WIRELESS WONDERS
“What do you mean?” asked Bob, secretly wondering whether the
wireless man was trying to mystify him.
“Just what I say,” repeated Johnson. “My set goes practically dead
while the aurora borealis is getting in its work. Can’t send, can’t
receive. When that begins to flood the sky—and it does it pretty
often up in these latitudes—it means that my helpers and I get a
little vacation.”
“I should think you’d be glad of it,” remarked lazy Herb.
“Oh, of course a little unexpected rest is welcome once in a while,”
admitted Johnson. “But all the same it leaves me uneasy. How do I
know but at this very moment some ship in distress may be signaling
us for help and we can’t get the message?”
“I suppose you feel something as a fireman would at a fire if he
found his hose was cut,” conjectured Joe.
“Something like that,” replied Johnson. “Only my comfort is that
there may not be a fire. Nothing may happen, of course, when your
set is out of commission, and then again anything may happen.
There’s no help for it, though, and I’ve simply got to wait until
the aurora gets ready to say good-night.”
“It’s queer that it should have that effect,” mused Bob,
thoughtfully. “What do you suppose the reason is?”
“That’s something the scientists haven’t found out yet,” was the
reply. “There have been a lot of theories, but none of them’s
satisfactory. All we know is that there’s so much electrical energy
let loose when the aurora is working that our poor little signals
get lost in the shuffle. Some day, though, the radio sharps will be
able to tell us all about it.”
“I should think that that would have a serious effect upon the radio
sets of the airships they are planning to fly to the Pole,” remarked
Joe, as his thoughts went back to the _Shooting Star_ and her
outfit. “Just at the time they most need to communicate with the
people south of them, they may find that there’s nothing doing.”
“There’s a chance of that, of course,” conceded Johnson. “But there
are so many chances connected with Arctic exploration that one more
doesn’t make much difference. There’s Amundsen now and McMillan, the
one up in the Arctic ice and the other in Baffin Land. They’re
counting largely on keeping in touch with civilization by radio, and
occasionally they have. But there have been quite a number of cases
where stations in the United States have tried to communicate with
them but evidently didn’t, for they have received no answer. The
fault hasn’t been with the sending set, which was plenty powerful
enough to reach them. My guess is that the failure’s been due to the
aurora borealis. It’s a beautiful thing all right, but there are
times when one would like to have a little less beauty and a little
better communication.”
“It seems to be fading now,” remarked Bob, as his glance swept the
sky. “It isn’t so bright as it was, and it isn’t covering as much
space.”
“It’ll last for about another hour,” judged Johnson; “and then my
enforced vacation will be over.”
“You fellows are as busy as a hive of bees most of the time,”
observed Jimmy. “Don’t you get so tired sometimes that you’d like to
chuck the job?”
“No, I’ve never got so tired as that,” replied Johnson. “The truth
is, I’m such a fan on radio that I’d rather handle a set than eat.”
There was an exclamation from Jimmy at this.
“Jimmy thinks you’re losing your mind when you say that,” chuckled
Joe.
“Perhaps I was putting it a little strongly,” said the operator,
with a grin, while Jimmy looked reproachfully at Joe. “But,
honestly, I think radio is the greatest thing in this whole
universe. Every day something turns up that gives me a new angle on
its limitless possibilities. What hasn’t it done? What can’t it do?
What won’t it do?”
“You’re getting eloquent,” said Bob, with a smile.
“It’s enough to make a dumb man eloquent,” returned Johnson. “I tell
you, radio is almost human. It seems to have an intelligence of its
own. Why, already it’s doing things that formerly only men could do.
It directs ships. It guides torpedoes. It flies planes.
“Only the other day,” he went on, warming to his theme, “an airplane
in France rose and flew and landed just as skillfully and accurately
as though it had been managed by a pilot on board. And it was all
directed by wireless from the ground. The machine was a big bombing
plane with a thirty-three horsepower engine. It flew easily,
maneuvered freely, and landed and rose several times in succession,
without a hitch of any kind. A stabilizer with four gyroscopes
maintained the equilibrium automatically, while a speed device cut
off the spark when the plane neared the ground, so that it landed so
gently that it wouldn’t have broken a pane of glass.
“And mark my words, that’s only one step in the process of
dispensing with human assistance altogether. I’ll bet that in my
lifetime ships will be sailing across the ocean without a steersman,
railroad trains will go speeding across the country at the rate of
sixty miles an hour without a man at the throttle.”
“It’ll throw a lot of men out of their jobs,” remarked Joe.
“For a while,” admitted Johnson. “Just as the railroad threw bus
drivers out of their jobs, just as the spinning jenny threw weavers
out of their jobs, just as every advance in civilization has made
readjustments necessary. But, after a while, it makes more and
better jobs, and raises the general level of human happiness.”
“You’re safe, whatever happens,” grinned Joe.
“I’m not so sure of that,” was the unexpected answer. “Radio itself
may throw me out of a radio job.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Herb.
“Sounds to me something like a riddle,” said Jimmy, rubbing his
forehead in perplexity.
“Fact, just the same,” Johnson reiterated. “Radio itself will drive
radio without the aid of an operator. They proved that that was
possible in New York only a few weeks ago. By an arrangement of the
controlling circuit of the longest commercial radio service in the
world, from New York to Warsaw, Poland, they were able to make
automatic signaling a substitute for operators. Radio was made to
control radio, and thus over an eight thousand five hundred mile
circuit continuous signaling was produced without human assistance.”
“Sounds to me as though I were listening to you read me something
out of ‘Alice in Wonderland,’” said Herb.
“There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in
our philosophy,” quoted the operator. “And among these, radio takes
the first place.
“But there,” he continued, rising from his seat, “I’ve talked you
fellows nearly to death, and, anyhow, the aurora is on its last legs
and I’ve got to get back to my work.”
The boys could have listened to him all night, and told him so.
“Come down to my room tomorrow, and I’ll give you some idea of the
multitude of things that radio does in the matter of the iceberg
patrol,” he invited. “I suppose you boys think that about all we
have to do is to report on the position of icebergs when we spot
them. Isn’t that so?”
“I thought it was mainly that,” Bob answered for them.
“Well, come in and see how greatly you’re mistaken,” said Johnson,
with a grin, as he left them.