HARNESSING LIGHTNING POWER
"Aiming for to go up to Renaud's?" asked Big Sandy as he fell into step
alongside of Lem Hicks.
"Yep! Wanter see how them new fixings up there are going to turn out,"
was Lem's answer.
"You ain't--you ain't sorter scared?"
"Scared?" Lem wheeled on Big Sandy, then grinned himself as he saw the
teasing grin on the other's face.
"Honest Injun, though," went on Big Sandy, "lots of folks round here are
scared plumb stiff over this electricity stuff. Old Poolak's had one of
his preaching fits. He's been spreading the word that it warn't fire
from the chimney what burned Miz Bobb's roof, but lightning fire what
our telegraph conjured down out of the sky. According to his tell, it
ain't Scriptural to be taking electricity out of the air and hitching it
on to man's contrivances. Johnny allows it's tampering with evil and's
goner bring down fire and brimstone on the whole Cove 'less'n folks take
axes to our newfangled fixings--"
"Johnny Poolak better mind his own business and not be mixing in with
our wires." Lem's chin went out belligerently. "I'm banking turrible
strong on this new fixing of Lee's. It's so mysterious-like, it don't
seem anyways reasonable. Yet if it works, it'll be the wonderfullest
thing what ever happened down here in the Cove."
"Well, I'm for it, strong." Big Sandy flung open the gate to the Renaud
yard and went in. Lem followed.
The "new fandangle" that Lee was working on now was an attempt at radio.
Telegraphy was wonderful enough. But that took wires, thousands of
dollars' worth to reach any distance at all. With radio, one merely sat
at a machine, turned a key and picked up sound that went hurtling
through the air with only electrical power to bear it on. It seemed
unbelievable--yet man was already doing this unbelievable thing. And Lee
Renaud, stuck off in the backwoods, had the temerity to make a try at
this same wonder.
Lee was subscribing to a magazine now, "The Radio World." Hard study and
the endless copying of hook-up designs from its pages was the way he was
preparing ground for his next experiment. By degrees he had gathered
together in his old workshop such materials as he could lay hands on.
His collection was crude enough to have gotten a laugh out of a regular
"radio ham," but it was the best he could do under the circumstances.
True enough, little rip-roaring Dr. Pendexter, out of the kindness of
his heart, had wanted to buy Lee considerable experimental stuff. But
somehow the boy's pride had rebelled at being under too much obligation
to anyone.
"I thank you, but no, sir," he had stammered, "I can't let you give me
everything. It would be different if I could only earn money some way to
pay for it--"
"There is a way!" snorted the Doctor. "Only I didn't want you fooling
away time at it when you could be going forward with electricity. Hell's
bells! You've got too much pride!"
The way of money-making that Dr. Pendexter pointed out to Lee was the
gathering of wild plants for medicinal purposes. Now and again the boy
sent in little packets of such things as bloodroot, wild ginseng, and
bay leaves. Quite a lot of herbs brought in only a few dollars, but that
money wisely expended brought back some very wonderful things through
the mail. One time it was two pairs of ordinary telephone receivers;
another time it was a piece of crystal; again it was a little can of
shellac and some special wire. In addition, Lee had gathered together an
assortment of his own--a piece of curtain pole, some old curtain rings,
a piece of mica that had once acted as "back light" in an ancient buggy
top, a length of stout oak board, sundry bits of wire and second-hand
screws and nails.
Back in his home town of Shelton, Lee had once listened in at someone
else's radio--a sleek affair with all its interior workings neatly
housed in a shining wooden case. In those days Lee had never dreamed of
aspiring to own a radio, much less aspiring to make one by using an oak
board, an old curtain pole and pieces of wire as parts.
Throughout the making, the lanky youths of King's Cove "drapped in" on
Lee whenever they could, to see how the work was progressing.
Now, when Big Sandy and Lem hurried along the shady lane in the dusk,
and on up to the workshop, they found Tony and little Mackey and Joe
Burk already there ahead of them.
