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

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 454 lines and 51357 words, and 10 pages

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.

It may seem a little queer but although I lived almost within sight of the old Atlantic and picked up messages right along from coast liners, the only trip I had ever made was on a little steam launch that takes unwary pleasure victims from Asbury Park outbound toward Europe for about ten miles, or until every one's gizzard is turned wrong-side-out and back again.

When I got back to the wireless room there was quite a collection of people crowded around the little window, but whether for the purpose of sending messages or out of curiosity I didn't know. I stood about as much chance of getting up to that window as a fellow has of getting on a subway express at Brooklyn Bridge during the rush hour.

I went away in disgust and didn't go back again until we had sailed down the river, passed through the Narrows and had dropped the pilot out at sea.

There was a short lull while the operator looked over a message which a little man with red hair and a pepper and salt suit had written out. When the operator started to send again I read off the name of our ship, the state of the weather and the number of words he intended to send, all of which was in accordance with the regular routine prescribed by the rules and regulations of the company for governing communications by wireless between ships and shore stations. The message ran like this:

For fear you may not know the Morse code which was used by all coastwise steamers in those early days, I will do it into English for you.

I laughed at the man who forgot, but nobody else laughed because there was probably not one among them who knew the difference between a binding post and an electric wave.

All of that afternoon I read the outgoing messages, but I felt I was losing something by not getting what was coming in. Then a brilliant idea struck me and I immediately proceeded to put it into execution with the result that it almost electrocuted me.

When I had fully come to and was able to use my thinker again I knocked the wire off of the electric light fixture and then proceeded to examine my receiver to see if anything had been damaged. Beyond burning off the point of my detector there was no scathe done, and I overhauled it and put the instrument back in its box.

My next move was to see the operator and hold some small wireless talk with him. It was now late in the afternoon and when I got back it overjoyed me to find that the crowd who hungered to penetrate the mystery of sending messages without wires had fathomed its very depths and departed, that is, all except one young couple who were from Missouri, according to the passenger list, and of course they must needs be shown.

The moment I saw the operator's face I set him down for one of those fresh young fellows you meet everywhere and I did not miss my guess. Now you would hardly believe it, but it is nevertheless true, that there are a few operators who think it smart and a great joke to tell land-lubbers anything but the truth whenever they are questioned about wireless.

"What I can't understand," said the young woman, "is how you can send out a wireless message when the wind is blowing so hard."

This would have been the real scientific explanation of how a message is sent and while it would, more than likely, have been as clear as mud to her young inquiring mind, still if she could not grasp the true explanation of how it works it would have been her misfortune and not the operator's fault. See?

"Are you having any trouble now on account of the wind?" continued the young woman deeply interested.

"None at all, because you see I am using a four horsepower spark and I have just had my aerial sandpapered and oiled and the waves slip off without the slightest difficulty."

This little speech gave me another shock, but I had a third one coming and forthwith got it.

"How are they coming in?" I asked, leaning against the window after the couple had gone.

"What do you mean?" he questioned as he looked at me through half closed eyes in a way I didn't fancy.

"Why the messages?"

"Through the window," he returned shortly, and went back to his key.

He began calling again and after he had put through his message I repeated it out loud as though I was talking to myself, just to let him know that I knew.

He took off his head-phones, came over to the window and smiled a thin-lipped smile which was anything but friendly.

"So you're another one of those wireless kids, eh?"

"Yes, I have a pretty good wireless set. I live in Montclair and very often I hear Key West," I told him with some pride.

The way he warmed up to me was something wonderful and in all my experience as an operator I have never met another of exactly his wave length.

"You kids," he said, pointing his long bony finger at my right eye, "make life a nightmare for us professionals. Every kid that knows how to splice a wire seems to be crazy to send messages. Ninety-nine out of a hundred know nothing of wireless and their signals are simply a jumble of sparks.

Not to be out-generaled I thought I'd try one more scheme and that was to use a couple of pieces of wire five or six feet long for the aerial and ground, hook them on to the detector of my receiver, fix the free end of the aerial over the window and lay the free end of the ground wire on the floor. In this way there would be no direct metal connection between his transmitter and my receiver.

The waves from his set were so powerful that they easily bridged the gap and I listened-in whenever I wanted to and knew everybody's business on board all the way down to Realjo. But I kept away from the wireless room and that operator. Before we landed I found out from the second officer that the operator was only a substitute for the regular one and that it was the second trip he had ever made.

The second day out I ventured close enough to the instrument room to see what the outfit looked like and to size up the operator in charge.

