or an electric light is all a mystery to me.”
Mr. Pauling looked the instrument over carefully and listened attentively to Tom’s graphic explanation of detectors, tuners, condensers, etc.
“H-m-m,” he remarked, “I guess I’ll have to take a back seat now, Son. You evidently have a pretty good grip on the fundamentals. Sorry I can’t help you any, but it’s all Greek to me, I admit.”
“Oh, it’s all mighty simple,” Tom assured him. “Frank’s coming over this afternoon and we’re going to put up the aërial and then you and mother can hear the music and songs from Newark to-night.”
But despite the fact that Mrs. Pauling declared it the most remarkable thing she had ever seen or heard, and his father complimented him, Tom was far from satisfied with his first set. He didn’t like the idea of being obliged to sit with head phones clamped to his ears in order to hear the music from the big broadcasting stations; he felt that it was mighty unsatisfactory for only one person to hear the sounds at one time and he soon found that despite every effort he was continually
interrupted by calls and messages from near-by amateur stations.
Being of a naturally inventive and mechanical mind and remembering his father’s advice to try to improve matters, he spent all his spare time studying the radio magazines, haunting the stores where radio supplies and instruments were sold and arguing about and discussing various devices and sets with his boy friends. Hardly a day passed that he did not arrive at his home carrying some mysterious package or bundle. Accompanied by his chum Frank, from the time school was over until late in the evening he kept himself secluded in his den while faint sounds of hammering or of animated conversation might have been heard within.
“What’s all the mystery, Son?” his father had asked on one occasion. “Going to spring some big invention on an unsuspecting world?”
Tom laughed. “Not quite, Dad,” he replied, “but I’m going to give you and mother a surprise pretty soon.”
When at last all was ready and his parents were invited to Tom’s holy of holies they were indeed