THE WONDERFUL SCIENCE
The effect of this closing sentence on the Radio Boys was electric.
They had been engrossed in the subject of the talk, and the personal
twist that came at the end took them utterly by surprise. Bob jumped
as though he had been shot, and Jimmy nearly fell off his chair.
“Well! what do you think of that?” exclaimed Joe, as soon as he got
his breath.
“Wasn’t that dandy of the old scout?” sputtered Herb, not yet
recovered from his surprise.
“Talking to hundreds of thousands and yet taking time to send a
special message to us!” remarked Bob, with deep gratification.
“Radio Boys of Clintonia!” chuckled Jimmy. “Guess we’re some
pumpkins, say, what?”
“How I wish we could answer back and tell him what we thought of his
address,” observed Joe regretfully.
“You’ll have a chance to do that when you see him face to face,” Bob
reminded him. “You remember that he said he’d call on us soon.”
“Can’t be too soon to suit me,” declared Herb emphatically.
“And that’s the man who began by saying that he wasn’t a practiced
orator!” commented Bob. “Gee, I think it was one of the most
eloquent things I ever heard. I wouldn’t have missed a word of it.
I’ll bet that if he’d have delivered that in a crowded hall his
hearers would have raised the roof.”
“He’s there with the goods all right,” agreed Joe. “And did you
notice how modest he was? Not a word about his own personal
adventures, but boosting the other fellows to beat the band. I tell
you, that fellow’s a real man.”
“We were in luck when we got acquainted with him,” declared Bob.
“And by the way, fellows, did you ever stop to think how many fine
fellows we’ve met in the radio line? There’s Frank Brandon and
Brandon Harvey and Payne Bentley, all of them princes.”
“Not to mention Doctor Dale,” put in Herb. “Of course we knew him
before, but we never got real close to him until we took up this
radio work.”
“What a treat it would be to get those four together and get them
started talking about radio!” ejaculated Joe. “Maybe we wouldn’t
learn something!”
“You said it,” affirmed Jimmy. “I wouldn’t want to say a word but
just sit still and listen.”
There were still other numbers on the program of WJZ, but the boys
were so absorbed in Mr. Bentley and his talk that they did not care
for anything else that night. They sat talking it over until Joe,
looking at his watch, was startled to find that it was nearly
midnight.
“Guess we’d better be making tracks,” he said, reaching for his cap.
Jimmy was the only one of the visitors who did not follow his
example.
“Glued to the chair?” inquired Herb flippantly. “Going to make Bob
twice glad by staying all night?”
“I was thinking,” said Jimmy dreamily, “of a little word that I
heard earlier in the evening. A very little word it was, but it
means a lot in my young life. Only three letters. Let me see! P-i-e.
Yes, that’s it. Pie. I knew I’d be able to recall it.”
“That’s a safe bet,” said Joe. “If you remembered your lessons half
as well, you’d stand higher in your classes.”
Bob, recalled to his duties as host, hurried to the pantry, whence
he returned bearing one of the apple pies for which Mrs. Layton was
famous.
“Do you think you’d better eat anything so late at night, Jimmy?”
asked Herb, with mock solicitude.
“I don’t think—I know,” returned Jimmy, with emphasis. “It may kill
me, but at least I’ll die happy. But I don’t believe it will kill
me. Do you remember what I did in that pie-eating contest up in the
woods? Don’t forget that I’m a champion.”
Bob started to cut the pie into four equal pieces, when Jimmy
intervened.
“Remember your promise, Bob,” he said. “I was to have twice as much
as these crooks who robbed me of my doughnuts. Cut it into five
pieces and give me two of them.”
“Your figuring is rotten, Jimmy,” declared Joe. “That would give you
twice as much as either Herb or me, and so far it’s all right. But
it would also give you twice as much as Bob, and that wasn’t in the
bargain. He didn’t swipe one of your doughnuts.”
Jimmy looked perplexed. He was not especially strong in mathematics.
“That’s so,” he admitted. “Suppose then we cut it into six pieces.
That will be two for Bob, two for me and one apiece for you crooks.”
“There again you’re wrong,” persisted the implacable Joe. “It’s all
right for you to have double what we have, but where does Bob come
in to have two to our one? We didn’t rob him of a doughnut.”
Now poor Jimmy was puzzled indeed. It was clear to him that if the
pie were cut in five pieces, of which he had two, he would have an
unfair advantage over Bob. There was no reason why he should have
twice what Bob had. On the other hand if it were cut in six pieces,
of which Bob had two, Bob for no reason whatever would have twice as
much as Herb or Joe. How could the pie be cut so that Bob would have
his fair share and no more and yet Jimmy have twice as much as
either Herb or Joe? Into exactly how many equal pieces must it be
divided so that justice might be done?
