Radio Prophet Who Was Right

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 763, 5 March 1954, Page 20

Radio Prophet Who Was Right

REMEMBER your first crystal set, your jubilation when you built one in a cigar box smaller than that of the boy next door, and your chagrin when he Ipftily invited you in to hear their battery and loudspeaker set? Remember the wires trailing all round the room, the chair which must not be moved lest visitors saw the hole in. the carpet burned, by the. battery acid? And remember the interminable static which made elders say-once the novelty had gone-"Turn that row off?" Those were the days when radio was a toy, not yet important enough to be the Enemy of Good Music, when ‘homes could still be quiet, if you didn’t have a gramophone. It was the decade of pud-ding-basin hats and uneven hemlines and bead lampshades, all old enough to seem ugly. or laughable, but not venerable enough to be charming-anyone willing to take a bet that that time will come? It was also the decade when Major Edwin. H. Armstrong changed the radio set in such a way that he is sometimes considered as the greatest of all radio inventors, including Marconi. He recently fell to his death from his 13thfloor flat in New York. He was 63. Armstrong made four basic discoveries which earned him millions of dollars: Regenerative circuit, which took radio out of the crystal-detector, earphone stage-an invention which I can be trusted to enjoy but which my neighbour abuses; superheterodyne, the basic ‘circuit. of all modern radio receivers; ‘Armstrong frequency modulation, a ‘static-free system of ‘broadcasting now in wide use in the United States; and super-regenerative circuit for ultra-high frequency communication, 1922 Prophecy The inventor also saw the shape of things to come, and in 1922 prophesied: "The time is not far-off when the

radiophone receiver will be as common as the victrola now is. Not every home will have the radiophone, of course, but every home now having the phonograph will be equipped with wireless. "The whole set-horn, and all-will be no bigger than the now ordinary music-box, and current to operate it will be supplied by an electric cord connected with the nearest wal! plug. "Instead of the aerial wires now used, there will be a small! coil of wire or a metal rod, something no more conspicuous than the ordinary curtain red. Outside wires will be unnecessary." Those inventor blokes! Really quite impractical enthusiasts, you know. Get carried away on their hobby-horses and talk nonsense. But it came to pass, Bishop’s Ablutions Of course, when a bishop began to talk about such things, he clearly didn’t know what he was talking about, and no-one need take any notice. "I view with great trepidation the coming of the day, when by television, my morning ablutions . . . will.be reflected on a screen in New York for. the entertainment of the American cinema public," said the Bishop of St. Albans. That was in 1928, and the paper which quoted him thought it necessary to add: "This, of course, is a joke." ; Joke or not, Douglas Fairbanks is now making films in Britain for American television. Episcopal ablutions are not so far part of the trans-Atlantic entertainment, but who would dare prophesy that they never will be?

J. W.

GOODWIN

(London)