A regular feature looking back at what was being printed more than 100 years ago in the former Bucks County Gazette. This week’s entry comes from the January 28, 1910 edition of the newspaper.
Bristol Youth Wireless Genius; Has Wireless Telegraph Station At His Home & Catches Messages Flying Through Air
Credit: Waldon Fawcett/National Photo Company
There is a youth only 17 years old in Bristol who has successfully demonstrated that he is a wireless telegraph genius.
Advertisements
At his house at the corner of Mill and Wood streets, Victor Smith, a pupil at the Bristol High School, son of Mr. and Mrs. W. Harry Smith, has rigged up a complete, practical and working wireless telegraph station. In company with Burgess Henry E. Aneker, who, by the way, is an expert in sending and receiving by the Morse code, the Gazette editor visited young Smith’s apartments on Monday evening and the visitors were astonished at what was revealed in a small room in the Smith residence. There was found a complete wireless station that the young man had set up himself.
The mass of switches, batteries, tuning coils, indicators and apparatus for intensifying the wave sound was bewildering, but with the knowledge of any expert, the young electrician explained every feature of the mystifying electrical apparatus. On the top of the building, a staff 50 feet high had been erected containing wires from the station below and while we sat in the little room, wireless messages were caught flying through the air from every direction. Upon the wires and brought into the young Smith’s laboratory were messages that were being sent from the Hotel Plaza in New York to the Bellevue-Stratford in Philadelphia. Messages were caught that were being sent from Wilmington to New York and from Philadelphia to Atlantic City.
The editor put the telephone receivers to his ears, which are necessary to detect the clicks of the wireless messages flying about, and the sounds were as distinct as those of a telegraph instrument in the room. Burgess Aneker adjusted the instruments, and, having a thorough knowledge of the telegraphy, caught this message, which was being sent from Wilmington to New York.
Advertisements
“Send you blueprints this evening by special delivery.”
Victor claims that when he doubles the height of his pole in the roof he will be able to receive and send messages for a radius of 800 miles, whereas, he can only operate about half that distance now.
Advertisements
The remarkable part about Victor’s station is that the system is his own having made practically all of the apparatus himself.
An advertisement from the January 28, 1910 edition of the former Bucks County Gazette:
Report a correction via email | Editorial standards and policies
