The Waterbury Democrat., 1939-03-18
BY JOHN BARR

Of all mans wonderful discov- cries and inventions-what is 50 marvellous as RADIO?
 Santa Claus brought me the latest General Electric" Xmas and now the world is mine, and I think I've also got Mars by tn tail because after scouting around this planet for awhile with my short-wave dial, and hearing Big Ben ring the hour on the bank of the Thames, and listening to the chimes from St. Peters on the Tiber; and catching the sound of the splash of a crocodile on the bank of the Nile; the spit spat-sputter of machine guns on the bank of the Yangtzekiang, the song of "Old Man River" in Span ish on the bank of the Amazon, lant anand tn e gallant and senti- mental cowboys on the banks of every river in our own blessed United States calling for their boots and saddles and sallying forth to revive the memory of Lydia Pinkham and Father John, about whom we old-timers used to hear so much when we were chil- dren. Then I gave my dial an extra spin - and you should have heard what I did! It was terrific and unearthly. There was howl ing and screeching such as prob ably no mortal man has heard before, and a heathenish language unfit to print or "transcribe" over any respectable radio system. So think that I caught the Martians in the midst of revolution = or some scandalous jamboree. Of course it may have been old Man Stoic" on rampage, but I prefer to believe it was Mars.
 Events have revived Shake speare's classic, Seven Ages of Man" = and even though we arrive at the period when We give up skiing, "golfing" and bowling, and hang things up and lay things down-same as Stehen Fosters celebrated "Old Uncle Ned" did with his fiddle and his bow and his shovel and his hoe" - yet, so long as we are not "sans" hearing, there's resource left for us that was never even dreamed of before the 20th Century - that, of course, is-RADIO.
 What an amazing age we live in! It is hard to realize what has come to pass on this planet since Benjamin Franklin flew his kite and Morse sent his first tele- gram - WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT" Since then man has learned more about the Earth and the mighty forces that enve'op it than he had learned in all the aeons of his existence before. It is enough to make one dizzy to think of what has hap pened since we four-scoreians were children. We remember the lay ing of the first Atlantic cable; the first telephones; we saw the first electric light and rode in the first electric cars; then came the phonograph, motion-pictures, au- tomobiles and with the advent of the 20th Century came the Wright Brothers and Marconi.
 When we were children the idea of man flying was a big joke and we recited in school with great glee. Darius Green and his Fly ing Machine. And now We can get breakfast in New York and fly to San Francisco in time for luncheon, or hop over the Atlantic Ocean in less than a day. And everybody takes 1t all quite as a matter of course. Isn't our faculty of quickly adapting oursel-es to changed conditions one of the most remarkable human qualities?
 While experimenting with my "short-wave" dial one evening, I chanced to get Rome. Italy. It was their regular American Hour. They were playing musical "re- quests" that had been sent to Rome from individuals of their American audience. It was pleas ant to hear the Roman announcer