Just before the Christmas holidays my father, who was the New York
manager of the _Singer Crude Oil Engine Company_, told mother and me
that he had to make a business trip to Nicaragua.
There was nothing exciting in this announcement for dad went off on
business trips quite often, but when he said that he would take us with
him and we’d go by steamer I immediately sat up and took notice, for I
had wanted to make a sea voyage ever since I could remember.
It may seem a little queer but although I lived almost within sight of
the old Atlantic and picked up messages right along from coast liners,
the only trip I had ever made was on a little steam launch that takes
unwary pleasure victims from Asbury Park outbound toward Europe for
about ten miles, or until every one’s gizzard is turned wrong-side-out
(much to the delight of the fishes) and back again.
I said _every one_ was sea-sick nigh unto death but as a matter of fact
there were just three human beings aboard the _Snail_ that were able to
step ashore like sober folks and walk a fairly straight line. I don’t
want to do any bragging but these sole survivors of _mal-de-mer_ were
the captain and the engineer, who made up the crew, and yours truly.
To make a real ocean voyage on a sure enough steamer meant something
more to me than just a sea-going trip, for a law had been passed some
time before making it compulsory for all ocean passenger vessels to have
a wireless outfit aboard and I was just _bugs_ to see a regular ship set
in operation.
For the next few days everything around home was a hurry-up place--like
going away for the summer--and I was mighty glad when at last we took
the Erie (not weary) railroad for Jersey City, where the _Pan-American
Line_ had its docks. Once there, a couple of porters relieved us of our
numerous pieces of hand baggage, and trailing along in the rear of dad
and mom, I came aboard feeling like a duke.
After we were shown our staterooms by the steward I made a bee-line for
the wireless room, but found it locked, the operator not yet having put
in an appearance. To kill time till he came I went up on the _hurricane
deck_, that is the upper deck, to take a look at the aerial.
It was formed of a couple of parallel wires about 200 feet long
suspended between the masts and insulated from them by _strain
insulators_ of the kind that was then known as the _Navy type_. I was
standing close to one of the _funnels_ looking up at the aerial, which
seemed to me to be a middling one--I had seen better and worse in
Montclair--when all of a sudden there was a terrific noise set up and
for a second I failed to cohere--that is I was nearly scared stiff. In
an instant my _jigger_ was right again, for it was only the ship’s
whistle blowing its deep throated blast to let those who had come aboard
to say good-by to their friends who were sailing, know that it was time
to go ashore, and to those ashore who wanted to take the boat know that
they had better get a move on them if they expected to make it.
When I got back to the wireless room there was quite a collection of
people crowded around the little window, but whether for the purpose of
sending messages or out of curiosity I didn’t know. I stood about as
much chance of getting up to that window as a fellow has of getting on a
subway express at Brooklyn Bridge during the rush hour.
I went away in disgust and didn’t go back again until we had sailed down
the river, passed through the Narrows and had dropped the pilot out at
sea.
Suddenly I heard the _ze--ze--zip--zip--zippy_ snap of the sparks of the
transmitter as the operator began to send, and I rushed madly to the
wireless room. As I ran down the passageway I read ‒··· ·‒· ‒ that is _B
R T_, _B R T_, _B R T_, at intervals of every two or three minutes; _B R
T_ was the call letter of some shore station that the operator was
trying to get, but without my book, which gave the call letters of the
different ship and shore stations, I couldn’t tell which one it was.
You know, of course, that when a vessel wants to talk to a station
either on ship or shore the first thing the operator does is to
_listen-in_--to make sure that he will not interfere with messages that
are being exchanged between other stations within his range. If the
_ether_ isn’t too busy he then sends the call letter of the station he
wants.
On reaching the wireless room I found a bigger crowd congregated around
the window than ever for the _zip--zippy_ crackle of the sparks as they
broke down the air between the spark-gap _electrodes_ had attracted the
curious even as honey attracts insects of the _Musca domestica_ family,
i.e., houseflies, and I couldn’t get within six feet of it.
There was a short lull while the operator looked over a message which a
little man with red hair and a pepper and salt suit had written out.
When the operator started to send again I read off the name of our ship,
the state of the weather and the number of words he intended to send,
all of which was in accordance with the regular routine prescribed by
the rules and regulations of the company for governing communications by
wireless between ships and shore stations. The message ran like this:
For fear you may not know the Morse code which was used by all coastwise
steamers in those early days, I will do it into English for you.
[Illustration: The Morse Code patterns and the text of a message with
this content: "VINALOS", "FINE", "FIFTEEN", "J D BROWN 12 BROADWAY NY",
"FORGOT MONEY IN HASTE", "SEND TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS BY WIRELESS",
"REST BY DRAFT", "RIALJO", "FRANK BROWN"]
_S G_, which I afterwards looked up, was, I found, a station at Sea Gate
which was on the coast. _Vinalos_ was the name of our ship. _Fine_ meant
the state of the weather. _Fifteen_ indicated the number of words the
message contained.
