“Oh, Dad! I’ve made a new set,” cried Tom, as he entered the dining room.
“That so, Son?” replied Mr. Pauling interestedly. “Seems to me you boys do nothing but junk your sets as fast as you make them and build others. Does this one work better than the last?”
“It’s a peacherino!” declared Tom enthusiastically. “Just wait till you see it and listen to the music coming in.”
“I’ll come up after dinner,” his father assured him. “Let me know when the fun begins. I’ve some papers to go over in the library first.”
Throughout the meal the talk was all of radio, in which Tom and his boy friends had become madly interested and in which Tom’s father and mother had encouraged him.
“Go to it, Tom,” his father had said when the boy had glowingly expatiated on the wonderful things he had heard on a friend’s instrument and had asked his father’s permission to get a set. “I’m glad you’re interested in it,” he had continued. “It’s going to be a big thing in the future and the more you learn about it the better. But begin at the beginning, Tom. Don’t be satisfied merely with buying instruments and using them. Learn the whole thing from the bottom up and use your mechanical ability to build instruments and to make improvements. Wish they’d had something as fascinating when I was a kid.”
Tom had lost no time in availing himself of his father’s permission, and of the roll of bills which had accompanied it, and there was no prouder or more excited boy in Greater New York than Tom Pauling when he triumphantly brought home his little crystal receiving set and exhibited it to his parents.
“I can’t understand how a little box with a few nickel-plated screws and some knobs can do all the things you say,” was his mother’s comment. “But then,” she added, “I never could understand anything mechanical or electrical. Even a phonograph or an electric light is all a mystery to me.”
Mr. Pauling looked the instrument over carefully and listened attentively to Tom’s graphic explanation of detectors, tuners, condensers, etc.
“H-m-m,” he remarked, “I guess I’ll have to take a back seat now, Son. You evidently have a pretty good grip on the fundamentals. Sorry I can’t help you any, but it’s all Greek to me, I admit.”
“Oh, it’s all mighty simple,” Tom assured him. “Frank’s coming over this afternoon and we’re going to put up the aërial and then you and mother can hear the music and
