On reaching the wireless room I found a bigger crowd congregated around the window than ever for the zip—zippy crackle of the sparks as they broke down the air between the spark-gap electrodes had attracted the curious even as honey attracts insects of the Musca domestica family, i.e., houseflies, and I couldn’t get within six feet of it.
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.
Transcriber’s note: The code shown is American Morse Code, which differs from the more familiar International Morse Code in use today.
S G, which I afterwards looked up, was, I found, a station at Sea Gate which was on the coast. Vinalos was the name of our ship. Fine meant the state of the weather. Fifteen indicated the number of words the message contained.
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.
I took out my little portable receiving set, hooked a wire to the detector and the other end to the electric light fixture for a ground which, from what I had read about ship stations, I had reason to believe made a connection with the steel hull of the ship. Being so close to the 2 kilowatt (about 2½ horsepower) transmitter, one side of the spark-gap of which also made connection with the hull, I hadn’t the slightest doubt but that I could receive without an aerial and I certainly did, but the kind wasn’t right.
No sooner had I put on my head-phones and my fingers on the adjusting screw of the detector than zip, zum, bang, boom, and I received a terrific shock that lifted me clear off the edge of my bunk; I hung suspended in mid-air ’tween decks (or so it seemed) and to give verisimilitude to the levitation act, I recoiled like a 12-inch gun and hit the floor with a dull thud. I was glad the man I laughed at because he forgot, was not there to laugh at the fellow who didn’t know.