Read Ebook: Jack Heaton wireless operator by Collins A Frederick Archie Frederick Owen Robert Emmett Illustrator

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Ebook has 454 lines and 51357 words, and 10 pages

"'Boys, you have done your duty. Now save yourselves'"

We were catching seals by wireless!

"'I whipped out my gun just in time to spot a couple of snipers'"

"A bright flash of blue fire shot up through the hole"

Our torpedo passed through the raider's hull and exploded inside

"The airplane signaled down to us in code"

"But for every one the boches sent we put over two or three"

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.

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 went over to Bob's one evening after dinner--we always have dinner in the evening in Montclair--and as usual there was Bob sitting at his table listening in. Charlie Langdon, Howard Brice and Johnny James were there and they were all leaning over him looking worried.

"Hello, fellows," I sang out as I opened the door.

I sat down sulkily, for no self-respecting boy that can box the way I used to wants to be told to shut up, get a poke in the ribs and the signal to keep his face closed when he has only said, "Hello, fellows." After a minute or two my curiosity bristled up for I must needs know what was going on. I looked at Bob. His face was a little longer than usual, his eyes were glassy and stared hard and he kept adjusting the detector nervously.

"What's it all about, Howard?" I whispered in his ear.

Say, you'd think I'd committed a crime the way he scowled at me. Then he deigned to make a whispered reply.

I could feel my heart stop beating, the blood leave my head, and my body get rigid, and it's just about the same kind of a feeling that comes over a fellow when he is on a ship that is going down, as I have since learned.

Well, the next day we wireless fellows--I had been initiated--did not take a very keen interest in our school work, for when you know a big ship crowded with human freight is sinking you don't care much whether school keeps or not. As soon as school was out we were all at it again and then after fifty-two hours of hoping against hope, and during all of which time Jack Binns, the first wireless hero, had stuck to his key on the ill-fated ship, help reached her and by so doing his duty sixteen hundred lives were saved.

Bob took the receivers from his head and laid them on the table. I tell you we were an excited crowd and it had us going for fair. We all felt as if we had really something to do with it, instead of merely getting the news at first hand. It was indeed a thrilling piece of business, and nothing more was needed for me to get into the wireless game except an outfit.

Now I don't know whether you know anything about wireless, but I will say here that while you can only send over short distances with a good sized sending apparatus, you can receive over quite long distances with a cheap receiver if you have a fairly decent aerial, by which I mean one that is high enough above the ground and has a long enough stretch, and, of course, it must be properly insulated. Not only this, but a sending apparatus of any size costs much money and takes a lot of current to work it. On the other hand a receiving apparatus can be bought for a few dollars and can be used without any current at all, though it gives louder signals when a dry cell is used.

"Won't those wires attract the lightning, Jack?" my mother asked, eyeing it dubiously after the aerial was all up.

I was just about to tell her I had never thought of that, when Bob jumped in and explained it all as intelligently as though he were Sir Oliver Lodge lecturing on wireless before the Royal Society.

"You see, Mrs. Heaton," he began, "an aerial when it is properly put up like this one really protects a house from lightning just as a lightning rod does, only better. Before a storm the air is charged with electricity and as the aerial is connected with the ground through that switch up there, the electricity as fast as it is formed is carried to the ground and this prevents enough of it from gathering to make a lightning stroke."

Mother's eyes brightened hopefully as she looked on this smart boy.

"Isn't it wonderful!" she said, and went into the house perfectly satisfied that I was in good company.

I had a diagram that Charlie gave me which showed exactly how the instruments were connected up, and as I wanted to be able to say "I did it myself," and without the advice or criticism of any of the fellows, I started to work on it as soon as I got home. I used my imposing table to set the apparatus on and it was not long before I had it all wired up as per the diagram.

Verily I was a proud youth when I put on the head-phone, adjusted the detector and moved the slider of the tuning coil back and forth. I knew just how to do it because I had seen the other fellows make these same adjustments a thousand times.

"Why, so can I, or so can any man, but will they come when you do call for them?" retorts Hotspur.

