Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1926-02-26
Listeners Critical
Where Radio Matters
Are Concerned
Will Complain at the Slightest Fault
Says Eminent Engineer

SdJ8 .'S''~~
"In the course of business I re-
Gently had occasion to make
Journey with an United States Super
visor of Radio gentleman who Is
philosopher as well as an administra-
tor" writes Carl Dreher in the March
Radio Broadcast Magazine. During
our talk, he commented on the re-
markable contrast between the per
fectly supin@ reaction of many citi-
gems to the avoidable evils of exist
ence, and the fearful howdy-do i'm
mediately raised when something
goes wrong on the radio. An auto
mobilist will sit almost motionless at
the ferry landing for two hours, on
Labor Day or some other holiday,
waiting his turn to get on the boat,
with scarcely murmur. If he lives
in a big city, he will submit himself
and his womenfolk to the most in
ordinate crowding In their daily
journeys about the town, without
batting an eyelast. He allows himself
to be robbed by hat-check boys. abus-
ed by the traffic cop when his car
slides two inches over the line. and to
be told by conventional irnbeciles that
he must not wear his straw hat after
September 18th. None Of these in
juries are inevitable. Wharves,
bridges, and subways may be built to
accommodate peak loads; a posse of
public spirited citizens could lynch
a hat-check boy and duck one Of the
over eloquent traffic directors, while
the bitter enders among the straw
hat wearers could free themselves by
marching to the Polo Grounds in a
body on September 25th and shoot
ing down the first hoodlum who threw
a pop bottle at them. My remedies"
continues Mr.. Dreher. ARE trifle
radical, and all the readers of this
law abiding periodical will not agree
with them, but there can be no debate
about the underlying thesis. In all
these situations, and q multitude
more. the people stand for anything.
But not in radio! Just let some for
eign freighter open up on $50 meters
during concert, and twenty irate
to Secretary Hoover. The more
moderate ones get after the Super
visor, but there are always some for
whom nothing less than the Secre-
tary will do. The Secretary must
suppress the amateurs. brush the
cobwebs off an ill-managed stations
carrier, stop xxx from air adver-
Using, and torpedo the Czecho-
Slovakiap merchant marine. He
must do these things right away, or
Richard Roe and John Doe will rise
agin the government.
Here is an actual instance. A
large broadcasting station was set
up at point 80 miles from New
York. the location having been de-
termined by careful tests and calcul-
ations. New York has a lot of
suburbs. and inevitably some of them
were and are (for neither the towns
nor the station have been moved)
much nearer the transmitter than
that. When the station started test
ing, after only day one gentleman.
lawyer, sat down and wrote a long
petition to Secretary Hoover. He is
quite a prominent lawyer and writ
Ing 1900 words must have cost him a
neat sum In time and energy. It
seems he had an eleven tube neutro-
dyne, which, as he was a lawyer and
had made 1t himself, was absolute
ly perfect, but with the nearby sta
ton going. he could not hear one in
Chicago which he had to hear. or
Ole. so there was nothing left but to
write the Secretary. AS q matter of
fact in about half the time he spent
in debating that epistle he could
have rugged up a wave trap which
would have solved his problem. The
company which put up the station
knew that a wave trap would tune it
out in all the nearby towns when 1t
wasn't wanted"