Stand By: The Story of a Boy's Achievement in Radio

  CHAPTER V

  TAPS

  "What's this? What's this?" A rough voice from the doorway startled Leeso that he nearly dropped the glass jar half full of salt water, inwhich he was just placing a strip of tin and a long stick of charcoal.

  The man behind the big voice was a little wizened, gray-headed fellow,with twinkle lines around his eyes that rather belied his gruff manner.

  "Well, well, well!" boomed the visitor. Lee thought in amazement that hehad never heard such a vast bellow proceed out of such a little man."Um, yes, you must be Lee, Gem's nephew. He told me I'd find you uphere. I'm Doctor Pendexter from Tilton, old friend of Gem's. Just nowheard about his bum leg and came over to see him. Gem, consarn him,never does write to anybody. Looks like you're getting ready to generatesome sort of power. Used to dabble in electrics myself, I have no timefor that nowadays. What's that you're up to?"

  "I was just following out the Volta experiments as best I could." Leetouched the jar with its half load of salt water. "Was trying tin andcharcoal for electrodes."

  "Um! Go on with it." Dr. Pendexter drew up a chair close beside Lee'swork table.

  At first Lee was embarrassed at having an older head watching over hiscrude tests. However, as he struggled sturdily on with what he hadplanned to do, interest in the work claimed his attention till there wasno room left for feeling self-conscious.

  With a firm twist at each end, Lee proceeded to connect the tops of histwo electrodes with a bit of wire. There, he had done it as Volta said.And if Volta were right, there ought to be electricity passing from oneof his crude electrodes to the other. He'd test it in his own way. Witha quick clip, he cut the wire in the middle, setting the ends apart butvery nearly touching. He laid a finger on the gap. A tiny prickling shotthrough his finger. The thing was working feebly, but working enough toshow that the theory was right. Fine--he'd learned another way of makingelectricity! Then his excitement quickly faded, leaving him lookingrather doleful.

  "What's the matter? Didn't it work? It ought to. I've dabbled at thatexperiment myself. It always works--"

  "Yes, sir, it worked. All the old tests I've tackled so far have. Butjust something to play with is as far as I seem to get. I can't find outhow to apply the power, how to make some use out of it."

  Dr. Pendexter's quick ear caught the note of tragedy in the boy's voice.To the man came a sudden realization of what a struggle this boy must behaving as he strove alone to fathom the almost unfathomable mysteries ofelectricity. Being a man of action, Pendexter applied a remedy in hisown way.

  "Consarn it all," he roared, "don't look so blasted blue! You're comingon fine, as far as you've gone." The little Doctor cast a quick eyearound the room at the bottles and jars, the Voltaic pile and thecrystal wheel with its renovated gear. "The trouble is, you're goingsort of one-sided with nothing but one old book to learn out of," and heflipped the calfskin cover of "Ye Compleat Knowledge" with hisforefinger. "You've got to the point where you need something modern tostudy. What do you know about magnets and magnetism and electromagnets?"

  "N-nothing," stammered Lee Renaud in confusion.

  "Umph!" from the Doctor. "Well, you've been missing out on one of thebiggest things in electricity. The electromagnet, that's the king pin of'em all!"

  "I've seen little magnets, sort of horseshoe-shaped bits of metal thatyou can pick up a needle or a tack or the like with. Didn't know magnetshad anything to do with electricity!"

  "You better be knowing it then!" The Doctor banged the table with anemphatic fist. "The electromagnet is the thing that puts the 'go' intelegraphy, the telephone, this radio business. Say, I'm going to sendyou a book about it, a modern one. You study it!" And with that partingcommand, the wiry, roaring little man was gone.

  Staring at the empty chair drawn up close beside his latest experimentin tin and charcoal, Lee Renaud had the feeling that he had onlyimagined Dr. William Pendexter. The wizened little man with theoutlandish voice was queer enough to have been generated out of a jar byone of these old electrical experiments.

  A few days later though, Lee had good proof that Pendexter was veryreal--and a man of his word, too. When Lee made a trip down to thevillage store for a can of kerosene, Mr. Hicks, who was postmaster aswell as storekeeper, shoved a package over the counter to him and said,"Today's mail day." (Mail came only three times a week to this littlebackwash village of King's Cove, and then never very much of it.) Mr.Hicks thumped the packet importantly, "This here come for you. Mustamount to something, 'cording to the passel of stamps they stuck on toit."

