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Show MORE ABOUT RADIO Last week I very hurriedly wrote a piece about "The Pleasures of Radio." Ra-dio." The piece was written on the last minute of a busy day, with the ( added annoyance of late copy from an advertiser, with the remit that there was no time to carefully prcof read the effort, with the result that many errors were left in it, and the thought was sometimes choked with poorly constrcuted verbiage almo-t clouded in places. For which I duly apologize. What I wanted the article to convey con-vey was that radio is an outstanding marvel. Eliminating the wonders of the electric light and the 'phone, the next wonder was the X-ray; but except its professional use, what is there of pleasure In it to you or me? If we've ?een and X-ray o graph, looked at our own hands and theru saw our own hidden bones, we're done with it, and may be wont U5e it again until we're sent to a human repair shop to be half soled. We all went to see Robin Hood. Did ' you notice that Richard Plan-tagenet, Plan-tagenet, he of the strident three lions on his escutcheon, a monarch who left a greater impress upon English Eng-lish history, story and chivalry than possibly any other monarch, a royal leader of armoured men, with their caparisoned horses, the hero of story song and harp he Richard Coeur de Leon, dread lige and redoubtable warrior, ate a boiled mutton shank with his bare hands, and licked his fingers, and then wiped them on his regal robes! Nothing to do with radio but wait. He a king, a ruler over men superior to ua, so ate, so lived, And did you note that hlsi huge ungainly castle was lighted by smoky torches and that a messenger conveys word back to England from only France, on a lumbering horse, to take weeks on the Juorney. Well any person today, even the mosit humble can send a message to France while the esquire was saddling sad-dling Old Dick's nag. Or ride over there himself in an iron horse that skims the air. "Aye madam, it is common." "Why seems it then so particular with thee?" It's too common com-mon to be particular. There's nothing noth-ing particularly wonderful to oven make mention of it's that common. One of our own townsmen, here of Delta flew across the Channel in the minutes it took Richard's messenger mes-senger weeks. King Arthur of the Round Table, Richard of the Lion Heart, Charle-mange, Charle-mange, lived in their majesty on a lower scale than even the most hum- (Contlnued on next column.) ble of us touay. More wonders. n:ov ; n--: o urre.si us in open mouthed astonishment, place the man of today above the planes o kings of old more is brought to Ml-hand, Ml-hand, for a nitre pM.iiice than mon-archs mon-archs could command, j The other night in my small house, extremely mndet, there was brot to r,y e;::v a v- ' -oio. a uart-tie a symphony ban 1 a lecture, music-land music-land more music, and yet still more, ; a program such that I would have ! to travel miles to a large city to get. and that brought to me from the emptiness cf space. Intangible, a thing not to take hold of, a nothingness nothing-ness and yet, all the tribute of an empire could not have laid it before Arthur of the Burning Cakes or Richard of the Mighty Grip. A Victrola brings artists to our homes. Yes, but canned, lacking that very thing cf radio, for in that you hear Oicm ;;'v--i: before pl?ying you hear the plaudit? of the audience a thou-aiul mile--, away, and know you are listening to a living thing, pulsing then and tl'sre with life. Radio is the outstanding marvel of the present generation. Although we harness electric power, pow-er, although we make it, and use it when made, the better minds of the world of science hesitate just on the edge of dogmatic opinion, and reverently rev-erently say the little they dare, that the present theory is supported by "almost indubitable proof," hoping not to be reversed by a later generation. gener-ation. (Einstein differs.) Scientists Scien-tists from all over the world will study the coming eclipse, with the hope to add just one iota to our fund of knowledge, and radio currents in the eclipse zone and elsewhere will be scrutinized as never, before, to see if Old Sol is a generator of frequency fre-quency waves himself, which may show in the behavior of radio sets, and every one using a set wil1 be alert to sea if there is anything abnormal, ab-normal, or if fluctuations take r"ace during those few brief momsnt': of, totality. I To patch up our theory, an extremely ex-tremely elastic something, which in lack cf a better name ia called "th-er," "th-er," is supposed to fill ail space, in 1 which a (winkle of a star can be ar-1 ried for trillions of miles, without i much loss, without much fricti n. In our nico clnr January nights any j person may tep out of doors, and himself sef' the star, (here we q lote -the National Geographic of Jam: Try. 1925. pace lie,) the light from which left it FIVE HUNDRED YEARS ago. And we make other waves, a half brother seemingly to light, vibrate them at 750,000 alterations per sec (Continued on page 3 ) MORE ABOUT RADIO (Continued from Page One.) f ond or so, much too fast for rece - tivity by the ear, and we so inipre t those alternations with a sound mo , ulation electrically, reduce the spe( t of "frequency," and lo! An arti , walks into my door at night, sini t to me, plays to me, recites his bes i and bids me good night, to con again at my bid another evening. What king of aforetime could con mand that talent? Marvelous. You saw an ad in the Literay D: gest and the Saturday Evening Po: and other better magazines, showin a high power transmission line, wire on poles, and on those wires, rusl ing by in thunderous charge, came host of big fine powerful horse: running like mad, manes flying an tails afloat. The purpose of th iluustration was to picture to you mind SEVENTY THOUSAND hors power conveyed over those wires, high transmission line supplying big city. And then, the ad went oi to tell you that by menas of a recen invention perfected in their researcl laboratories, a trouble shooter out oi line could impress nisi vocal me3sag Dn those high tension wires, and th juperintendent in the office get thi message, that out in the open waste: i wire or a pole was down, and wha '.o send out to repair the damage. And from a portable instrument Think of it. able to talk on a lin .vith seventy thousand horses run ting by, and some rider on a hors eceives your message, ride3 on witt t, and delivers in, and the horse .joes thundering on, to run your ma-:hinery, ma-:hinery, turn your washer, heat youi ilectrio iron, make your incandescent incandes-cent bulb glow.or turn the wheels inder your street car. We buy one kind of electric power here in town, "60 cycle" stuff they all it, which menas that sixty times n a second the current starts from iero, mounts to full capacity in one lirection, dies down again to zero md then starts up again In the other lirection from zero, mounts up tc full strength, and dies down again :o zero, to do that sixty times in a econd all day and every day. We iaJl that ordlinary 60 oyole alter -tating curent. Radio current alter lates It ?50,000 times a second, ir irder to give it the 400 meter wave 'ength. A shock from that line is nstant death, Yet a man talks in o a microphone, or a woman sings md that big current Is impressed vith the peculiar litle wriggle of the -oice, -and without losing its owr haracteristios, imparts that self ;ame wriggle back at the other end which is translatable into audlo-re-leptivity (audio frequency.) I sincerely hope it is half as much pleasure to my readers to read this is it is to me to write it. Physical scienoe is fasainating. To the elee-trioal elee-trioal wizard, to the patient chemi-oal chemi-oal researcher, to the inventive genius, gen-ius, we owe much, I for one would clamber up a tall ladder to place another an-other wreath upon their brows, as their statuea rest in their little niche of fame. May we all of us ever remain tuned to those impulses. And may we ever be mindful of the deep debt of gratitude we owe tq those ingenius men who have made the lot of common folks above the reach of by-gones kings and potentates. po-tentates. And again I thank you for reading his to the; end, (The foregoing pieee was written before the eclipse of Jan. 24, hence the use of the tenses therein employed). em-ployed). The next iaaue It Life will have a cover design drawn by Jack Held, t Utah boy, son of John Held, corne lololst. This is quite a distinct on, and. speaks well for the youm man's ability. |