Radio Broadcast (Nov 1926-Apr 1927)

486 RADIO BROADCAST MARCH, 1927 Curious Problem for a Broadcaster N EATLY typewritten note received by a New York broadcasting station during October, 1926: WE, THE POWERS OF THE ETHERIC PLANE, authorize you to broadcast the following: MAN SHALL EAT NO MORE FLESH WHILE THE WORLD STANDS; AND IN THE DAY THAT HE EATETH THEREOF HE SHALL DIE. Later communication written on the same typewriter: WE, THE POWERS OF THE ETHERIC PLANE, authorize you to broadcast the fact that on the fifteenth day of November, Nineteen Hundred and Twenty-six, a book entitled The Love-Story of the Ages or the Second Coming of Christ will be placed upon the book-stands of New York, N. Y. and Washington, D. C. No comments are permitted. Any neglect in the fulfilment of our instructions is punishable by instant death. The officials of the broadcasting station, pleased at the prospect of a speedy termination of their miserable lives, did nothing. They were rewarded, after an interval, by the following gracious proclamation: WE, THE POWERS OF THE ETHERIC PLANE, commend your acceptance of our directions, and wish to state that the difficulties you have experienced thereto have been owing to our intervention. You will not begin the broadcasting of material already submitted, until Monday the eighteenth of October: and because of the spirit in which you have undertaken to carry out our instructions, we are calling your attention to the fact that on the first day of December, 1926, New York, N. Y. and Washington, District of Columbia, are to be totally destroyed by fire. You are permitted to dispose of personal and business property to the best advantage, placing the proceeds in a private vault in Philadelphia, headquarters of E. P. Dutton & Company, Publishers, after the fifteenth of November. Possibly the POWERS OF THE ETHERIC PLANE got that way from trying to devise a plan for regulating radio in such a manner that Congress, the public, the Administration, and all the broadcasters will be pleased. Note for Radio Historians DO YOU remember, you radio men whose memory goes back to 191 5 or thereabouts, the silicon detectors then used by the United States Navy, one of which it was every amateur's hopeless dream to possess? They were worth, in the glory of their swivel joints, bright nickel plate, and hard rubber bases, some $15, and in those days $15 was a lot of money. Well, passing down Cortlandt Street, the foremost abbatoir of radio equipment in New York and the world, the other day, I noticed a heap of those detectors on sale before one of the shops. They were the genuine article, engraved with the traditional formula: "SiliconAntimony Detector, CR-535, Manufactured for Navy Department, Bureau of Steam Engineering," and they were to be had at 75 cents apiece. And nobody was buying them! Sic transit gloria mundi. Broadcast Station Service Data USEFUL tables from Dr. Alfred N. Goldsmith's paper on "Reduction of Interference in Broadcast Reception" in the Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, Vol. 14, No. 5. October, 1926: Estimated service range of stations of various powers, in the eastern portion of the United States. Antenna Power Service Range 5 watts 1 mile 50 watts 3 miles 500 watts 10 miles 5000 watts (5 kw.) 30 miles 50,000 watts (50 kw.) 100 miles Type of service corresponding to various field strengths. Signal Field Strength Nature of Service 0.1 millivolt per meter Poor Service 1.0 millivolt per meter Fair Service 10. o millivolts per meter Very Good Service 100.0 millivolts per meter Excellent Service 1000.0 millivolts (i.o volt) Extremely Strong per meter Signal Memoirs of a Radio Engineer XVII DURING the second term of my radio course at the College of the City of New York, the United States entered the war. Radio, which had been considerably upset by the preceding years of anxious neutrality, now had the lid clamped down with a sharp official snap. Even the great triangular antenna which covered the campus of the College, with its six wires running from the tower of the Main Building to Townsend Harris and Mechanic Arts, had to be taken down, although shortly afterwards two of the wires went up again for the United States Navy's listening-in station, which was installed during the summer of 191 7. But before going on with the story, I had better try to give a picture of how things stood at this time in the radio world. The war started in 1914, as we are not yet likely to forget. In the early months of 191 5 I was writing a weekly newspaper column of radio comment for the Rockville Centre Owl, under the heading, "Wireless for Amateurs." Probably these were not the earliest descriptive articles on radio to find a place in a newspaper, but certainly they were among the grandfathers of the present radio supplements and critiques. There were about twenty-six of these Owl radio essays which astonished the uncomprehending burghers of Rockville Centre, a suburb not very far from Garden City, where these recapitulations now go into print; but our only interest in them lies in the fact that the red flames of the conflagration to the east cast their glow even on that innocent radio column, loaded with all the wisdom of my nineteen years. Two quotations may be justified on this account : "Within a little more than three years," I wrote on May 14, 191 5, "there have been three great maritime disasters. Together they account for the loss of almost four thousand lives. Ice sent the Titanic down into the sea weeds; an ill manoeuvred collier was the end of the Empress of Ireland, and now the Lit-sitania, has gone to take her place in that company. Men build ships and sail them on the sea, but the sea insists on its percentage, and takes it on occasion. It is remarkable, too, that when Nature spares a ship, man, with his no less effective weapons, goes ahead and sinks her. Yes, the Lusitania is gone. We are never going to hear her spark again. It feels rather queer when you reflect that only last Saturday you heard her working Sea Gate as she steamed down the Bay. Only a week ago, and now her funnels are in the mud, and the fish are eating the insulation off her multiple tuner. A sad end for such a fine ship, and one that is doubly sad because it can accomplish no possible good to anybody, least of all to the people who caused it." "Never before in the memory of the oldest wireless operator has the air above New York City been as busy as this week. The number of radiograms transmitted every hour is astonishing. They are sent out by several classes of stations. First of all there are the battleships, big and little, lying in the Hudson. They use shrill, high frequency sparks in communication with the Brooklyn Navy Yard on various short wavelengths; 750 meters is perhaps the one most used. The Navy Yard, in addition, transacts its usual business with Newport, Fire Island, Philadelphia, and Arlington. Sea Gate takes care of the coastwise liners. Then we have wcg at Bush Terminal attending to the needs of a large brood of Sound steamers. The Herald sends war bulletins on reduced power. As if all this was not bad enough, the inevitable British cruiser off the Hook chimes in occasionally. Considering the great amount of business transacted, there is remarkably little confusion. Everybody sends the signal number "4" before transmitting. This is a double question: "Are you clear? May I transmit?" The answer K or / indicates that the inquiring station is at liberty to send off its radiogram. The answer "Min" or the standard abbreviation of • ■ • • » indicates that transmission will cause interference. The word "rush" after a call entitles one to special consideration. It means that the operator is burdened with an important message which he wants to get off as soon as possible." It was the war that first brought the interference problem into radio, what with the enormous increase in shipping and general message traffic. The congestion of the ether, as we know it in broadcasting, is nothing new. As, according to the law of Mathus, population always presses on the means of subsistence, so, since about 191 5, the number of radio stations has always pressed on the available ether channels. Aside from this factor, however, the average radio operator in United States waters heard little about the war, whatever was^ going on behind the scenes. There were the Herald bulletins I wrote about, sent on reduced power so that the German receiving stations could not possibly utilize them. And the British cruiser droned out long messages in numeral code to Halifax, or to another unit of His Majesty's Navy, as she lay guarding the entrance to New York Harbor, so that no Teutonic vessel could venture out or in. Many thousand tons of German shipping lay bottled up at the Hoboken docks during 1 9 14, '1 5, and '16. Then the United States went in. The German ships were seized by the United States Navy. And, while it was about it, the Navy also seized American radio, from the power board to the antenna insulators, and held it in duress for two years.