"The aerial's done up!" shouted Tony Zita. "Done did it yesterday. Had
to finish the job by lantern light."
"I helped!" little Mackey Bobb was fairly bristling with pride. "Us all
went up through that funny little door right in the roof of this here
house. One end of the wire's hitched to a pole that's lashed onto a
chimney. T'other end of the wire is rigged to a scantling what's nailed
to the barn."
"And you're countin' on that high-sittin' wire to pick up music out of
the air for you?" asked Big Sandy incredulously.
"Jumping catfish, no!" exploded Lee, who was cutting wrapping paper into
long strips. "We've got to hitch up a sight of apparatus here in the
house, too."
"Ain't there something I can do?" Lem Hicks moved over to the bench
where Lee was working.
Soon everybody was hard at it, doing whatever he could on this strange
contraption young Renaud was evolving. The younger boys scraped and
trimmed at smoothing off the heavy oak plank that was to be the base of
the outfit.
Lee had spread around him on table and bench a half dozen "Radio
Worlds," propped open to show diagrams full of coils and lines, and
lettered at certain points, A, B, C, D, and so on.
"This paper says the timing coil is most important, so we better go
mighty careful on that." Lee produced a piece of old-fashioned wooden
curtain pole, three inches in diameter. "A ten-inch length is all we
need."
When this core was measured and cut, Lee began to wind it smoothly in
the strips of tough brown wrapping paper that he had already prepared.
As he wound it on, Lem, armed with the little can of shellac and a stiff
feather for a brush, bent above the job and carefully shellacked each
piece.
After the neatly wrapped core with its dose of the sticky gum had dried
out a little, the hardest task of all was undertaken--winding on the
wire tuning coil itself. The paper strips had been easy to handle, but
managing the lively, wriggling wire was a very difficult task.
"Help, everybody! We've got to step lively to get this thing on right
away, while the shellac is still some sticky, so it will hold the wire
firm." Lee waved his roll of wire, and there was a general rush for
everyone to have a finger in this excitement.
A couple of fellows held the wire taut, and another couple, gripping the
ends of the wooden rod with tense fingers, turned it steadily. As the
master hand, Lee laid the coils in place at each turn. With even the
simple machinery of a lathe and foot pedal, it would have been an easy
job to wind the core. But with only excited boyish fingers to grip and
turn, the task was one of considerable difficulty. The wire would writhe
and knot. Now and again coils slipped and refused to lie smooth.
"Unwind it! Try it again!" Brows bent, mouth set firmly, Lee unwound and
rewound, over and over again. This thing had to be right. No use making
it if the wire didn't lie smooth and close, without any space at all
between the coils.
"Um! That looks sort of like it now!" Lee said with satisfaction as he
fastened down the last tag end.
The other boys drew close and gazed upon it pridefully.
"Gosh, it does look right! Slicker'n silk, and 'pears to be real close
kin to that there picture in the book," Big Sandy said, holding the
illustration of the tuning coil in a "Radio World" up beside their
effort in wire and wood. "I thought you was being tollable persnikerty,
doing it over so much, but reckon you was right."
"The sliding contacts come next. Wonder if we can mount them now?" In
lieu of store-bought metallic contacts, Lee produced a pair of old metal
curtain rings. "Got to punch holes in 'em so we can stick in the copper
rivets."
And so the work went forward. Night after night the gang met in Lee's
workshop. There was a certain amount of the apparatus that even
untrained hands could attend to, such as cutting the four-inch squares
of paraffined paper and tinfoil, alternating these in a stack, then
placing these between two blocks of wood and screwing them tightly
together. This was the "condenser" that, according to the printed
directions, was to help the electric vibrations pass through the
earphone receivers.
Since the human ear alone could not detect the sound waves that touched
the aerial, a sort of electrical ear was necessary. And this electrical
ear was nothing more than a piece of sensitive galena crystal and a wire
of phosphor bronze. If this thing that Lee Renaud was building turned
out right, when that phosphor bronze wire came in contact with the bit
of crystal, the mysterious sound wave would become audible.