That just about states my case, for I could adjust the detector and run the slider back and forth on the tuning coil and so can any one else, but to be able to get a message is quite another matter. But then perhaps, as I thought, no one was sending, so I telephoned over to Bob and asked him to send something and to send it slow. I went back to my receiver but try as I would I couldn't get a thing. Gee, but it was discouraging.

In about fifteen minutes Bob popped in and by this time I was right glad to see him. He looked over the apparatus, not like an amateur but like a professional operator, and saw to it that all of the wires were tight.

"You've got it connected up all right and we ought to get it. Somebody ought to be sending something."

He put on the receiver and listened, but to no purpose. He looked perplexed. As he was listening and trying to adjust the receiver, he glanced out of the window.

"You're a great operator, you are," he said with a rueful countenance; "how do you suppose you're going to get anything when you haven't got your lightning switch closed?"

Well, from that day to this when anything goes wrong I always look first to see if all the switches are closed and the connections are tight.

"Ollie Nichols of South Orange is telling Eddie Powers to meet him at the Y.M.C.A., and have a swim," he said with a grin.

Then he clapped the receiver on my head and I heard the signals coming in as plain as day, only I didn't know what the fellows who were sending were talking about.

My wireless proclivities were getting the better of my scholastic training and my folks were quite worried over and more than tired of it. So one sweet day dad and I had a long talk and he did the most of it.

"Wireless," he said gently but firmly, "is a good horse if you don't ride it to death, but that is just what you are doing. There isn't a minute of the time you are in the house, when you are not eating or sleeping, that you haven't got that pair of receivers glued to your ears."

"That is all very well," he came back, "and I'm glad you can talk so understandingly, at least to your father, but those big words are not getting you anywhere in algebra and that's the point at issue."

Then suddenly veering the subject he asked, "How far can you send a message with that coil apparatus there?"

"A couple of miles in daylight if the atmosphere is right and about twice that far at night if there is not too much interference. You see--"

"How much would an apparatus cost that had power enough to send say twenty miles?" he broke in.

"About fifty dollars, I guess," I made reply.

"Then let's strike a bargain. It's two months till school is out and if you will bend your efforts and pass everything--everything, mind you--I'll see to it that you have a sending outfit that's worth something."

"Dad, you're all right," I ejaculated, shaking his hand warmly.

"And you're all right, too, Jack, if you'll only speed up in your studies a bit."

The result was that both dad and I made good. He was pleased with my work and I was tickled most to death with my new half-kilowatt transmitter. But that is what you call buying an education for a fellow twice. It's a shabby trick to work on one's folks and I've often thought about it since. The only way I can ease off my conscience is by considering that this mild kind of bribery has been worked by nearly all fond parents in one way or another ever since the world began.

Hardly had I installed my new transmitter than summer was upon us and we were rushing off for our annual vacation at the seashore. Not far from Asbury Park, where we were to spend the heated months, there was a Marconi station. I had a brilliant idea and to the end of trying it out, I made a box about four inches high, six inches wide and twelve inches long with a good lid to it and fitted it with hinges, clasps and a handle.

I arranged my receiving apparatus so that it would all go snugly into the box--that is, I made a portable receiver of it. Then I got a spool of No. 18 copper wire, three or four porcelain knob insulators, a screw driver and a pair of pliers, and I was ready for business.

When we were inducted in our hotel, which was to be our home for the next couple of months, I strung the wire lengthwise across the roof, supporting it on the insulators. I brought the free end of the wire down the side of the hotel and into my room which was on the sixth floor. I connected the aerial wire to one of the binding posts of my portable receiver and the other binding post to the water pipe in the bath room. Talk about messages! Why I got them from all over New Jersey when the big stations were working.

It showed me, though, that there were great possibilities in wireless and that we may yet be able to talk with the inhabitants of Mars. I wanted to get into wireless deeper and I did.

There was nothing exciting in this announcement for dad went off on business trips quite often, but when he said that he would take us with him and we'd go by steamer I immediately sat up and took notice, for I had wanted to make a sea voyage ever since I could remember.

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