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.”
If the operator had been even a 14-carat gentleman he would have told her that when he works the key a low pressure current of electricity is broken up into dots and dashes representing letters and that this intermittent current flowing through the coil of the transmitter is changed into high frequency oscillations by the spark; the oscillations then surge through the aerial wire and their energy is emitted from the aerial in the form of electric waves. These electric waves are exactly the same as light waves, except that they are very much longer, and both are transmitted by, in and through the ether. Hence the wind, which is air in motion, has nothing at all to do with it.
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?
But did he tell the lady straight? You could have told from his physiog that he would not. Instead he went on at great length and framed up a story of how the wind had once blown a message he had sent far out of its course and then suddenly veering round it blew it back again and he caught his own message several minutes later when he was listening-in for the reply. This he claimed, with great seriousness was due to the low power of his instruments and a fouled aerial.
“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.