Jack Heaton Wireless Operator

It happened out at sea about five hundred miles as wireless waves fly from Montclair. But perhaps you don't know where Montclair is and maybe you don't particularly care, but as it is my home town I must tell you about it. First, it's in New Jersey a short way from South Orange, where Mr. Edison, the great inventor, has his laboratory, and about twelve miles from New York City. So you see it is pretty favorably located. If you were a stranger going through the place you'd have been surprised to see the webs of wires strung around every other house in town and on first sight you might have taken them for telegraph or telephone lines, or as I once heard a man remark to my father, "They look like lines on which to hang the family wash." But, nay, nay, these wires, on the contrary, were not used for any such commonplace purpose but they were, instead, aerials put up by wireless boys for sending and receiving messages. Just about half of the fellows in our town at that time were wireless bugs and they ranged anywhere from thirteen to nineteen years of age, though every once in a while a full fledged man would be found with an outfit. Some of the fellows had elaborate equipments with aerials containing upwards of a thousand feet of wire and with them they could send messages to distances of a hundred miles or so and receive them from powerful stations a thousand miles away. I don't know who started the wireless game in Montclair, but I do know that it was a long time after I was exposed to the wireless germ that it took and I was interested enough to listen in to the news that was flashed out by ship and shore stations. Nearly all fellows begin wireless by seeing some of their pals monkeying with the apparatus, and no wonder, for wireless has a kind of fascination about it that makes a deep appeal to not only boys but men. At that time I was fifteen years old and my hobby was printing. I had quite an outfit, including a 5 x 7 self-inking press, a good layout of type, cases and everything. As I was a boy of action and wanted quick results I couldn't see this idea at all of constantly adjusting a detector, working the slider of a tuning coil back and forth, looking as solemn as an owl and keeping as silent as a clam.

Dettagli