CHESTER CHADWICK--INVENTOR.
As readers of the preceding volumes of this series, know, Jack
Chadwick and Tom Jesson, his cousin, had won the titles of Boy
Inventors through their ingenuity and mechanical genius. Jack's
father, Chester Chadwick, was an inventor of note, and unlike the
majority of inventors, he had turned his devices to such good account
that he had accumulated a substantial fortune and was able to maintain
a fine estate, already referred to as High Towers where, with
splendidly equipped workshops and a miniature lake, he could
experiment and work out his ideas.
In the first book of this series it was related how Tom Jesson, Jack's
cousin, came to make his home at High Towers. Tom's father, an
explorer of international fame, had departed on an expedition to
Yucatan and had not been heard from since that time. This volume,
which was called the Boy Inventors' Wireless Triumph, told of the
boys' exploits in the radio-telegraphic field and the uses to which
they were able to turn them. In a flying machine, the invention of Mr.
Chadwick, they discovered Tom's father, under remarkable
circumstances, a prisoner of a tribe of savages, and also found a
fortune in precious stones.
In the succeeding story of their adventures, the boys helped an
inventor in trouble. The Boy Inventors' Vanishing Gun, as this volume
was entitled, set forth in a graphic way the triumph of the boys over
the machinations of a gang of rascals intent on stealing the plans of
the wonderful implement of warfare which they had helped bring to
successful completion.
We next encountered the lads in the Boy Inventors' Diving Torpedo
Boat. Here they were placed in a new environment on the surface and in
the depths of the ocean. The way in which the wonderful diving craft
aided Uncle Sam in a crisis with enemies of the United States was
told, and their ingenuity and bravery played no small part in the
affair.
The Boy Inventors' Flying Ship was devoted to a detailed narrative of
the boys' long and unexpected cruise to the unexplored regions of the
Upper Amazon. The boys were shipwrecked and cast away without an
apparent hope of rescue on a yacht belonging to a German scientist,
the crew of which had mutinied. The boys' capture by a strange tribe
and subsequent escape in their Flying Ship formed thrilling portions
of this story, while Dick Donovan's researches in natural history
provided the boys with a lot of fun.
The volume immediately preceding this showed the boys coming to the
rescue of a poor lad, a waif and orphan, who yet had a fortune in the
plans and specifications of a new type of craft invented by his dead
father who had lacked the capital to develop it. Enemies strove
desperately to secure the papers, and even went to the length of
forging a will for the purpose, but partly through the agency of an
odd German lad, Heiney Pumpernickel Dill, their schemes were
frustrated and the invention was developed and set upon a working
basis. This book was called the Boy Inventors' Hydroaëroplane, and
dealt with some astonishing adventures and perils all of which the
boys encountered with plucky spirits and resourceful minds.
For some weeks preceding the opening of the present book relating of
the Boy Inventors, Mr. Chadwick had been closeted in his own private
laboratory. The boys had seen him only at rare intervals, and then he
had appeared abstracted and preoccupied. This, the boys knew, was a
sure sign that he was at work on a new idea.
Sometimes the lights burned in his laboratory far into the night and
in the morning he would appear at breakfast pale and silent. The boys
had indulged in much speculation as to what the new invention could
be, but had arrived at no satisfactory conclusion when, two days after
their experience with the eccentric professor, Mr. Chadwick summoned
them to his private workshop. The boys, who had been at work on the
Wondership, the flying automobile with which they had met such
surprising adventures in Brazil, obeyed the summons with alacrity. It
was delivered to them by Jupe, the negro factotum of the place.
"Massa Chadwick send me on de bustelbolorium," explained Jupe, who had
a vocabulary that was all his own, "for yo' alls to come right away by
his laburnumtory."
"All right, Jupe, we'll be right over," said Jack, "just as soon as
we've got some of this grease off our hands."
