OUT OF THIN AIR

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Provincial Exhibition Building. Destroyed by fire, April 25, 1945.

at that time: Acadia University, Wolfville with‘9AT; F.P. Vaughn, Saint John 9B1; F. G. O’Brien 9BL at the Nova Scotia Technical College, Halifax and the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Co. in Newcastle with 9BN. They were all experimenting with what was called radiophone.

During this time Dad and his friend and co-experimentalist Walter Hyndman, who was some ten years younger than Dad, built and rebuilt several transmitters. The dream had always been to build a transmitter that would send voice as well as receive it. By 1921 the technology to do this was available, but the cost to hobbyists of limited means was prohibitive. And there were certain types of tubes that were virtually impossible to get—especially on PEI.

One summer an American warship equipped with the most up-to- date radio technology Visited Charlottetown. Walter Hyndman befriended the chief wireless officer who gave him a present of radio tubes that could not be bought locally. Walter built a small transmitter for voice and code.

Walter, although only in his teens, was well-versed in wireless teleg- raphy and was the chief operator and instructor at the Navy League. The Evening Patriot called him “a wizard at the wireless.” He had built his five—watt transmitter following instructions in an article he had read in Radio News, a magazine for wireless enthusiasts. On April 22, 1921

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