Lee himself attended to the delicate task of mounting the galena crystal
and adjusting the two rods that held the sliding contacts, also the
soldering of various "lead in" and "lead out" wires.
Then at last it was all done. For Lee Renaud, this was a crucial time.
It didn't seem possible that this homemade contraption of wood and wire
and old curtain fixtures could really reach out into the ether and pull
down music for its users.
According to one of old Pomp's favorite expressions, the young inventor
felt "more nervouser than a rabbit what's bin shot at and missed."
He would have liked to have tried out the thing alone. But there was no
chance of that. Every youngster in the Cove was packed in that old
upstairs workshop. Even a couple of flop-eared 'possum hounds had
managed to sneak in at their young masters' heels. Here was a full
audience and everything set for a great night.
On the heavy oak base on the table before Lee, the tuning coil, the
crystal detector, the condenser, and the terminals for the head phone
plugs were arranged and fitted in their proper places. The last cutting,
stripping and soldering of connecting wires had been attended to.
"G-gosh, I'm almost afraid to give it a try," muttered Lee to himself.
"S'pose it don't work!"
He couldn't keep his hand from trembling as he set one of the sliding
contacts at the middle of the tuning coil, and moved the other just
about opposite.
Young Renaud had on one pair of ear phones. Jimmy Bobb and Lem Hicks,
heads right together, shared the other pair.
Lee, all keyed up to hear something, adjusted the sharp little phosphor
bronze wire on the detector until the point just touched the crystal. No
sound came. Lee could feel the tenseness of the crowd, could sense the
gasp of bitter disappointment from Jimmy and Lem. In desperation, he
slowly moved the slider along the tuning coil. Suddenly a burst of
orchestra music rolled in to those at the ear phones. Faintly at first,
then swelling triumphantly as Lee Renaud slid his contacts along the
coil!
Those first listeners sat spellbound till others, eager for their turn,
snatched away the ear phones.
Like one in a trance, Jimmy Bobb sat with the music still ringing in his
soul.
"Gee," he whispered, "those fiddles, high and sweet, like they was right
in the next room!"
"And they were really in Gulf City, fifty miles from here!" laughed
young Renaud. "Let's make a try for Madsden. That will be a good bit
farther--something like a hundred miles."
Until far into the night the group stayed "tuned in," excitedly swapping
phones, eagerly listening to the first real music in their lives.
King's Cove was in touch with the world! It had suddenly come out of the
nowhere into the somewhere. A copper rivet slid along a coil of wire,
and in a fraction of a second this bunch of boys in faded, ragged
overalls was in contact with music in another county, music in another
state even!
Then there came a swishing thud against the outside of the house as if
made by the recoil of wire.
"S-s-sh!" hissingly whispered little Mackey, who had been peering out of
the window. "Something out on the barn roof--like a man with hisself all
humped up, creeping, creeping--"
"Somebody's been at our aerial--cut it off!" agonized Lee, realizing to
a certainty what that swish of wire against the house had meant.
Another had taken in the situation, too, it seemed. The shutters of the
next room were flung open and Great-uncle Gem's voice rang out angrily,
"What you up to on that roof? Don't be trespassing on my place, you
Johnny Poolak!"
From the slant of the barn roof a fanatical voice croaked back,
"Lightning power belongs up in the sky. The Lord's agin humans what
steals his lightning. Fire and brimstone! But the wire's cut! And I'm
a-saving King's Cove!"
"Better be saving your own hide!" shouted old Gem. And from that
second-story window roared a pistol shot.
A thud and a bump from the barn roof. Then footsteps crashing off,
running through the underbrush.
Into the radio room limped Gem Renaud, wiping off a smoking,
long-barreled old pistol. "Just shot up in the air," he announced
angrily. "But I hope I put enough fright into that old nuisance to run
him into the next county."