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When I was a young boy of about ten, I got a crystal radio kit for Christmas. It was a popular gift for children to inspire a love of science. I suppose it worked for me, but science is more complicated than putting together a science kit.
A few months later I was home from school because I was sick, or perhaps I had a math test that I needed more time to study for. I don't remember. But there were many such days when it was convenient to be ill. At any rate, I decided to break out that kit and build a radio. As I recall, the most important instruction involved wrapping copper wire around a cylinder with a perfectly concise number of repetitions (or something like that). The crystal embedded on a wire was a magical object that had to be positioned in a certain way, and then the whole contraption had to be attached to a long wire antenna.
Amazingly, it actually worked! Imagine my joy when I heard WLAC radio from ten miles away! Believe it or not, no batteries or electricity were involved. The power for the radio was entirely generated by the radio waves themselves acting on the cylinder of wire and magic crystal. Do you believe in magic? That young boy did.
They say that nothing breeds success as does success. That was one of the few times I thought that might be true.
Discussion (31)
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Great post. I've still got a 1922 vintage crystal set. Most people are amazed that it doesn't need batteries; it's about as close to something for nothing as you get.
There's an even more basic type of crystal set improvised during WWII as a "Foxhole radio". It required a pair of earphones, but the only other parts were a razor blade, a safety pin, and the lead from a pencil.
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This brought back some memories! I had the same experience when I was a lad. I put together the radio, wrapped the antenna wire around a metal drain pipe in the bathroom, and voila!, I was listening to Top 40 tunes on WLAC.
My family would spend Christmas in Milwaukee with my grandparents, and they had an old Zenith console radio in the basement. My father and I would tune into WSM and listen to Vanderbilt basketball games, clear as a bell.
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WLAC and WSM were power stations when listening to radio in your car while you fought the dragons of childhood and teen aged insecurity. They competed with power stations late at night from Fort Wayne Indiana and another from Chicago. I have heard that there were other power stations that started with a K out west but I never found them.
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Or if you were really lucky you didn’t even need a kit, just some recent dental work.
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