 Radio's own show, Behind the Mic. Radio, with a switch of a dial, radio brings you tragedy, comedy, entertainment, information, education, a whole world at your command. But there are stories behind radio. Stories behind your favorite program and favorite personalities and radio people you never hear of. Stories as amusing, dramatic, and as interesting as any make-believe stories you hear on the air. And that's what we give you, the human interest, the glamour, the tragedy, the comedy, and information that are behind the mic. And now presenting the man whose name has long been a symbol of the best in broadcasting, Graeme McNamee. Thank you, Gilbert Martin, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen of the radio audience. This afternoon behind the mic presents an amazing story of the persistence and courage of a radio singer, Karen Kemple. Proof that radio stars and radio audiences have their hearts in the right place as shown by an incident in which Radio M.C. Walter Compton and movie and stage star Lyle Talbot played the part. And finally, the thrilling story behind the invention of the wireless telephone and the Audeon, or Radio 2, presented as a tribute to their inventor, Dr. Lee DeForest, who will speak to you later from Los Angeles. Radio is full of instances of people determined to succeed in spite of handicaps, and that brings us to our first guest, Karen Kemple. Suppose I tell you first how I conquered my handicapped Graeme? Well, that'll be fine. Go ahead. Well, I used to be in Vaudville as a dancer, also during a little professional ice skating. Several years ago, I played in a skating scene in an RKO picture. In between film takes, I used to sit around the rink without adequate wraps. One day, I found myself in the theaters of Lebanon Hospital with pneumonia, leading to empyema and a collapsed lung. I was in the hospital seven and a half months, Graeme. As I was leaving, the doctor said to me, Well, Karen, what are you going to do now? I guess I'll be going back to my family in St. Louis. I see. I suppose you know, Karen, that you'll never be able to dance or skate or take any violent exercise again. Yes, doctor. I know. But Graeme, I needed the money. So two months after getting back to St. Louis, I went to work as a dancer in a supper club. In spite of the fact that the doctor had told you to take no violent exercise? Yes, Graeme. I used to put a hot water bottle under my coat on my way to work to ease the pain in my side. It was pretty tough. In the meantime, I started to exercise my lungs. The doctor had given me two bottles full of colored fluid connected by tubes. I was supposed to use the tubes to blow the fluid from one bottle to the other as a breathing exercise. The first time, it took me 20 or more breaths to do it. Then a friend of mine, a singing teacher, came to me and said, Karen, as long as you're doing these breathing exercises with the bottles, don't you think that singing lessons might help your lungs? You'd exercise too. And besides, you've always had a good voice. Well, I'm not making much money now. Maybe if I sing, I could have a better future. All right. When do we start? At first, I couldn't practice singing more than three or four minutes at a time. Then I increased my practicing to a half hour or more. Meanwhile, I found that where at the beginning, it had taken me about 20 breaths to blow that liquid from one bottle to another. Now I could do it in one. You certainly were improving, Karen. Yes. And then about a year later, I auditioned for Station KMX in St. Louis and started to broadcast. Then came a few commercials, and later a station in Cincinnati offered me a staff job as well as a number of commercials. One and a half years later, I received an offer from NBC and I've been in New York ever since. And, ladies and gentlemen, Miss Campbell makes recordings which are played on 240 stations throughout the country. And this is the girl who had a collapsed lung and was relegated to the status of a semi-invalid. And now Karen Campbell will sing for us, Amapola. Certainly nothing wrong with your lungs now and your voice is delightful. Ladies and gentlemen, radio is full of human interest and the radio people and the folks who listen to radio are a pretty decent sort. You don't have to take my word for it. Just listen to this story and you will find out for yourselves. This is a little story behind the broadcast of that popular program, Double or Nothing. And here is the program's master of ceremonies, Walter Compton. Hi, Walter, what is this story? Well, Graham is in the case with practically all quiz-type programs, Double or Nothing pays for questions submitted by listeners. A few weeks ago, a question was sent to us by Mrs. Mabel Hicken of Duluth, Minnesota, which said... Dear Double or Nothing, I am sending this question with the hope in my heart that you will use it on your program. The question is, what is the Seeing Eye Institute? I hope you will use it because I have a son who is blind and the money I might get for this question I will put towards paying for a course of training for my son at the Seeing Eye Institute, where he can learn to make proper use of the Seeing Eye dog. Graham, one of the guests on our show that night was Lyle Talbot, star of motion pictures and co-starring with Alan Dinehart and Glenda Farrell in the Broadway play, Separate Rooms. On that program, the first question I asked was, here is a question sent in by Mabel Hicken of Duluth and she gets $5 for it. Lyle, what is the Seeing Eye Institute? It's an institute which trains dogs to be guides with a blind. Right. And that's worth $5 to you, Lyle Talbot. But now, you go on and talk for a minute, giving me as many facts as you possibly can about the Seeing Eye Institute. I'll tell you how much each fact is worth as you give it. All right. Let me see. The Seeing Eye Institute is in Morristown, New Jersey. That's worth two bucks. I believe it was started in 1928. Right, 1928. I think that's worth four silver dollars. And the Seeing Eye dogs are, well, usually German shepherds, I think, and they... You've done all right, Lyle Talbot. You have 24 silver dollars to your credit. Now then, double or nothing. Shoot, Walter. Who invented the system of reading for the blind? Well, it's called the Braille system, so I imagine it was invented by a man named... Wait a minute. I remember Louis Braille. That is correct, sir. 48 silver dollars plus the $5 you've already earned, which makes a total of $53 silver dollars in all. Incidentally, Lyle, the lady who sent in that question will be mighty happy that we used it and that you answered it so well because you see she mentioned in her letter that she has a blind son and at the $5 she receives for her question she's going to use to help pay for a course of training at the Seeing Eye Institute for the boy so that he can learn the proper use of a Seeing Eye dog. You have to be trained for that, you know. Well, I'll tell you, Walter, if that's the case, I want you to take this $53 now and send it to Mrs. Hicken to put towards paying for that course for her son. I feel she earned it. Oh, Lyle, that's very generous of you. With the $5 she gets for a question, that'll make $58 all together. Is that the end of the story, Walter? Oh, no, Graham, not by a long shot. Letters poured into the Duluth studio, the city where Mrs. Hicken lived. They came from all over the country as well and the great deal more than the $150 for Mrs. Hicken's son was collected. The contributors were asked whether they would have any objection if the additional money was forwarded to the Seeing Eye Institute and not one objected. Of course not. The radio listener is a pretty good guy at heart and so is Lyle Talbot. Our thanks to Lyle Talbot and to you, Walter Compton, for a most interesting story. And now to celebrate the 34th anniversary of the invention of the wireless telephone from which radio, such as we know it today, springs, we pay tribute to its inventor, radio's first genius, Dr. Lee DeForest. There's tremendous drama behind his two greatest discoveries, the Audion or Radio Tube, without which radio couldn't function today, and the wireless telephone. This afternoon, we give you some of that magnificent story, the authentic details of which have been supplied to us by Lee DeForest's chief assistant, Frank E. Butler, who is here in the studio. We take you back to 1907 to an attic in one of New York City's great skyscrapers, the Parker Building, a hall of 13 stories high. Where Dr. Lee DeForest, his brother, Charles DeForest, Frank Butler and a couple of other loyal assistants living on their meager savings so that they could experiment with DeForest, we're examining a remarkable device in wireless reception. Well, there it is, boys. There's the tube. And it works, Doc. It certainly does. And what an improvement over those crystal detectors. No cat's whisker to break off every time they're static. And you can certainly hear more clearly with it, too. What are you going to call it, Lee? Well, how about Audion, Charlie? Because it does make ions audible. That's just the name for it. Lee, what do you intend to do with it? Well, Frank, after we experiment a little more with it, I'm going to take it down to the Navy Department of Washington, see if I can sell them on the idea of using it on the battleships to receive wireless messages. Yes, instead of crystal receivers they have now. They certainly ought to buy it. So not long afterwards, Lee DeForest took his radio detector consisting of its new-fangled Audion or radio tube encased in a mahogany box with a little peep window in it so you could see if the tube was burning, a pair of earphones, and a weatherbee storage battery down to Washington to demonstrate his invention for receiving wireless messages before a board of naval experts. After the demonstration, there was a conference. And then? Mr. DeForest, we have decided definitely not to purchase your new wireless receiver. In the first place, the price is prohibitive. You want $30 for this equipment. Well, that includes the storage battery. Yes, yes, I know, but it's much too much. Secondly, this new equipment of yours is impractical. Because unlike our present crystal receiver, your equipment requires a storage battery, which will have to be replaced or recharged, perhaps in the very middle of a message. And then we don't like the idea of using a storage battery in wireless equipment. Anyway, the acid from the battery will spill with the motion of the ship and spoil the deck of the wireless room. Yes, but couldn't the storage battery be slung in a cradle underneath the table, so it would sway with the motion of the ship and the acid wouldn't spill? No, no, no. And furthermore, the tube is very short-lived and we don't think it's reliable. And, uh, well, your invention is new, unpride, and it isn't standard equipment. I'm sorry, Mr. de Faust. This was a discouraging blow. The radio tube had been invented, but the Navy, which could be de Forrest's only important customer at the time, had turned it down. Upon his return to New York, he broke the news to his group of assistants. So that's that, boys. That's terrible news, Doc. It certainly is. Well, what are we going to do? I'm through with wireless telegraph. If they won't take my tube, they won't take it. I think we're working an idea that I've had for some time. You mean the wireless telephone? Yes. Sending the human voice instead of just dot-and-dash code. We're going to work on that. I think the first thing to do... And they did get to work on it. And then one day in March 1907, 34 years ago this month, in the little attic in the Parker Building, an historic event took place. At one end of the room was Lee de