And, as I read the addresses made on that memorable occasion, and look up the references cited, I get the solution to my problem.
I find it was Joseph Henry who first discovered that breaking the circuit in a coiled wire “gives a more intense spark than the same wire uncoiled.” And so inductance was born, and later in his honor we name its unit of measure a “henry.”
Then he put iron inside the coil and got the first magnetic field; next he found that when he arranged a second similar coil near the first, the spark appeared in a gap of the second circuit, and so we have the first transformer.
He put parallel metal plates across the circuit, and he had a condenser; and finally he separated the circuits by many hundred feet, and the first radio signals were broadcast and picked up.
So we learn that to this modest but remarkable man we owe the simple coupling coil that the boys of the past twenty-five years have been using to telegraph to each other wirelessly.
And it is these American youngsters who have developed radio; who first set up two-way communication half-way around the world; who, through their Radio Relay League, kept Captain McMillan in touch with home during his long winter night in the Arctic ice; who kept the Shenandoah in constant contact with headquarters in Washington during her recent transcontinental trip, official acknowledgment of which was publicly made by the Secretary of the Navy.
Radio eventually will touch our lives at more points directly and indirectly than any other discovery in the history of mankind, unless, perhaps, I should make an exception in favor of fire.
And the delightful thing about it all is that the inaccessible places are benefited the most by radio, those in the out-of-the way places are less lonesome, and the long day of the sick and shut-in is more endurable.
The farmer has his market reports on the minute, his weather forecasts in time for action, and he sets his clock by radio and gets his entertainment from the air.
Dispatched and guided by radio, the flying mail goes day and night with such clocklike regularity that its remarkable performance is no longer “news,” although industry has not yet waked up to the advantage and economy which can be effected by a larger use of the airmail.