Radio and television mirror (Jan-June 1950)

key, without pay and frequently at the risk of his life, when he was needed. Like all other traditions of service, the radio operators' creed was developed in disaster. The one particular tragedy that waked the world to the importance of radio, more than any other, happened in 1912 when the fastest, safest, proudest ship built to that date went down in the Atlantic. She was called the Titanic. She was the biggest thing that had ever sailed the seas. She was vast. She was beautiful. Her passenger list of 2,223 was packed with the distinguished, the famous and the rich when she set out on her maiden voyage. She was so big that nothing could hurt her. She was so fast that when an iceberg was sighted dead ahead she could not possibly change her course in time. She veered, but not enough. The wallowing berg raked a three hundred foot hole in her steel side below the water line, jamming the mechanism that operated her waterproof compartments. Four hours later she was gone. The CQ went out first, the call meaning "All Stations Stand By for News." Then, shortly after midnight, the wireless operator on the Carpathia, fiftyeight miles away, was shocked to hear CQD-SOS-CQD-SOS from the great unsinkable Titanic. CQD — the signal of distress. SOS— the newer signal that meant death at hand. (SOS is newer than you think. When the Marconi company first started, CQD was chosen to mean an urgent call to clear the air for the message that was to follow. It did not mean "ComeQuick-Danger" as many people thought, because it meant the same thing in other languages besides English. In 1906, SOS superseded it as the international code for distress. It was chosen because the three dots, three dashes and three dots of SOS were easier to send and to identify than the dot dash dot dash da^h dot dashdash-dash-dot-dot of CQD. SOS does not mean "Save Our Ship" or "Save Our Souls." It means "Distress-Help" in every language in the world from Persian to Chinese.) But SOS was new in 1912, so the Titanic's radioman took no chances. He sent it and then CQD and then SOS again as it became hideously, incredibly certain that the Titanic was doomed. "Coming hard," wirelessed the Carpathia, turning off her course though her old engines could not bring her to the scene until dawn, hours after the Titanic had disappeared. Tragically, another ship only fifteen miles away chugged calmly on through the dark, oblivious to the Titanic's cry. She carried a radioman, but, as was the custom in those days, he had closed his key and gone to bed at the end of the day. The sinking of the Titanic and the loss of all but 706 of her passengers focused attention sharply on wireless as an essential supplement to cable and telegraph lines. The American Telephone and Telegraph Company was pouring money into experiment, and it was needed. Radio was wildly erratic. At one moment signals would be clear. The next they would fade into humming silence or the crackle of static. Then young Edwin Howard Armstrong entered the picture with the first of the four discoveries that were to qualify him as the greatest of all radio inventors, and, according to many engineers, the greatest American inventor since Edison. His background was completely different from that of both Marconi and deForest except for one thing — all three decided to become inventors in their teens. Armstrong was born in 1890 in New York. His father was the American representative of the Oxford University Press. The family lived comfortably in a big house in Yonkers. When Howard was fourteen, his father brought him a present from England. It was The Boy's Book of Inventions. He read it, absorbed, and immediately began his career with the setting up of a shop filled with home-made wireless gear in his spacious attic. Before he graduated from Columbia University he was ready to apply for a patent on the regenerative circuit. That jaw-cracking name is well worth remembering. It is the discovery that took wireless out of the crystal detector, earphone stage and made possible the radio we have today. His patent was issued in 1914, and he became the sensation of the radio world. Dreary litigation, exhausting to both sides, was to follow when Dr. deForest's attorneys were to press the claim that the same ground was covered in his patent for the ultra-audion, but that is not a part of this story. The important thing is to honor both men for great achievement, and to remember the name Armstrong because his later invention of the superheterodyne was to make possible the standard receivers we use today. His superregenerative circuit made possible our short wave communications. His frequency modulation gave us static-free, high-fidelity FM sets — a stunning list of gifts to the world. Take courage. The stage is almost set. The curtain is about to go up on the show. In 1916, another very young man, David Sarnoff, was dreaming of a completely new use for wireless, and he wrote a memo to his chief at the American Marconi Company about it. He wanted to bring music to individual homes by means of what he called a "radio music box." Sarnoff's is one of the most fabulous of American success stories. He was to play a vital part in the formation and operation of the first great major network, NBC, and was to become the president of RCA before he was thirtynine, so his start is doubly dramatic. He was born in Minsk, Russia. He was brought to this country in 1900 when he was nine years old. His father died when he was fifteen, and David became the main support of his mother and four other little Sarnoffs. He went to work selling newspapers. On the side he picked up much-needed extra cash as a messenger boy for the Commercial Cable Company. He became so fascinated with what he learned there of long distance communications that he studied Morse Code at night. When wireless telegraphy came along, he became an operator, first at a lonely station on Nantucket Island, then on an Arctic sealing ship, then in New York where he stayed on duty for seventytwo hours straight helping direct ships in the search for Titanic victims. It is amazing how accurately he outlined the future of radio in his memo of 1916, though his plan was turned down cold as quite impractical. The company could make a profit on the sale of the music boxes, as he suggested. Certainly. But who would pay for the programs that would have to be supplied? Could they charge a monthly DIANA LYNN, lovely Hollywood star of Hal Wallis' Paramount release"My Friend Irmaf recommends Kill OS \mmm tfi FIRED 23-KARAT GOLD AND CRYSTAL R M 79