Forrest, with a rather weird-looking device to which was attached a mouthpiece, which looked like a telephone mouthpiece, as a matter of fact, it was. Instead of a radio tube, which he had not yet discovered could be used for transmission, but only for listening, he used a flaming arc located in the chimney of a lamp which burned denatured alcohol. At the other end of the room sat Frank Butler at one of de Forrest's Audion tube receiving sets with a pair of earphones in front of him. All right, Frank. I'm going to try it. Wait a second. Can I get these earphones on? All right. Go ahead. Yes, Doc. I can. I can. Can you hear me distinctly? Very distinctly, Doc. Just as if it was coming through a telephone. Let me speak through it, and you listen. You'll find out for yourself. All right, Frank. Wait now. All right, go ahead. Doc. Yes, it works, Frank. It works. Then de Forrest and his loyal assistants experimented to see if while using the wireless telephone a voice could pass through a wall from one room to another. It did. De Forrest grew more daring. One day he made this suggestion. Say, fellows, let's rig up an antenna on the roof. On that 30-foot flagpole that's up there. Then we can send stuff up over the air and see if it's picked up by someone. It's a fine idea, Lee. Yes, let's do it. How on earth anybody will pick it up? No sooner said than done. Instead of the voice, however, they sent music from two phonograph records. One record was the William Tell overture. About four miles distant in the one room shack of the wireless telegraph station of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, three Navy wireless operators were on duty. Their names were Davis, Wallace, and Smith. Davis, with headphones over his ears, was vainly trying to intercept a wireless telegraph message from a ship at sea when suddenly the whispering spasmodic dots and dashes as they fluttered over the air were unceremoniously interrupted. Hey, fellas. What is it? What's the matter? Listen to this. It's music. Yeah, music. Hey, it must be angels. Angels, I guess. Hey, come over here quick and listen. Hey, give me those headphones. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's music. Well, it can't be angels. They wouldn't be playing the William Tell overture. The experiments continued, and at last, having made complete wireless telephone sets for transmission and reception, they took these sets to put in bay near Sandusky, Ohio, where there were some yacht races being held. DeForest went out on the lake on the yacht Thelma, belonging to his friend Commodore W.H. Huntington. He had the transmission set, and on the dock, 14 miles away was Frank Butler with the receiving set. DeForest, following the course of the race, reported to Butler. Some of what Butler heard was, and so on July 18th, 1907, was the first radio sports broadcast. 1907. Wow. DeForest and his assistants continued experimenting, working to improve the wireless telephone. And then, on January 10th, 1908, while DeForest was in Chicago, disaster struck. Hey, special extra pocket building burns. Hey, for Mr. Everybody. Here. Thanks, Mr. Thanks. Million-dollar configuration strips fire-proof skyscraper to skeleton. Three killed. Thirteen-story Parker building on Fourth Avenue, eaten to its steel frame by flames. Collier's judge and great rug firm burned out. Millions worth of rugs destroyed. Those were the exact headlines which appeared in the old New York world. The Parker building, which contained their laboratories, had been consumed. And all their precious notes, the historical data relating to the wireless telephone and the tube, the original tubes themselves were destroyed. But in that article, not one word was mentioned of DeForest or the priceless, irreplaceable material which had been lost. From his patents, from his memory, and from the material that had not been in the building, DeForest reconstructed his equipment as best he could and went on trying to interest the public in his invention, sometimes almost starving. For instance, one day Butler entered the laboratory, unseen by DeForest, who was leaving by another door. He saw DeForest stop in the hallway, take a nickel from his pocket, look at it longingly and say aloud, I don't know whether to buy a sandwich or a pad of newspaper. Work, work. Then the discovery one day out in Palo Alto, California, that the Audion tube, which he thought could only be used for listening, would oscillate and could be used for sending as well. A company was formed to sell stock in his wireless telephone inventions when disaster struck again. Lee DeForest and the officers of his company were indicted by the United States government in March 1912. How strange that indictment reads today. We shall prove that these defendants scheme to defraud diverse persons of their money and property by false and fraudulent representations which the defendant did not believe to be the truth, but by which they intended to deceive and mislead said persons. They stated that their company would earn and pay large dividends chiefly through a device like an incandescent lamp which the defendant calls an Audion and which device we shall prove worthless. The Audion or Radio Tube, the very heart of radio sending and receiving equipment, worthless. DeForest accused and pilloried during the trial the prosecuting attorney picking up from a table a tube and holding it in full view of the jury said, Now gentlemen of the jury, I want you to consider this here as an electric light bulb similar to the one invented by Mr. Edison. It has a filament and is lighted by electricity. Why did this genius Edison labor all these years sacrificing his knowledge and powers? Why? To make a better light, of course. They have taken this glass bulb and have used it not for what it was intended. But for what? I'll tell you. They have said and we have proven