I laughed at the man who forgot, but nobody else laughed because there
was probably not one among them who knew the difference between a
binding post and an electric wave.
All of that afternoon I read the outgoing messages, but I felt I was
losing something by not getting what was coming in. Then a brilliant
idea struck me and I immediately proceeded to put it into execution with
the result that it almost electrocuted me.
I took out my little portable receiving set, hooked a wire to the
detector and the other end to the electric light fixture for a _ground_
which, from what I had read about ship stations, I had reason to believe
made a connection with the steel hull of the ship. Being so close to the
2 kilowatt (about 2½ horsepower) transmitter, one side of the spark-gap
of which also made connection with the hull, I hadn’t the slightest
doubt but that I could receive without an aerial and I certainly did,
but the kind wasn’t right.
No sooner had I put on my head-phones and my fingers on the adjusting
screw of the detector than zip, zum, bang, boom, and I received a
terrific shock that lifted me clear off the edge of my bunk; I hung
suspended in mid-air ’tween decks (or so it seemed) and to give
verisimilitude to the _levitation_ act, I recoiled like a 12-inch gun
and hit the floor with a dull thud. I was glad the man I laughed at
because he forgot, was not there to laugh at the fellow who didn’t know.
When I had fully come to and was able to use my thinker again I knocked
the wire off of the electric light fixture and then proceeded to examine
my receiver to see if anything had been damaged. Beyond burning off the
point of my detector there was no scathe done, and I overhauled it and
put the instrument back in its box.
My next move was to see the operator and hold some small wireless talk
with him. It was now late in the afternoon and when I got back it
overjoyed me to find that the crowd who hungered to penetrate the
mystery of sending messages without wires had fathomed its very depths
and departed, that is, all except one young couple who were from
Missouri, according to the passenger list, and of course they must needs
be shown.
The moment I saw the operator’s face I set him down for one of those
fresh young fellows you meet everywhere and I did not miss my guess. Now
you would hardly believe it, but it is nevertheless true, that there are
a few operators who think it smart and a great joke to tell land-lubbers
anything but the truth whenever they are questioned about wireless.
“What I can’t understand,” said the young woman, “is how you can send
out a wireless message when the wind is blowing so hard.”
If the operator had been even a 14-carat gentleman he would have told
her that when he works the key a low pressure current of electricity is
broken up into dots and dashes representing letters and that this
intermittent current flowing through the coil of the transmitter is
changed into high frequency oscillations by the spark; the oscillations
then surge through the aerial wire and their energy is emitted from the
aerial in the form of electric waves. These electric waves are exactly
the same as light waves, except that they are very much longer, and both
are transmitted by, in and through the _ether_. Hence the wind, which is
air in motion, has nothing at all to do with it.
This would have been the real scientific explanation of how a message is
sent and while it would, more than likely, have been as clear as mud to
her young inquiring mind, still if she could not grasp the true
explanation of how it works it would have been her misfortune and not
the operator’s fault. See?
But did he tell the lady straight? You could have told from his
_physiog_ that he would not. Instead he went on at great length and
framed up a story of how the wind had once blown a message he had sent
far out of its course and then suddenly veering round it blew it back
again and he caught his own message several minutes later when he was
listening-in for the reply. This he claimed, with great seriousness was
due to the low power of his instruments and a fouled aerial.
“Are you having any trouble now on account of the wind?” continued the
young woman deeply interested.
“None at all, because you see I am using a four horsepower spark and I
have just had my aerial sandpapered and oiled and the waves slip off
without the slightest difficulty.”
This little speech gave me another shock, but I had a third one coming
and forthwith got it.
“How are they coming in?” I asked, leaning against the window after the
couple had gone.
“What do you mean?” he questioned as he looked at me through half closed
eyes in a way I didn’t fancy.
“Why the messages?”
“Through the window,” he returned shortly, and went back to his key.
I stuck around the window and took a good look at the instruments which
to my way of thinking weren’t much, in fact a lot of fellows in
Montclair had outfits that put his way in the shade except that they
were not as powerful. I couldn’t see why he was so _swelled_ on himself.
He began calling again and after he had put through his message I
repeated it out loud as though I was talking to myself, just to let him
know that I knew.
He took off his head-phones, came over to the window and smiled a
thin-lipped smile which was anything but friendly.
“So you’re another one of those wireless kids, eh?”
“Yes, I have a pretty good wireless set. I live in Montclair and very
often I hear Key West,” I told him with some pride.
The way he warmed up to me was something wonderful and in all my
experience as an operator I have never met another of exactly his wave
length.
“You kids,” he said, pointing his long bony finger at my right eye,
“make life a nightmare for us professionals. Every kid that knows how to
splice a wire seems to be crazy to send messages. Ninety-nine out of a
hundred know nothing of wireless and their signals are simply a jumble
of sparks.
“A kid has no business learning wireless at all. I can _tune out_
amateur low power stations, but they are always breaking in in the
middle of a message. I haven’t got any use for a wireless kid. So
_hotfoot_ it and don’t hang around here any more.”
