With a prayer Bronson separated a sizable hunk of the phosphor to work
upon, while the other "sang." He breathed no sigh of relief until he
had half of the original phosphor back in the tube with the works
completely covered, as before, by the mad mass of meaningless hoots
and catcalls. Then he went to work on the other piece. He did have a
parallel set-up right on the same bench. There was something about
this....
During the hours that followed there were three breaks in the
whistlings. The first produced only the words "nature of the
situation--" The second time the woman said, "--something _must_ be
done, of course, but you tell me what. I--" which also left Bronson
completely in the dark. The third time, she said "--so this part of the
Carlson family is going to bed!"
After which there was no woman's voice riding along with the myriad of
sounds. They were as before, like a radio that has gone off the air,
leaving an increased racket of background noise. It was maddening and
futile.
All he had to show for her hours of telephoning was her name. Carlson.
All he had to do was to get the telephone directories of all the cities
in the United States of America and perhaps Canada, then run through
the listings of 'Carlson' until he hit one that lived on 1347 Vermont
Street.
It might as well have been 'Smith' as far as running them down went. He
could try Central City. After all, he could easily have made an error
in listening.
But that was futile. Bronson sought the entire list of Carlsons and
found none who lived on Vermont Street or any phonetic variation.
Grumbling and baffled, he returned to his labors.
That, at least, proved more profitable. It was midnight when Bronson
discovered that tapping one of the bits of phosphor caused a response
in the other when they were energized by the electron bombardment from
the television tube works.
From that point to vibrating the hunk of phosphor with the adapted
insides of an old earphone and getting a response, took another hour of
whittling, filing and working. He discarded that method of modulation
two hours later when he discovered that an audio modulation of the
electron stream in the kinescope tube produced the same effect.
Then, dead tired, Ed Bronson went to bed. He'd have called the woman
right then and there had she been handy, but she had gone.
Bronson was truly beat. Had he stopped to think about it he would
have known that something big was in the wind. For he was tapping no
telephones. He had accidentally discovered some sort of communication
receiving principle and had then devised a transmitter.
His first thought on the following morning was to try the receiver.
She was there, all right, and so was a hooting cry of the dissonant
pipe-organings.
Bronson shrugged and fired up his transmitting gadget. "Miss Carlson!"
he called into the microphone. "Calling Miss Carlson of Thirteen
forty-seven Vermont Street. Can you hear me?"
Then he listened.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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