by the evidence here that this bulb will talk. Not only talk mind you, but that it also has the power to hear as well. To talk and to hear on the same device. Why even man can't talk and hear with the same organ? They not only belittle the work of Edison, but they place and ridicule the very acts of the creator himself. But they have presented this device to an unsuspecting public and have asked them to invest their money in such an unheard of enterprise promising them returns for their investments. When you know and I know and yes they know that this is impossible. And now, now they would insult your intelligence by asking you to believe them. I know you will find these men guilty and send them to the federal penitentiary where they belong. But chiefly upon the testimony of Frank Butler who proved that on July 18, 1907 the forest had actually transmitted the human voice for 14 miles during the broadcast of the outraces the forest was acquitted. In freeing him, the judge admonished the forest this way. Young men, give up all pretense of being an inventor. Go out and get a garden variety of job and stick to it. That was the advice given to the inventor of the wireless telephone. But DeForest with his great vision and his magnificent courage and his inventive genius stuck to it. And to him and to the other pioneers is due radio such as we know it today. And now here in the studio is a man who for many years was Lee DeForest's chief assistant, Frank Butler, a great engineer and a great guy as well. Frank, I'm mighty glad to see you here today. Well, thank you, Graham. And I'm mighty glad to see you again also. Let's say, do you know, I passed up a lovely double birthday party of my daughter Jane and sister-in-law in Toledo thought I might be here today. Well, Frank, that's not the first sacrifice that's been given to the cause of radio. Frank, after all these years, what do you think of the opportunity you had to have assisted Lee DeForest? Well, Graham, as I noticed the grandeur and the magnitude of Radio City, for instance, and think of what radio, sound pictures, television, and the other electronic marvels today mean to mankind, why, I'm stunned. I can't realize the transition. I find myself wondering, why was I, of all humanity, chosen to have been one of those that stood at the cradle of this baby, nursed it, and now have lived to see the dreams and the prophecies of this great genius come true. It must have been a great experience, Frank. It certainly was, Graham. And now here's a treat. After a few seconds' pause in which to make the switch, you will hear the voice of Dr. Lee DeForest from Los Angeles. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Hello, Frank. Hello. If you hear me, wave a towel out of the window there. Ha-ha. Do you remember those first radio phone tests, Frank? Then it must be evident that I am not speaking into that old microphone which we used in the Parker building away back in 1907. Radio voices sounded rather muffled and indistinct then compared to those from the high fidelity mics we are using today. Yes, 34 years have seen tremendous developments in every branch of communications. And you and I, with Jack Hogan, almost the sole living survivors of the old guard who were present at the very birth of broadcasting are indeed fortunate to be alive to compare the radio triumphs of today with those primitive but hopeful beginnings. In 1907, no one could possibly have foreseen what is occurring right now between Los Angeles and New York because then the amplifier which has since made possible the transcontinental telephone to go to a little glass baby lying in swaddling cotton in that little old shoe box in our laboratory. How well I remember those first-audient tubes. And you do too. How difficult they were to construct. How great our chagrin when one of them burned out. And what headaches we suffered to keep those first radio telephone transmitters on the air. Bitter sweet are those old memories. May good luck and long life attend you, Frank. Don't forget, I am eagerly awaiting to read your book of reminiscences. I know you share my oft-expressed wish that we might live until the 21st century just to observe the state of radio and television then. Startling changes are in store. But I have a hunch that the little grids will always be found in our radio and amplifier tubes even then. And now we return you to New York. Thank you, Dr. Lee DeForest and thank you, Frank Butler. I feel deeply honored to have been a part of this broadcast. And, Frank, I might say that I await with great interest your book, I grew with an era. Which tells so graphically your story as assistant to Dr. Lee DeForest and the part he played in the development of radio. Those of you who heard the audition for the Quiz Kids program last week will be interested to know that the contestant picked to appear on next Wednesday's Quiz Kids program is Betty Swanson, age 12. Harvey Fishman, age 10, will also appear later. Next week in response to the requests of a large number of listeners, we offer another episode of the famous Eno Crime Clues program. Arch Obler will tell some of the trials of a radio writer in Hollywood and we'll bring you more of the glamour, the tragedy and the comedy that are found behind the mic. Behind the mic was written by Mort Lewis, original music composed and conducted by Ernie Watson. Before saying good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, when we announced last week the beginning of March 29, all stations above 72 on the dial would move to another number. We received so many requests from listeners asking at what number they could find this and that and other programs after that day that we are going to give you a chance to find out. Your local station will now announce the exact spot on the dial where you will find it. This is the National Broadcasting Company.