Electronics

[Terry]

If you look at the books by Morgan it gives another slant on the subject. He published the Boy Electrician in 1914 and the Boy's first boy of radio and electronics in 1954. Both of these gave instructions for building radio.

I suspect that the edition of The Boy Electrician that I found in the local library while I was at school in the 50s was a slightly later edition than that!

Fortunately for my neighbours I managed to resist the temptation to build a spark transmitter!

There is something about the drawings in old books that intrigues me: the way aerials are always shown as three parallel wires with a spreader at each end - indeed, it only occurred to me recently that the symbol for an aerial that we know so well is based on that one wire to three spreader.

Was it a commonly held belief at one time that this trebling up was essential for an efficient aerial system?