subject and the result will be a simple and inexpensive set having a
limited range. With more highly perfected appliances, as a vacuum, or
audion tube, and an aërial elevated from sixty to over a hundred feet,
you may receive radio energy thousands of miles away.

"Now, this talk we are about to hear comes to us from the broadcasting
station WUK at Wilmerding, a distance of three hundred miles, and this
outfit of mine is such as to get the words loudly and clearly enough to
be audible through a horn. The talks are in series; there have been
three on modern poets, two on the history of great railroad systems and
now this will be the first of several on great inventors, beginning with
Edison, in four parts. The next will be on Friday and I want you all to
be here. Time is up; there will be a preliminary-ah, there it is: a
cornet solo by Drake."




CHAPTER II


AN UNUSUAL LAD


Professor Gray turned to the box and began moving the metal switch arms
back and forth, thus tuning in more perfectly as indicated by the
increased and clearer sound and the absence of interference from other
broadcasting stations, noticed at first by a low buzzing. In a moment
the music came clear and sweet, the stirring tune of "America." When the
sound of the cornet ceased, there followed this announcement: