RADIO MYSTERY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 July 1938, Page 9

RADIO MYSTERY

MAN’S TEETH “RECEIVE” MESSAGES. \

Hens that don’t lay eggs, milk which goes sour, and umbrellas that turn inside out are only a few of the phenomena modern broadcasting stations are accused of perpetrating. But the strangest and most incredible complaint ever received by WOR’s engineers came when a worried gentleman called at the transmitter building recently. The trouble started, he declared, when he began to drift off to sleep at night. Radio programmes, apparently emanating from nowhere, seemed to float through his head. When he woke up, they vanished; when he began to doze off they woke him up again. It was, he indicated, very trying. No one could explain.

WOR engineers proved to be determined people. The problem was a challenge and so they began to query this victim of phantom reception. The questioning revealed that he works in a machine shop which specialists in the grinding of paper cutter knives. Also he resides very near to WOR’s great 50,000 watt ■ transmitter at Carteret, N.J.

The grinding of paper knives is a process which requires carborundum grinding wheels. Coupled with this is the fact that the gentleman in question habitually reads in bed and has a small bed lamp attached to the frame for this purpose. Furthermore, there are gold fillings in his teeth. Now if you’re technically inclined, these facts fit together like crackers and cheese. Carborundum dust had settled in the gold fillings, and when he snapped off the lamp it re’moved the partial radio short circuit caused by the filament of the lamp, allowing the bed frame to become a very efficient antenna.

As his jaw relaxed upon falling asleep, his mouth acted as a satisfactory crystal detector, receiving the signals picked up by the bed frame in the same manner as the old-time crystal detectors intercepted the earliets radio programmes. The solution was quite easy. The engineers gave him a new toothbrush to keep the carborundum dust from his gold fillings. “It’s nice being able to sleep again," he told his WOR friends, “but I do miss some of the programmes.”