Radio Broadcast (Nov. 1925-Apr 1926)

APRIL, 1926 HOW BROADCASTING TO-DAY COMPARES WITH THAT IN 1921 673 so that the tuning was as good as one could expect of such a simple arrangement. Of course the more complicated three-circuit, four-control tube receivers favored by the amateurs were available, but bold indeed was the novice who essayed to operate one right off the bat. A three or four-control receiver nowadays usually has most or all of the dials lined up so that for a given setting of one, the others should be adjusted to about the same numbers on the scales. Besides, in the meantime the public has been educated by radio periodicals, . trade catalogs, and comparison of notes on the 8:13 into town. But in 1921-22 the more complicated receivers were still operated by intuition rather than figuring, and if you lacked the intuition you had to fall back on the crystal receivers, which were therefore in the vast majority. The typical radio fan was a slightly deranged but harmless fellow who sat all evening with a pair of headphones on his ears, tinkering with a wire which he called a "catwhisker" wherewith he gently prodded a "crystal," muttering at intervals, "Maybe I can find a better spot on this d — d piece of galena." So much for the technical equipment. And what did he hear? Mainly phonograph music riding on top of great splashes of telegraph code. Although, for a time, very respectable artists broadcast for the sheer novelty of the thing, and a ride to Newark in a Packard with a lively party at the Robert Treat following. Then, when the cute little fish began to grow up and threatened to attain the dimensions of a whale, they found it better to stay away from its aquarium. Also the music composers, and the custodians of their copyrights, began to oil their six-shooters and to sharpen the tips of their harpoons. There followed some lean years, judged by the artistic standard, but the marvel of getting voices, and a species of music, out of the air, kept the new art, not only going, but growing. As for the broadcasting stations themselves, they were good for their day, even though they would give a modern broadcast engineer, i.e., one practicing four years later, convulsions and suicidal impulses. Their audio frequency bands were too narrow and had a great number of humps and dips, most of the tubes overloaded, the microphones had joyfully responsive resonance peaks and were addicted to blasting; the wire lines carried almost as much sixty cycle hum and telegraph clicking as modulating energy for the broadcasters who leased them. It was a grand old time, and I myself grow sentimental over it after a few drinks of ginger ale — but let us thank God that we do not have to listen to its effusions again, with our sensitized and critical ears. (We prodigies who did not know, five years ago, whether a 373-W "mike" had one button, or two, or as many as a vest.) Let us now regard the present. We have receiving sets so selective that they clip the side-bands off the transmitted wave, if we are not careful, and they operate on one or two tuning controls. They are a thousand times as sensitive as they need to be for anything but extreme long distance reception, and are used most of the time with the volume control near its minimum position. The output can be made as loud as the original performance in the studio or concert hall, without noticeable distortion. The users of such sets need not be cautioned to hold down the volume in order to keep the quality decent; they can get all the output the window panes can stand, without hashing up anything. As for headphones, most radio listeners no longer associate them with radio sets at all. Modern loud speakers transmit all the frequencies from 70 to 7000 per second, and if they have serrations they are not as high as a cathedral door, nor as close as saw teeth, so that the human ear, which is no precision instrument itself, takes little note of them. These sets not only work well, but they look well. The programs, in large part, are on the same level. More and more they are being supported by professional musicians, and, among the greatest artists and aggregations of artists, there are now more who have broadcast, and are going to do it again, than those who still fight shy of the microphone. Scarcely an event of public importance is run off without that little instrument in the foreground, and half of them are planned as much for the "invisible audience" as for the people physically present. As for the broadcasting stations, it is not fitting for a professional broadcaster to point publicly to their many excellencies. Nor is it prudent, because whenever he gets that way all the modulators immediately go soft, the cat gets tangled up with the ten thousand five hundred, and the breakers go out and won't go back while Lucrecia Bori takes a top note. Still, it may be said that there are ten or twenty stations in the States which are pretty good, considering that their whiskers are not yet beginning to sprout. They are connected by quiet and well equalized lines, their frequency characteristics are satisfactory, their power is fairly adequate, their staffs know something about music and practical acoustics. All in all, the look backward is flattering, and the prospect encouraging. What with static, forced sales, copyright disputes, and lack of wavelengths, we are certainly not out of the woods, but one does not have to be a member of the Kiwanis sodality to recognize the fact that we are on intimate terms with the goddess Progress. Among the Broadcasters WBAL THIS new 5 kw. transmitter at Baltimore, Maryland, uses the "mixing panel" idea in solving its studio pick-up problems. Instead of employing one microphone, which must be moved to the proper position for proper balance on vocal solos with instrumental accompaniment, orchestras, and the like, wbal utilizes three microphones with separate controls which are under the hand of the supervising operator. The electrical energy fed to the set from each of these microphones may be increased or decreased at will, without noise or other complications, so that one microphone may be cut out altogether, and another cut in, during a musical number. In other words, microphones may be changed at any time, without disturbance, the only precaution necessary being that the cutting out and swinging in must be accomplished in inverse proportion, so that the over-all volume resulting remains about constant.