I was raised under strict conditions. Bedtime was at a certain rigid hour every night. Lights out meant no reading; meant sleep. It certainly did not include listening to radio broadcasts.
But as a thirteen-year-old boy, I discovered the delights of
crystal set It was a frustrating affair. the operation of it
They have remained a complete mystery. How, I wondered then, could a lump of gray mineral capture radio waves and do so without a battery?
Now, several decades later, the answers are easy to find online: here I quickly discover that crystal assemblies and the parts to make them are available today, though they look very different from the crude thing I had. By comparison, today’s looks… well… positively modern.
To my amazement, according to Google there are 81,200 pages that contain the phrase “crystal set”.
There is even The Xtal Set Society http://www.midnightscience.com, which says it is “dedicated once again to building and experimenting with radio electronics.” Advertise books, parts and kits. One kit is called the Quaker Oat Box Radio Pack. Contains a roll of 24 gauge patch cord (100 feet), a germanium diode, a 47,000 ohm resistor, an alligator clip, and a crystal earpiece. Sounds almost as basic as my old gear… but I don’t remember the other one
instructions that come with this kit: “You will need to provide your own antenna cable and oatmeal box.”
The advertised price is $8.95. Do some reverse inflation
calculations and you’ll know better than I do now I remember roughly how much I paid for my game in 1947. All the money I had in those days was ‘earned’ by not spending lunch money at school, so I know the game I had was very cheap.
Radio Shack also sells starter kits. Describing a project
“beginning experimenters” on [http://www.thebest.net/wuggy/rs99fun.htm] one reviewer said “Radio Shack Cat. No. 28-178 Crystal Radio Kit is a pretty fair starter set. It works, and some simple modifications will improve its performance.” When he wrote four years ago, the price was $9.99. After some modifications, which he describes, he was able to listen to New York, Netherlands Antilles, Cuba, Charlotte NC, Chicago, “and some more”. What difference a
coil of wire to make an antenna!
To see some fascinating photos, you might want to take a look at http://www.schmarder.com/radios/crystal With its knobs and dials to tune in to a favorite station, they make me envious!
There was no simple method to fine tune my equipment. I remember that there was some kind of contact, and that by moving these small distances through the glass, with a lot of patience, you could tune in a radio station. Usually it was fake. Fiddle with the contact and the signal would be lost and found again many times
before a signal strong enough to enjoy came in. And he would often disappear in the middle of a show for no apparent reason.
“He points and shoots, but misses… and that was his last bullet. The assassin reaches for him, ax raised in his other hand, and…sizzling, crackling, silence. Murmur, murmur (this last one is me)!
Now I understand that I needed to pay much more attention to installing a good antenna, a 50 foot cable outside the house and as high as possible, and that I needed a good ground connection. But as a 13-year-old, I just wanted to listen under the covers in the dark to my favorite thriller radio show.
It hardly mattered what the program was. Each had the compelling signature music, sometimes just individual musical notes, the voices with their sense of urgency, the suspense, the climax, the formula of the script. I also remember the screeching of car tires in the chase scenes. It was quite an exciting thing for a little boy.
Do you remember that shoes always had hard leather soles? The rubber didn’t make enough noise. The doors always creaked; the silent ones wouldn’t have done much on the radio. And do I remember correctly that the detectives were always men and that the secretaries were always women?
Today, when I look back on those days of old, I remember the crystal radio set with its delicate connection fading almost to nothing at the crucial point in the story. Then he would come back just as the announcer said something like, “See you later! See you next week.”
This article is also available as a .pdf file at the following
URL: http://www.rusc.com/misc/crystal-radio.pdf
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