ABSTRACT
Getting on for a thousand moons ago I would listen to 'Children's Hour' with a temperamental crystal set. The crystal looked like a piece of coke. To make it work, one explored the crystal with a delicate 'cat's whisker' - magic! - voices and music would crackle through the earphones. This was an advanced wireless, for there was also a brightly glowing valve ('tube' in American) on its heavy insulated board supporting thick wires, going dead straight and at right angles, exactly like the circuit diagram drawn with a ruler. There were rotary switches with large brass studs, and coils perfectly wound on shellacked cardboard cylinders. The capacitors ('condensors') looked like dusty bars of chocolate. The aerial was a hundred feet or more in length, stretching down the garden.