He was a big fellow with a full rounded face and every little while he would whistle a popular air which fitted in nicely with the bright sunshine that flooded the room. At the same time he would listen-in and finally he sent O. K., which in the wireless code means that he had heard the operator of the distant station who was calling him and that he was ready to take his message.

Of course I couldn't tell what was coming in but I was aching to put those head-phones on just once. When he had finished writing out the message he put it in an envelope and started to leave the room. Spotting me standing by he beamed pleasantly.

"Oh! I say, boy, I wonder if you would be so kind and condescending as to take this message to the Captain? Some other messages are likely to come in and I don't want to leave my post."

Would I carry a message to the Captain? Why I'd carry one to the King of Abyssinia for a pleasant word from any professional operator. I felt that there was my chance to get a stand-in with his royal highness, the wireless man.

After delivering the message to the Captain I returned with alacrity to the window of the wireless room. The operator loosened up but I didn't tell him I was one of those fellows too. I had learned at first hand that professional operators hadn't any use for wireless kids and that the only way to be friends with one was to be as dumb as a clam as far as wireless was concerned.

This scheme worked out fine for after some talk he asked me of his own accord if I'd like to take a look at the apparatus. He opened the door and told me to "come right in" although on a card tacked on the wall in plain sight was printed this legend:

Service Regulations for Operators.

The instrument room is strictly private. No strangers are allowed on the premises without a signed permit from the Managing Director.

And this was followed by a dozen or more other rules and regulations.

"Put it there, pal," he said. "I was a wireless kid myself once." We shook hands and it put me next to the fact that all professional operators are not alike and at the same time it gave me a pass to the wireless room whenever I wanted it. I almost lived there the rest of the voyage.

Harry--I mean Bathwick--and I got so thick we began calling each other by our first names. He let me listen-in whenever I wanted to, and then after telling me all about the service regulations that had to do with the order in which the messages were sent, he let me try my hand at sending.

One night when we were off Cape Hatteras and a furious gale was blowing Harry got suddenly sick and as this is the worst part of the whole trip the Captain was in a quandary about his wireless messages. Harry told him that I could work the instruments and to put me in his place. The Captain seemed doubtful at first because of my age, but there was nothing else he could do.

Naturally I made a few mistakes but at that I was pretty successful and I had the distinction, so the Captain told my father, of being the youngest operator on board ship on record.

The year I was the operator on this ship I visited many Central American ports. I became more and more imbued with the desire to see farther around the corners of the great round world and I think I can safely say I have done so in a fairly creditable manner.

Why, once a brother operator and I married a maid who was on board my ship to a man somewhere in Panama by wireless. Of course there was a minister at each end to help the ceremony along but it was we operators who really did it with our wireless sets.

Another time while we were running through a storm it was my pleasant duty to flash the tidings ashore that a stork had overtaken us and added two more to our passenger list, both consigned, to use a maritime term, to the same family.

I took this important message to the Captain myself and we were soon headed for "Grayville." Several other messages passed between the Captain and the Minister of War and it struck me that the signals were the strongest I had ever received for the distance covered; in fact they were strong enough for a 5 kilowatt transmitter instead of a 2 kilowatt transmitter which I knew was installed at the station at "Alvarada."

I told the Captain about it and while he didn't take much stock in the idea he had a search made of the ship. One of the room stewards reported that he had found an electric cord with a plug end hanging from a lamp socket in room 138. It might have been for an electric iron, for a hot-water heater or any one of a dozen other electric appliances, he said, but it looked suspicious.

After connecting my instruments to the aerial again I immediately got in touch with the station at "Alvarada" and learned that no orders had been given by the Minister of War to change our port of destination. The Captain had the protesting passenger put in irons to be turned over to the government officials of Nicaragua and thus it was that another small insurrection was knocked in the head.

Although the apparatus was of the old Marconi type, having been installed when the ship was built, we could send from 300 to 400 miles with it and receive four times that distance. The transmitter was formed of two 10 inch induction coils the primaries of which were connected in series and the secondaries in parallel so that while the length of the spark was still 10 inches it was twice as fat and hence proportionately more powerful.

To throw on the transmitter and cut off the receiver you simply turned the key back to its normal position and this made the connection between the aerial and tuning coil and at the same time it closed the circuit connecting the source of current with the induction coils.

He wasn't very big in body--only 5 foot 4--and he was of very frail build but he proved to be a giant when it came to sheer bravery and as for meeting death when duty called he was absolutely unafraid. In fact when he saw the grim old reaper bearing down on him he went out of his way to grasp him by the hand and said: "When I get through with this message I'll be ready to go with you." And he did!

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet