“In 1895, Sir Oliver Lodge detected waves from an oscillator over a distance of forty yards, using a filings tube coherer, a galvanometer and a cell.”
“Hey, hey, hard aport there!” cried Hank. “You’re out of soundings, mate.”
“Well, that is a little technical, I’ll admit,” smiled Joe. “I’ll try and get down to plainer language.”
“Yep, my head ain’t tough enough to take in all that. It’s swimming now as if you’d chucked a dictionary at it,” growled Hank. “Tell me the names of them biting jiggers on the table thar, and what they’re supposed to do.”
“Very well. This,” touching it, “is the coil or transformer. That produces the spark that slips up into the aerials, those wires over our heads, and sends it shooting off into space just like that stone you might chuck in the pond.”
“Um-hum, that’s all clear enough. Heave ahead.”
“Now you see this little appliance? That is the vibrator. By that I can regulate the length and ‘fatness’ of my spark. Now when I press down the key like this——”
S-s-scrack!
Hank almost jumped from his seat as the green spark whined and leaped between the terminals.
“——well, that is a dot. If I make the contact longer, it forms a dash. Of course you know the Morse alphabet is made up of dots and dashes. For instance the letter A is .—.”