective, remarkably so in comparison with the untuned set, and it was further improved by the substitution of a alena — cat whisker detector for silicon. Dicking up a signal was no longer an achievement; it could be accomplished almost any time. The United Wireless tation at 42 Broadway, New York City, ame in fairly loud, although about eight liles away. There was also the Wanalaker station, MHI, in New York, comlunicating with MHE in Philadelphia — erhaps this was a little later; it is rather tiard to remember down to a year after ;ifteen of them have rolled by. The rest vere largely amateurs. 1 also had a transmitting station. My parents had aught me a quarter-inch spark coil, in a quartered oak case. In my own room, vhich measured about eight by ten feet, strung up an antenna of aluminum wire, vhich was popular at that time, consisting }f about a dozen wires forming a grid which Dvered the whole ceiling. The spark coil, perated from dry cells and keyed by some crude spring and knob arrangement, when onnected to this antenna and a ground, vas heard by an amateur about five blocks away-, we engaged in conversation, and he paid me a visit, declaring that I came in louder than some of the boys with outdoor antennas. The spark gap, I recollect, consisted of zinc electrodes turned out for me by a boy who attended Stuyvesant High School and had access to the machine shop there. Among other amateurs in the neighborhood, some were using long single wire antennas at a time when multiwire ones were all the fashion, until, on the advent of broadcasting, the single wire antenna for reception came into its own. Many quaint superstitions regarding antennas and other radio subjects raged among these innocents. For example, it was declared, on the strength of an article in a periodical, that "the wavelength of an aerial was four times its mean height above the instruments." There was one comrade, it happened, who had a sloping antenna running from his roof to a clothespole, with a horizontal lead to the set, the lower end of the antenna being about as far below the apparatus as the upper end was higher. In a discussion on wavelengths, in which everyone boasted of the great length of his own wave, one of his rivals taunted this fellow, saying, "You ain't got no wavelength," and backing his argument with the article in question. Confronted with the fact that the antenna radiated audible signals, he merely shrugged his shoulders and admitted that there might be signals, but, properly speaking, no wavelength existed. I do not remember the name of this dialectician, but he deserves high honors, for he is the forbear, in the radio field, of a great multitude who substitute words for sense, and they should keep his memory green. It was in the early part of 1912 that 1 wrote my first radio article, for which I received the sum of 65 cents. It was a description of a Tesla coil, fed from the quarter-inch spark coil which also furnished the oscillations for my transmitting set, and it was certainly one of the smallest Tesla coils ever made. The secondary or high frequency winding covered an ordinary small test tube, the turns being No. 30 silk-covered wire carefully spaced by hand and dipped in wax. Over this were wound a few turns of heavy weatherproof wire, in parallel with a leyden jar across the spark gap of the induction coil. The secondary of the Tesla converter gave a one half inch high frequency spark, which, being confined to the surface of the body, could be taken without sensation — a great opportunity for fooling other boys who believed that an electric spark always meant a severe shock to any one monkeying with it. The same credulity was being exploited by some vaudeville acts built around large Tesla transformers, throwing sparks several feet long, which enabled the actors or "professors" to announce that they could withstand potentials of millions of volts where a mere 1800 would kill an ordinary man in the electric chair. The distinction between high frequency currents and d. c., and the matter of the number of amperes actually flowing through vital tissues, were of course unmentioned in these acts. For the July, 1913, issue of Modern Electrics 1 also wrote an article on "indoor aerials," which won the third prize of $1.00. Recently, in looking up this publication, I was amused to note that the second prize in that issue ($2.50) was captuied by Harold Beverage, who was probably at that time a student at the Universityof Maine, or, more likely, preparing for his college course, as I was. He was not wi i t ing about antennas, in fact, his contribution was electrical in nature and really had nothing to do with radio. About six years later this boy was to invent a new type of antenna, the "wave antenna," whose highly directional properties, eliminating the bulk of the static on transoceanic reception, marked a great step forward in high power commercial radio. In 1912, however, antennas were not yet familiar objects, and the indoor vaiiety, particularly, seemed very strange to most people. They could not conceive of waves penetrating wood and glass and other solid objects. One friend of my father's came to the house and listened attentively to the wireless signals, but when he asked whether I had an antenna on the roof, and I pointed to my indoor wire, he declared vehemently that I was hoaxing him, and that the signals were being cooked up somewheie in that room. I argued with him for a long time, and grew very angry, for I was young and it irritated me to be accused of fraud when I knew that the signals were genuine and there was nothing extraordinary in such reception. I had not yet learned the truth of Schiller's saying, "Against stupidity the gods themselves fight in vain," an aphorism which the progress of the engineering arts has not affected in any way. The Country Is Saved! Advertisement of a manufacturer of automobile accessories entering the radio field: HICCOUGH & Co. Radio — the ensemble radio — is now ready! The good news has been hard to keep! Extreme secrecy has guarded every move and discovery of Hiccough engineers, who have for more than two years been engaged in the solution of a tremendous problem — the perfection of radio! Yet for months the radio world has been atremble with the rumor that "something revolutionary in radio is about to be announced." So the announcement of Hiccough & Co. is not a surprise because everybody has been expecting it. You know you yourself have been waiting for a concern like Hiccough & Co. to take the uncertainties, disappointments, and troubles out of radio and give you only real results. Italics and exclamation marks not ours. At last! Radio is to be made perfect — by a manufacturer of automobile accessories. ^^^^^••^•••••••••••••••i FI^B THE LANDLORD OBJECTED TO TRESPASSING ON HIS TIN TREASURE