This was too much for even a fellow with a cast-iron nerve like mine, so
I turned on my heel, said _sore-head_ under my breath and took a walk on
the promenade deck. He was the first professional operator I had ever
met and I was certainly disappointed in the way he treated a brother
operator. I wondered then if all professional operators had his kind of
a _grouch_ and if so, I didn’t want to be one of them.
Not to be out-generaled I thought I’d try one more scheme and that was
to use a couple of pieces of wire five or six feet long for the aerial
and ground, hook them on to the detector of my receiver, fix the free
end of the aerial over the window and lay the free end of the ground
wire on the floor. In this way there would be no direct metal connection
between his transmitter and my receiver.
The waves from his set were so powerful that they easily bridged the gap
and I listened-in whenever I wanted to and knew everybody’s business on
board all the way down to Realjo. But I kept away from the wireless room
and that operator. Before we landed I found out from the second officer
that the operator was only a substitute for the regular one and that it
was the second trip he had ever made.
After a stay of a couple of weeks in Realjo we started back for New York
on the _Almirante_. I didn’t know whether to tackle making friends with
the operator or not. I had swallowed a pretty bitter wireless pill on
the way down and didn’t care about repeating the dose.
The second day out I ventured close enough to the instrument room to see
what the outfit looked like and to size up the operator in charge.
He was a big fellow with a full rounded face and every little while he
would whistle a popular air which fitted in nicely with the bright
sunshine that flooded the room. At the same time he would listen-in and
finally he sent O. K., which in the wireless code means that he had
heard the operator of the distant station who was calling him and that
he was ready to take his message.
Of course I couldn’t tell what was coming in but I was aching to put
those head-phones on just once. When he had finished writing out the
message he put it in an envelope and started to leave the room. Spotting
me standing by he beamed pleasantly.
“Oh! I say, boy, I wonder if you would be so kind and condescending as
to take this message to the Captain? Some other messages are likely to
come in and I don’t want to leave my post.”
Would I carry a message to the Captain? Why I’d carry one to the King of
Abyssinia for a pleasant word from any professional operator. I felt
that there was my chance to get a stand-in with his royal highness, the
wireless man.
After delivering the message to the Captain I returned with alacrity to
the window of the wireless room. The operator loosened up but I didn’t
tell him I was one of those fellows too. I had learned at first hand
that professional operators hadn’t any use for wireless kids and that
the only way to be friends with one was to be as dumb as a clam as far
as wireless was concerned.
This scheme worked out fine for after some talk he asked me of his own
accord if I’d like to take a look at the apparatus. He opened the door
and told me to “come right in” although on a card tacked on the wall in
plain sight was printed this legend:
Service Regulations for Operators.
(1) The instrument room is strictly private. No strangers are
allowed on the premises without a signed permit from the
Managing Director.
And this was followed by a dozen or more other rules and regulations.
When I got inside the room the operator, whose name was Bathwick, began
pointing out which part of the apparatus was the sender and which made
up the receiver; this was the key; that the sending tuning coil, over
here the condenser; under the table the transformer; on the wall the
spark-gap; and altogether these make up the transmitter. This the
crystal detector, the potentiometer, the tuning coil, the variable
condenser and the head-phones make up the receiver and, finally the
aerial switch, or _throwover switch_ as it is called, the purpose of
which is to enable the operator to connect the aerial with the
transmitter or the receiver, depending on whether he wants to send or to
receive.
I acted as if I had never seen a wireless set before; all went well
until he had finished and then I let the cat out of the bag. He had a
peculiar kind of a loose-coupled tuning coil that I had never seen
before and I asked him how it was _wound_. He grinned at me with his big
mouth and blue eyes and put out his open hand, palm side up.
“Put it there, pal,” he said. “I was a wireless kid myself once.” We
shook hands and it put me next to the fact that all professional
operators are not alike and at the same time it gave me a pass to the
wireless room whenever I wanted it. I almost lived there the rest of the
voyage.
Harry--I mean Bathwick--and I got so thick we began calling each other
by our first names. He let me listen-in whenever I wanted to, and then
after telling me all about the service regulations that had to do with
the order in which the messages were sent, he let me try my hand at
sending.
One night when we were off Cape Hatteras and a furious gale was blowing
Harry got suddenly sick and as this is the worst part of the whole trip
the Captain was in a quandary about his wireless messages. Harry told
him that I could work the instruments and to put me in his place. The
Captain seemed doubtful at first because of my age, but there was
nothing else he could do.
Naturally I made a few mistakes but at that I was pretty successful and
I had the distinction, so the Captain told my father, of being the
youngest operator on board ship on record.
Well, the gist of it all was that when I graduated from High School in
the spring and wanted a job as an operator I made application to the
_United Wireless Company_, which at that time controlled about all the
coastwise steamers, and, armed with a letter of recommendation from
Captain Harding of the _Almirante_, I got it on the good ship _Carlos
Madino_.
The year I was the operator on this ship I visited many Central American
ports. I became more and more imbued with the desire to see farther
around the corners of the great round world and I think I can safely say
I have done so in a fairly creditable manner.