Fig. 195
Our next addition was a telegraph sounder as shown in [Fig. 195]. B1 is a single dry cell, C is the coherer, R is the relay, B2 is now a battery of three cells. Part of its current goes to B3, the tapper for the coherer, and part of its current goes to the electro-magnet of the telegraph sounder S. Ordinarily a spring holds the iron strip d up against the metal stop a, but when the current passes through the electro-magnet it pulls down this iron strip with a click against the metal stop e. But while this is happening C is being tapped by B, and is ready to respond to each wave. It was only necessary now to have some code of signals in order to communicate by telegrams. We learned the system of dots and dashes, or short and long periods marked off by the sounder, which all telegraphers use and which is known as the Morse alphabet, and very soon Harold and I were telegraphing from one room to another messages of several sentences at a time, the Morse alphabet being told off on the spark coil and being received through the coherer and telegraph sounder. It was not long before Harold and one of the neighbours' boys were exchanging messages between their homes, each having a spark coil and the necessary receiving apparatus, and having extended their antennæ to the top of the buildings into what are called in the wireless language aerials.
Photograph by Helen W. Cooke
Induction Coil of a Wireless
The fever for wireless telegraphy spread like wild-fire among the boys. In a few months they had formed a "wireless club." They had each read anywhere from ten to thirty books and articles upon the subject, and had secured the latest improved apparatus. They made it a practice to spend hours daily at their instruments picking up and keeping on file messages which were sent to and from steamers leaving the harbour for European ports. On one occasion they showed me from these files scores of messages—fond, personal, and supposedly private farewells to friends and communications between business partners which they would never have made on land without first closing the office door. The boys had acquired a mass of technical knowledge upon the subject which far exceeded my comprehension. But their teachers in school complained that they would learn nothing else, and some of the boys had already received warning that they might fail of promotion.
How to have compelling interests without riding hobbies is the great problem for both boys and men. I have known many boys who could, or at least would, do nothing well in school or out, except some specialty like manual training or science. In later years they were so deficient in education that they could hold no worthy position in anything. My anxiety was to save my boy from such a fate. I was determined that he should have a fair share of all kinds of culture. To this end we read together much of biography, history and classical literature, ancient and modern, through the medium of the English language.
As both prevention and cure of the wireless telegraph mania I deemed it not necessary to suppress enthusiasm, nor to introduce obviously useless tasks for the sake of the training which might be in them. My method was, on the contrary, to encourage my boy to have several hobbies which he might ride with enthusiasm, but to make it a rigorous rule to exchange his "mount" occasionally.