  It most certainly did amount to something. When he got off to himself,Lee's hands trembled so that he could hardly tear the wrappings away.Ah, there it was--a big, fat, red-bound volume, with gold letters, "TheAmateur Electrician's Handbook."

  There was information enough within those red covers to set Lee Renaudoff on a brand new set of experiments. From a battery made of a trio ofglass jars containing salt water, each jar holding its strips of zincand copper, and fitted with wiring, he charged a bar of soft iron untilit was magnetized--but this would stay magnetized only so long as thecurrent was put to it. Then he electrified a bit of steel--and it becamea permanent magnet.

  Lee became more ambitious in his experimenting. He was after power,something that would generate real movement. And so he rushed in where amore experienced hand might have been stalled by the lack of material.But Lee Renaud staunchly refused to be stalled, even though his supplyof working material was nothing much beyond bits of tin, iron, somebarbed wire, old nails, broken glass, and pieces of brass salvaged fromold cartridges.

  And out of such junk, Lee proposed to make himself an electric motor!

  Well, that was the next step for him. If he were going forward, he justhad to make a motor.

  His first attempt was the simplest of the simple. According todirections and diagrams in the new red book, he took current from hisVoltaic Cell and put it in a circuit through a loop of wire which lay ina strongly magnetized field. The push of power in the lines of magneticforce, through changes in the connections, set the loop to revolving.And there it was, his electric motor! Very sketchy, very rudimentaryindeed, but it worked in its own crude way.

  Later, and after much study, he decided to attempt a real little dynamo.This, by comparison with number one, was to be an elaborate affair,comprising a loop of wire revolving between the poles of ahorseshoe-shaped permanent magnet, with two half-cylinders connected tothe revolving loop of wire and touched at each half-turn by stationarymetal brushes. The metal brushing was to turn the alternating currentinto a direct current. In the making, Lee ran into all sorts oftroubles, mostly due to his poor materials. But he kept on, and at lastproduced something that sputtered and coughed and was as cranky as aone-eyed mule. But it ran part of the time--enough to teach Lee moreabout electric motors than all the reading in the world could have done.

  A few weeks later, Dr. William Pendexter drove his prim little car outagain to see how Gem Renaud's leg was progressing--which really wasn'tnecessary for old Mr. Renaud was coming on finely. He might just as wellhave admitted that the real reason for driving twenty miles to King'sCove was to see how Lee and electricity were hitting it off.

  The wiry little man roamed all over the Renaud place and roared hisapproval of Lee's cranky, balky dynamo. When he was climbing into hiscar, he called, "Hi there, Lee! I've got to go to Tilton and back tobring something I want for Gem. Want to go for the ride?"

  To Lee, who for months now had been stuck away down in the backwoodsCove, this trip to town seemed to be bringing him into another world,the progressive world that he had slipped out of for a spell. Drugstores, banks, cars, tall poles for telegraph and telephone wires,electric lights--seeing all these again made his dabblings at VoltaicCells and the crystal wheel seem truly to belong to a long-gone,primitive period.

  Pendexter got out at the railroad station, motioning for Lee to follow.He wrote off a telegram,
handing it to the operator. All the while Leestood like one transfixed, staring in fascination at the telegraphinstruments on the dispatcher's table. Almost without knowing it, theboy was mentally calculating on the coils of wire, the shining brass.Electricity ran that thing; here was power hitched up and working.

  Pendexter jerked a thumb in the boy's direction when he had caught theoperator's eye.

  "Plumb batty on electricity!" For once the Pendexter roar was silencedto a mere whisper. "Found him down there in the Cove experimenting allby himself. Consarn it, John Akerly, tell him something aboutelectricity! You know plenty. Got to go by the house for a package--beback." And the Doctor disappeared.

  Akerly reached out a long finger and suddenly clickety-clicked theinstrument. "Want to know something about that?" he queried sharply, butwith a grin wrinkling up his leathery face.

  "I--what--yes, sir!" The click and the voice had startled Lee.

  "Know anything about batteries?"

  "I made some that worked--sort of. You mean putting two metal strips inan acid solution so as to produce an electric current. Then a lot ofjars with this stuff in 'em, and wired up right--you set 'em togetherand that forms a battery--"

  "You've got it, kid! With that much in your noodle, I reckon I can passon to you something about this telegraphing business. To begin with,I've got a battery here, with a wire from one pole of it passing throughmy table and going all the way to Birmingham. Say that this wire cameall the way back from Birmingham and connected with the other pole of mybattery, what would that make?"

