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Fascinating
Way back in the annals of history, when your EIC was just a pup, there was a phenomenon that truly fascinated the future editor. ELECTRICITY! What was it? How did it work? Landing a book entitled 'The Boy Electrician', by Alfred P. Morgan from the local junior high school library opened up a segment of the universe to the EIC that most fail to ever understand or care about. Magnetism, Electromagnetism, RADIO!!! Just exactly how does all this stuff work? Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock flitted about the universe once a week and obviously considered the ether fundamental child's play.
Your humble EIC subsequently learned to elicit odiferous smoke and ozone from various electronic devices of the day using a mere butter knife! Fortunately, dear readership, the gods of the electron were looking out for the junior editor, guiding the silver utensil away from the more life threatening situations one can encounter inside one of those mysterious devices.
'The Boy Electrician' had a chapter that described how to build what was known in the day as a "Crystal Radio". Now the term 'crystal' can be misleading since the radio isn't made of the stuff of chandeliers and wine glasses. It actually refers to the minerals that enabled the radio's inner workings. The book talked of Pyrite, also known as "Fools Gold", and Galena and these are the 'crystals' of the crystal radio. Were they related to the dilithium crystals from the star ship Enterprise?
Fascinating! Why, dear readership, these crystals have the power to detect RADIO WAVES beaming overhead in the SKY!!! To harness the ether! What's more, one of these magical devices can be built from common household items! Not only that, dear readership, these devices require ABSOLUTELY NO EXTERNAL SOURCE OF POWER!!! A butter knife in one of these devices is simply a benign instrument of spread! This was a junior pup scientist's dream come true.
If you, dear readership, share the OHN EIC's fascination with such ethereal things as electromagnetic waves and the inner workings of the atom follow the links to other sites where the pioneers of the science still endeavor to make the perfect crystal radio.
Some of My Rocks
MK484
Crystal Radio Set Systems (for advanced concepts)
Gollumīs Crystal Receiver World
Jim Cushman's Crystal Radio Page