The boys' workshop was equipped with a washbasin and they soon made
themselves presentable. Then they hurried to Mr. Chadwick's workshop.
They found him standing before a roughly-built table on which were
ranged some odd-looking bits of apparatus.
There was a gasoline motor in one corner, geared to a generator--or
what appeared to be one--from which feed wires led to a square metal
box on the table. Attached to this metal box was a sort of horn-shaped
mouthpiece something like the transmitter of a telephone. Hanging from
its side was what looked like an enlarged telephone receiver. Jack
regarded his father questioningly.
"You sent for us, dad?"
"Yes, Jack," was the reply. "I'm in a quandary. Have you any idea what
this apparatus is?"
Both boys shook their heads.
"Looks like some kind of a telephone," ventured Tom.
"It is a telephone," replied Mr. Chadwick.
"But--but--where are the wires?" asked Jack, glancing about him, "or
haven't you connected it up yet?"
"It's connected up as much as it will ever be," said Mr. Chadwick with
a smile. "Can't you guess what it is?"
"I've got it," cried Jack suddenly. "It's a wireless telephone."
"That's right," admitted his father, and, in response to a flood of
questions from the boys, he told them how he had been working day and
night to bring the device to perfection.
"Now," he said, as he concluded, "I want you boys to go down to that
shed that was put up last week at the northwest corner of the
orchard."
"The one that was put up to store gasoline?" asked Tom.
"I said it was for that purpose in order to avoid questions till I had
my work completed," said Mr. Chadwick with a smile. "Here is the key
to it. Inside you will find an apparatus similar to this one. Start
the dynamo and then stand in front of the transmitter and place the
receiver to your ear. If you don't hear anything at once use the
inductor to tune your aërial earth circuit to the transmitted current
from my end just exactly as you would tune up a wireless telegraph
instrument to catch certain wave lengths from another instrument"
"Then the principle of the radio telephone is the same as that of the
wireless telephone?" asked Tom.
"I'll explain that to you later in as plain language as I can," said
the inventor, "but now I am anxious to see how this instrument will
transmit sound."
The boys were excited. Anything novel in the way of science attracted
their bright, active minds as an electromagnet attracts steel. The
idea of a wireless telephone, of the possibility of transmitting
actual speech through space, just as the dots and dashes of the
wireless telegraph are sped through the ether, quickened their
inventive faculties to the highest pitch. Both felt a glow of pride
that they had been selected, even before their father's scientific
friends, to make the first test of this wonderful new invention.
They hurried across the broad lawn that intervened between the
workshops and the orchard where the newly erected shed stood, and
which, it had been given out, was to serve for the storage of
gasoline. Unlocking the door, they found inside an apparatus
resembling in almost every detail the one in Mr. Chadwick's workshop.
Jack's hands fairly trembled as he started up the motor and the
generator began to buzz. With shining eyes and throbbing pulses he
placed the receiver to his ear as his father had directed. But the
next moment a flood of disappointment swept through him.
"Well?" demanded Tom, himself a tiptoe with expectation.
"Nothing doing," replied Jack, shaking his head. "I guess the thing
isn't at a practical stage yet."
"Wait a minute, give it a chance," urged Tom. "By the way, how about
that tuning device, have you tried that yet?"
"No, good gracious, my head must be turning into solid ivory from the
neck up. I guess that's just what the trouble is."
Jack began carefully sliding a small block connected to the
instruments up and down the coiled wire which formed the tuning
apparatus, and brought the sending and receiving ends into harmony
just as if they had been two musical instruments. When the right
electric "chord" was struck he should be able to hear, just as in
wireless he would be able to catch the message of an instrument whose
wave lengths were attuned to his.
Suddenly Tom saw his chum and cousin give a start and then a shout.
Over the space between the workshop and the small shed a human voice
had been borne on electric waves. Sharp and clear as though he had
been listening to a "wire" 'phone, Jack caught and recognized his
father's voice:
"Hul-lo!"