RADIO GALORE
"A good many folks," said Bill, "get scared when they think about radio
construction. The big words come at them all in a bunch like a lot of
bees, and it is to dodge. And when they go to the dictionary they are
lost for sure. Potentiometer, variometer, variocoupler, radio frequency,
amplification, loop aerials, audion and grids--no, I am not saying
these words to show off. They are only a part of radio terminology. And
you've got to get 'em, or you might as well take radio theory and
construction on faith and be satisfied simply to listen in.
"Anybody can commit these words to memory without a dictionary, and
that's where my partner shines. He has heard the big words so much that
he talks them in his sleep, and he ought to know all their meanings, but
the one most his size is 'grid.'"
Here Gus drew a much scared boy, with hair on end and knees knocking
together, surrounded by a lot of the words that Bill had pronounced.
Then Bill, putting his hand to the side of his mouth and leaning toward
his audience as though in confidence, said in a stage whisper:
"He's doing that to show that he knows how to spell these words.
"To be serious about it, if I'm allowed," continued Bill, "this subject
of radio is a coiner in every way. Just think of someone saying
something in San Francisco and someone else in Maine listening to it,
and without any speaking tubes, nor wires to carry the sound along! A
good many folks are wondering how it happens--how speech can be turned
into electricity that goes shooting in all directions and how this is
turned back into speech again.
"Well, it's done on the telephone, over wires. The voice in the receiver
is turned into electric energy that passes over the wires and at the
other end turns again into sounds exactly like the voice that started
it. But somebody found out that this same energy could be shot into the
air in all directions and carried any distance, maybe as far as the
stars, and then when pretty much the same principles were applied to
this as to the telephone, with some more apparatus to send and catch the
energy, why, then, that was wireless.
"It is really too bad, with all the useless short syllables in our
language going to waste, that the fellows who got up the terms for radio
work couldn't have used words like 'grid,' for instance. They could have
called a variocoupler a 'gol,' a potentiometer a 'dit,' an induction
coil a 'lim,' (l-i-m) and a variable condenser would look just as pretty
if it were written out as a 'sos'--but no! They forgot the good example
set by the grid, the volt and the ohm and they went and used
jawbreakers.
"I'll tell you another thing that makes this electro-motive force as
used in wireless easier to understand. It is the sun and its light. A
great scientist, Doctor Steinmetz, says that light and electric waves
are the same thing. Perhaps they are, though they surely work
differently under different conditions. But if the sun has an awful lot
of heat it can't send it ninety-five million miles--not in reason! The
heat only makes light and that light travels through space. It reaches
the atmosphere of our earth and is converted into heat again. Perhaps
light of the sun and stars and the reflected light of the planets do not
shine through space as light, but as radio waves that either by our
atmosphere, or by our electrical conditions here are converted into
light again,--but this is hardly open to proof even."
Bill glanced at the blackboard; Gus had drawn a big sun, with radiating
rays, a grinning face, a small body with one short leg and two gesturing
hands and had labeled it "Bill Brown, radio radiator." Bill made a
motion of his thumb toward the caricature, then spread his hands in mock
despair, but not without a side glance expressing pride in his
lieutenant's performance, all of which pleased the audience immensely.
Then Bill proceeded: "This electro-motive force which travels around and
through our little earth is what we can actually experiment with. We do
not know just what it is, but we are finding out pretty fast what it
will do. Perhaps there is hardly any limit to what it will do. It is
generated for power and light and heat, for carrying signals and sounds
over wires and through the air. What next? Just now we have got all the
thinking we can do about radio. It is the sixth wonder that electricity
has sprung upon us. I guess we won't include electrocution.
"Now, there's no use going into technicalities about construction,
that's a thing that must be studied out and thought over, not mussed up
in a talk like this. I'll say this much, however, it is the vacuum or
audion tube detector that gives results, and the application of a loud
speaker is only possible with a vacuum or audion tube. It is as easy to
build a vacuum tube set as a crystal set and only a very little more
expensive. So, whether you are building or buying a set, make it a good
set, something that you can hear with a good many hundred miles.
"Now, you can buy the parts and build a receiving set that will
generally give more satisfaction than a bought set." (Bill stepped over
to the blackboard and took up a pointer.) "I may need this for this
partner of mine if he persists in caricaturing me instead of drawing
what we want. We'll make things about four times as big as they ought to
be. You can use an aerial outdoors, which everybody now understands,
or, just as well and a lot handier, a loop aerial indoors, the bigger
the better, but two feet in diameter is big enough.
"Here is your base and upright panel and this is the way to hook up or
wire the parts. Here's your aerial and its ground, between which is
placed your variable condenser and tuning coil, thus, off here between
condenser and coil comes the wire to your vacuum tube, with its fixed
condenser and grid leads, the wire being connected directly to the grid,
while here the wire from the tube plate is connected with the six-volt
storage battery and in turn with the phones, like this. Then, from the
phones to the ground wire, the wire is carried thus through a secondary
dry cell battery, on each side of which the wires are taken off to a
rheostat, though my partner has sketched this to look more like a bird
after a caterpillar.
"I am not going to tell you how to make all these parts--if I did you'd
probably go to sleep, if you are not half way there already. So, if you
can't find out how to make the parts, or contrive them in some way
yourself, why, then, you'd better buy them. Only you can make the base
and do the wiring, attaching and so forth. Even my partner can do that
if he is watched pretty closely; it is almost as easy as making a sketch
of it.
"If any of you really want to know how to build a radio set in a
practical, get-there way, all you'll have to do is to get Doctor Field's
consent and come round to our shop in the basement of the school
dormitory and we won't soak you much. I thank you all for your
attention."
Very warm applause indicated the approval of the audience, as Bill and
Gus left the platform. Again the president arose to say:
"Another of our students has a message for us in regard to radio. Among
the notable pioneers and probably one to give the subject its greatest
practical impetus is William Marconi, whose name is familiar to you all.
The great inventor is now an honored guest of this country, his yacht
_Elettra_ lying off our shores. It seems doubly fitting that more than
special mention should be made of him, and as Mr. Antonio Sabaste was,
in his native land, a neighbor of Marconi, his father being really a
friend of the wizard, I think we shall listen with pleasure to what this
student of the school has to say."