OCR Text |
Show Vibrations, Frequencies, or Waves School text books of a generation ago taught that visual rays registered on the eye from wave length 4,000 to 7,000 or thereabouts; that below 4000 was the ultra violet, and beyond 7,000 the infra red, both invisible; and that many substances obstructed obstruct-ed them, and so were "opaque." A young fellow by the name of Ted came to my ' house the other evening and had a gadget he was proud of; he is handy with tools, has a specialized training in radio and kindred subjects, and had made this contrivance himself. Now I was taught that my hand, or a board, was opaque to visual rays that we could not see thru either of them. He plugged in his gadget, waited a minute, and then had me hold my hand before the glass screen: I saw through the flesh saw the bones saw the outline of a metal ring on a finger; he put a board in between, and still I saw the same things, though more dimly. I don't underestand vibrations, frequencies, or waves;vibrations of one size and kind were coming in on the light circuit; we call them electric; he put on a whapdoodle, and made those visual rays go . through flesh and wood well, if not the visual ray, .then some kind of ray which was impressed by the visual ray, travelled through wood and flesh,, and emerged, still impressed, and gave the visual record rec-ord to my eye. No marvel just commonplace. The door of the house was open that night, and sound waves of a passing train came in plainly also, al-so, the radio was on another sort of waves; and a low fire was in the stove heat rays. Yet in all this mix-up, electric, heat, auditory, visual, each kept its course, retained its identity, and functioned perfectly, although undoubtedly each must have bumped into another, and been bumped, innumerable innumer-able times. Yet, on the radio dial I could sort one length from another, and get just one station out of dozens "on the air." Rays, frequencies or vibrations were criss-crossing that room in a jumble, mixing, one would think, inextricably; still, none were warped, knocked out, tangled, or prevented from functioning. Each retained re-tained its characteristic length, and behaved as if not influenced by another kind. Maybe that's like the frequenciy of a character; there are many kinds, some keyed to the low, some to the high; and some rare characters, that no matter mat-ter what the turmoil, no matter what distractions a-round a-round them, serenely keep their awn wave length, true to purpose, staunch, direct to its course, unbat-tered unbat-tered by the many diversities of life. Such characters charac-ters we revere. Ted grinned as I moralized; "from thousandths of a millimeter to yards long, these waves vary; yet each one keeps its course, keeps its length, keeps its direction, true to its character. We can tune in or tune out," and he smiled at his wit. I guess there's a lesson there. In life do we tune out the undesired? On the radio we simply turn a dial; for x-rays we use a gadget that lets us look into another (substance). Have we a dial or gadget that lets us look into another character, and get information informa-tion in advance "Tune in, or Tune out? Accept Beware"? " Too often we slight the marvelous because it is commonplace; a daily occurence; and fail to see it is still the marvel it was when new. Though it happens every day, still I wonder at the marvel of that room, filled with a jumble of waves, frequencies, frequen-cies, vibrations, apparently all mixed, yet in reality, real-ity, each maintaining selfhood, steadfast to its true character, no matter how much buffeted by other rays (or things). |