Sometime later there was an election in the city and a new Council was elected. The members were mostly young electricians and the new Highway Commissioner was a radio enthusiast. At the first meeting the Council changed the names of all the avenues to “Mil-amperes”[[3]] and of all the streets to “Volts.”
Then the Highway Commissioner who had just been taking a set of voltmeter and ammeter readings on an audion moved that there should be a new 73road known as “Audion Characteristic.” He said the road should pass through the following points:
Zero Volt and Plus 1.0 Mil-ampere
Plus 2.0 Volts and Plus 1.7 Mil-amperes
Plus 4.0 Volts and Plus 2.6 Mil-amperes
Plus 6.0 Volts and Plus 3.4 Mil-amperes
Plus 8.0 Volts and Plus 4.3 Mil-amperes
And so on. Fig. 21 shows the new road.
One member of the Council jumped up and said “But what if the grid is made negative?” The Commissioner had forgotten to see what happened so he went home to take more readings.
He shifted the battery clip along, starting at c of 74 Fig. 22. At the next meeting of the Council he brought in the following list of readings and hence of points on his proposed road.
| Minus | 1.0 | Volts | and | Plus | 0.6 | Mil-ampere |
| " | 2.0 | " | " | " | 0.4 | " |
| " | 3.0 | " | " | " | 0.2 | " |
| " | 4.0 | " | " | " | 0.1 | " |
| " | 5.0 | " | " | " | 0.0 | " |
Then he showed the other members of the Council on the map of Fig. 23 how the Audion Characteristic would look.
