While oscillator tubes were being experimented with in the research
laboratories of the General Electric, the Westinghouse, the Radio
Corporation of America, and other big companies, all the youthful
amateurs in the country had learned that by using a vacuum tube as a
detector they could easily get messages 500 miles away. The use of
these tubes as amplifiers also made it possible to employ a loud
speaker, so that a room, a hall, or an out-of-door audience could hear
clearly and distinctly everything that was being sent out.

The boy amateur had only to let father or mother listen-in, and they
were duly impressed when he told them they were getting it from KDKA
(the Pittsburgh station of the Westinghouse Co.), for was not
Pittsburgh 500 miles away! And so they, too, became enthusiastic
wireless amateurs. This new interest of the grown-ups was at once met
not only by the manufacturers of apparatus with complete receiving and
sending sets, but also by the big companies which began broadcasting
regular programs consisting of music and talks on all sorts of
interesting subjects.

This is the wireless, or radio, as the average amateur knows it today.
But it is by no means the limit of its possibilities. On the contrary,
we are just beginning to realize what it may mean to the human race.
The Government is now utilizing it to send out weather, crop and
market reports. Foreign trade conditions are being reported. The Naval
Observatory at Arlington is wirelessing time signals.

Department stores are beginning to issue programs and advertise by
radio! Cities are also taking up such programs, and they will
doubtless be included soon among the regular privileges of the