Perhaps some of our young readers might be puzzled to answer the
question. Jimmy certainly was. So much so in fact that he made a
virtue of necessity and decided to be generous.
“Oh, all right,” he said with a magnificent gesture. “Cut it into
four equal pieces and let it go at that. I’ll get even with you
fellows some other way.”
“How sweet of you,” replied Joe, grinning, hastening to grab his
quarter before Jimmy should repent of his offer. “Only I’m not sure
whether this is softness of heart or softness of brain. You’d never
have done it if you hadn’t got mixed up in your figuring.”
Jimmy tried to think of some crushing retort, but by that time he
had started to eat the pie, and he put his whole attention so
thoroughly on the work that less important things were forgotten.
The next afternoon, as Bob was going down to his father’s store, he
ran across Dr. Dale. After the doctor had made inquiries as to how
Mr. Layton was progressing, Bob asked him:
“By the way, Doctor, were you listening in at WJZ last night?”
“No, I wasn’t,” replied the doctor. “Was there anything that was
especially interesting?”
“We found it so,” responded Bob, and then proceeded to give an
outline of the talk of the forest ranger.
“It must have been fine,” Dr. Dale commented when Bob had concluded.
“I have a personal interest in forestry work for reasons that I will
tell you about when I have more time. I’m glad to hear that Mr.
Bentley is going to visit you, and I would like to come round and
get acquainted with him.”
“I’ll tell you when he comes,” promised Bob.
“One reason that I missed his talk last night,” the doctor went on,
“was that for the greater part of the evening I was listening in at
WGY. Those, you remember, are the call letters of the Schenectady
station. They’ve got a wonderful new contrivance there that’s going
to make a sensation in the radio world when it becomes generally
known.”
“One more miracle to be put down to the account of radio, I
suppose,” replied Bob, with an appreciative smile.
“You might almost call it that,” replied the doctor. “Some weeks ago
WGY told its audience that a new device different from the
phonograph was being used to talk into the radio transmitter. But at
the time they didn’t give any explanation of what the contrivance
was. I suppose they wanted to test it out under all conditions
before they let the public in on it. But last night they told us all
about it. It’s a film that does the talking.”
“A film!” exclaimed Bob, in surprise.
“That’s just what it is,” affirmed Dr. Dale. “They showed it to
Edison when he was up there the other day, and he was astonished.
And anything that astonishes that wizard must be pretty good.”
“I should say so!” acquiesced Bob. “Please tell me just what it is
and how it works.”
“It’s something like this,” replied the doctor. “I’ll try to give it
to you as nearly as I can in the very words that were used in
explaining it. The purpose of the device is to record sounds on a
photographic film so that the sound may later on be exactly
reproduced in ordinary telephones and loud speakers. The record is
made by causing the sound waves to produce vibrations on a very
delicate mirror. A beam of light reflected by this mirror strikes a
photographic film which is constantly in motion.
“When the film is developed it shows a band of white with faint
markings on the edges which correspond to the sound which has been
reproduced. On account of the exceedingly small size of the mirror,
it has been found possible to produce a sound record which includes
the delicate overtones which give quality to speech and musical
sounds. Do you get my meaning?”
“I can understand how the film is made,” responded Bob thoughtfully.
“But after it is made, how is the sound reproduced?”
“I was coming to that,” replied the doctor. “The reproduction of the
sound from the film is brought about by moving the film in front of
an exceedingly delicate electrical device which produces an
electromotive force that varies with the amount of light that falls
upon it. By an ingenious combination of vacuum tubes, there has been
produced an apparatus which responds to variations in the light
falling on it with the speed of light itself or with the speed of
propagation of wireless waves into space. Therefore, when this film
is moved continuously in front of such a device, the device produces
an electric current which corresponds very accurately to the
original sound wave. This electric current may be used to actuate a
telephone or loud speaker.
“When this was told to us last night, I thought that it was the
announcer who was talking. But, as a matter of fact, it was the film
that was talking. The voice of the announcer had first been recorded
on the film and then was sent out with such accuracy that we were
all fooled into believing that the announcer himself was speaking to
us at first hand.”
“That certainly showed how good it was!” exclaimed Bob. “It’s
nothing less than magic! It sometimes seems as though it couldn’t be
real—as if radio must be a dream.”
“A dream that has come true,” answered the doctor, as he smilingly
said good-by and went on his way.