  "An electric circuit," answered Lee. "One that--"

  "Yes, one that included the Birmingham station in its circle. Only thereisn't any return wire--"

  "Then it isn't a cir--" Lee began.

  "Yes, it is! Think, boy! This old earth of ours is a mighty goodelectric conductor--"

  "Of course!" Lee was crestfallen that he hadn't thought of that. "I'vegrounded wires myself, and made the circuit."

  "All right then. We've got our wire going to Birmingham, grounded at theBirmingham station, and the earth acting as a return for our current.Now we'll say this circuit is fixed around some instruments on my table,and fixed around the same sort of instruments on the table inBirmingham. Well, when I start tapping my telegraph key--making andbreaking the circuit--won't this current be stopped and started atBirmingham just like it is here? Huh?"

  "Yes--an instrument on the same circuit." Lee cocked his head sidewisein deep thought. "It just naturally would be."

  "Well, son, that's telegraphy!"

  "Telegraphy! Great jumping catfish! Is that all there is to it?"

  "Er-r, not exactly," said Akerly dryly. "There's the relay, or localbattery circuit, the electromagnet sounder, special stuff and duplexwork, signals, the code to be learned." The dispatcher paused a momentin his recital, pulled a battered book out of a drawer, opened it at apage full of queer marks, and added, "Here's the code."

  Lee bent over the page. "I see," he said, then added with a wry grin,"or rather I don't see! How do you hitch all those little signs up sothat they mean something on an instrument?"

  "All right--it's like this. I'll tap the telegraph key for a tenth of asecond. That means I've let the current flow for a tenth of a second. Wecall that a 'dot.' A three-tenths of a second tap makes the 'dash.' Put'dot,' 'dash,' 'dot' together in all sorts of combinations, and you'vegot the code. When the fellow at the other end of the line knows thecode, he can understand what you're tapping to him."

  A couple of hours later when Pendexter breezed back into the office, hefound the two of them still at it, with the talk switching back andforth about magnetic rotations and cycles and frequency, aboutmultiplying powers and symmetry and resonance.

  "Looks like you two sort of speak the same language," rumbled theDoctor. "Didn't mean to leave you at it all day but got a patient upthere. Had to stop--"

  "Why, it's--it's late!" Lee looked dazed at the passage of time. "Yourwork, I didn't mean to keep you from it--" and the boy leaped up.

  "I like to talk about electricity. Come again and we'll jaw some more."Lanky, long John Akerly shook hands heartily.

  Lee's mind fairly seethed with the information it had tried to absorbabout coils and codes and induction and what-not. Electricity was alanguage that Dr. William Pendexter spoke too, and the twenty miles backto King's Cove fairly slid by.

  As they drove up to the high sagging porch of the old Renaud place, thelittle grizzled Doctor started pulling a wooden box out of the back ofhis car. Lee put a willing shoulder to it, and involuntarily grunted alittle. Just a little old box--but gosh, it was heavy!

  "Not in here," roared the Doctor, as Lee started to ease the thing downin his Great-uncle Gem's room. "Go on upstairs."

  Breathing hard, Lee lugged it on, and following directions, slid it downin a corner of his workshop.

  "That's right! Good place for it. Some junk I'm going to leave withyou," rumbled Pendexter. "Get the lid off."

  The next moment Lee Renaud was on his knees beside the box, touching thecontents as though they were gold and diamonds. A code book, sometattered pamphlets full of sketches and diagrams, and these well mixedin with coils of copper wire, screws, an old sounder still bearing itsprecious electromagnets, some scrap glass and brass. It might all havelooked like trash to somebody else, but not to Lee Renaud.

  Right here under his hand, experimental stuff such as he had never evenhoped to buy! He touched one prize, then another.

  "It's too much! You don't really mean to leave it?"

  "Leaving it! By heck, of course I am. My wife would skin me alive if Ibrought that box back home to just sit and catch dust and spider websagain. Never fool with it any more, myself,--no time."

  "I--I--how will I ever thank you?" Lee couldn't keep his hands fromstraying over the old sounder and the bits of real copper wire.

  "Do something with it!" roared Pendexter, backing off testily from anyfurther thanks. "Do something with it, that's what!"