Radio V-rays

Stan Ross plugged in his pair of phones and watched his friend, who was crouched before the superheterodyne, seeking by his trained manipulation of the dials to follow up the faint whistles which the set was pouring into his ears. Three stations four hundred miles to the south in Los Angeles roared in, one after the other, with an intensity sufficient to rattle the sensitive diaphragms of the head-sets. Dick slid his pair forward from his ears, but Stan, a veteran of the days when he and his fellow amateurs had sat long hours into the night with each others’ one kilowatt spark stations tearing into their heads from three-step audio amplifiers, only smiled.

“Pretty good, Dick,” he shouted. “Those stations down south are all piled together on almost the same wave. I didn’t think even the ‘het’ would separate ’em.”

“Sh-h-h!” cautioned Dick. “There’s the Calgary station away up north in Canada. I’m going to try the new loop, now--wait a minute.”

He removed his head-set and turned his attention to the egg-shaped affair previously referred to by Stan, connecting it in place of the outdoor antenna. The affair, Stan noticed, was shaped like half an egg, and rotated on a vertical axis at right angles to the normal horizontal line of an egg. Wire was wound on the parabolic wooden frame in such a fashion that the focus of the electrical parabola thus formed was fixed upon a point far out in space, in whatever direction the horizontal axis of the affair might be pointed.

Dick turned back to the set, now much quieter, and motioned for Stan to turn the loop, slowly. Stan stretched a tentative hand toward the handle on top of the parabola, expecting a fearful shriek in the phones. Nothing of the sort occurred--he gave a slight whistle of amazement.

“No body capacity?” he asked.

“Nope,” came the reply; “new kink in shielding I worked out.” Then as Stan stooped and peered into the frame, a puzzled look on his face: “No need of looking for metallic shields, because there aren’t any. Just something I happened to stumble on: reducing everything as much as possible to ground potential.”

Stan smiled, and put out his hand.

“I’ll have to hand it to you, old kid,” he said. “I can supply the practical experience, but you certainly were born with all the brains and genius for both of us.”

He began turning the loop slowly, pausing whenever Dick signified for him to do so, and in such a manner that the focus of the parabola moved in a great circle from the south to the east--counter-clockwise, in other words. First a small station in New Mexico, then El Paso, and finally Chicago and New York swung in, loud enough to be just comfortable in the telephones.

The two young men smiled into each other’s eyes, contentedly, experiencing the joy of a dream come true and appreciating the beautiful creation on the work bench as only one can appreciate modern wireless telegraphy who has followed the art from its coherer stage. Dick snapped off the tubes, and the two removed their head-sets.

“Of course you would disagree,” said Dick. “I’d like you less if you failed to. But honestly, now--you understand the principles on which the set works, you know how all the parts are put together, and you know how to operate it efficiently. On the whole, won’t you have to admit that this seven-tube set seemed far less complicated to you than did the first crystal set you ever made when you were new to the game?”

“Well, yes, I guess I will,” admitted Stan. “As usual, I’m cornered. But just what are you driving at?”

“I’ll come to that in a minute. Now, think of the thousands of people in this country who use radio receiving sets. They can tune them, after a fashion; they hear over long distances, mostly because of luck, and so they think themselves scientific research workers, and speak of their sets, which really do all the work, contemptuously--patronizingly. Yet those same sets, even if they have built them themselves (which is not usually the case) are really miracles to them, if they would only admit it.”

“All done?” Stan inquired solicitously.

“All done,” said Dick, wonderingly.

“Right. Now listen to this and then unravel it, little logic. It’s gospel truth, and I’ve always wanted an explanation of it--but I never thought I’d meet anyone who would admit everything to be so simple as you do, so I’ve always kept it under my hat.”

“I’m listening,” said Dick.

“Before I came to college I had an amateur station in Los Angeles--big spark transmitter and all that. One winter I was listening in at about 1 o’clock in the morning. The stations up here around San Francisco that had been booming in an hour before had all seemed to shut down together, almost as if something had suddenly smothered them, if you get what I mean. The Los Angeles fellows, I suppose, thought that the northern fellows were having some sort of local interference, so they, too, shut down, one by one. 5ZA had been working his spark, down in New Mexico, but he seemed to fade out at about the same time the San Francisco stations did.

“It was odd to hear the air so quiet. I tuned all up and down the scale, hoping for some eastern DX, although it was rather late, but there was not a station on the air. Thinking that perhaps my receiver was not working as it should, I started the rotary gap and drawled out a long CQ on full power, but none of the locals came back to ‘bawl me out’--I was alone on the air. It was eery; I felt as if I were the last inhabitant of a dead world, and the night outside--a sixty mile gale of ice-cold north wind had sprang up from nowhere--didn’t help to lessen the uncomfortable illusion. Suddenly, on about five hundred meters (I remember the setting of those dials as well as if I had them here in my hands now) I heard a low hum, and eight long dashes pealed out, one after the other, each of them one tone higher than the preceding one. The octave in the key of C!

“I admit that I jumped--cold sweat broke out on my forehead, but I glued my fingers to those variometer dials. About a minute later I heard it again--_do, re, mi_, and on up. It sounded at first like eight rotary gaps tuned to a musical scale, except that the tones were much smoother, almost bell-like, in fact.”

Dick was laughing.

“And you ask me to explain a thing like that after I’ve been talking of miracles?” he scoffed. “Why, it’s childishly simple. Some local fellow was playing a fool trick with eight rotary gaps adjusted to the key of C, or else someone was pioneering with a modulated CW--a broadcasting set.”

“Yeah, Sherlock? Well, I thought of that, too--I’m not as dumb as I look.”

Stan had risen to go. When he was safely outside the door, a position calculated to make his parting shot highly dramatic, he turned and shot back, “Right in the middle of that little performance the light in my radio room went out, and I learned the next day that the power had been off all over the city!”

The door slammed.

Weeks passed. Stan, busy with athletics and activities, did not have time to call at his friend’s house for more than a month, and when finally he did, it was only upon receipt of an urgent telephone message. He burst into Dick’s room to find that worthy lying on the floor with his nose deep in an immense volume.

“Oh, Lord! False alarm,” he groaned. “I thought you had electrocuted yourself, or something. What’s the matter?--and what the dickens are you reading?”

Dick rose and laid the volume carefully on the table.

“A treatise on X-rays,” he said; “and as for your other questions, nothing is the matter and I haven’t electrocuted myself. I just wanted you to come over and see what you have been responsible for. Look!”

He stepped to the neat work bench and withdrew the black covering cloth from a bulky cabinet.