Monitor

In a forest of shiny white poles on the treeless prairie six miles west of Grand Island, Neb., radio technicians under the expert direction of Benjamin Wolf last week put the finishing touches to the Federal Government's most immense receiving station.

Placed at the radio centre of the U. S. amid good atmospheric conditions and well removed from high tension power lines, this station will serve the Department of Commerce as a monitor of the air, capable of bringing in the most distant high-frequency broadcasts throughout the world. Scheduled date of operation: Nov. 15. Purpose: to check up the licensed wavelengths of the 20,000 wireless, broadcasting and television transmitters in the U. S.,* to keep them in their proper communication lanes, prevent "jaycasting." The cost: $160,000.

In two low brick-&-concrete structures on a 50-acre plot have been placed a collection of specially designed radio instruments. Dials and switches are strung along on racks as in a power station. Headphone connections are scattered on tables. Three Diesel engines run 50-kilowatt generators. Upstairs are sleeping quarters with a kitchen, so operators may live through a Nebraska blizzard. Outside on poles are miles and miles of antenna wire. One great loop is suspended 60 ft. above the flat ground. New York is brought into range with a Beveridge directional antenna. Other loops are pointed at London, Porto Alegre Brazil, Moscow, Sidney.

By means of an instrument so sensitive as to register a variation of one-one-millionth in an assigned wave length a 1,000 mi. away, the staff of ten at Grand Island will check between 300 and 400 wireless and broadcasting stations during a 24-hour working day. Not only will the wave wobbling of U. S. stations be detected but those in Canada and Mexico will be watched to see they do not creep out of the channels allotted them by international agreements. Entertainment programs will be brought in to evaluate their public worth, though no censorship will be attempted. Before long an automatic recorder will probably be set up to take down programs as part of each station's official record.

With its own transmitter Grand Island will report twice daily its observations to the Department of Commerce in Washington which in turn will pass along all violations of frequency-jumping to the Federal Radio Commission. That Commission will thereupon take disciplinary action against the offending broadcaster, after U. S. agents in scout cars equipped with less delicate testing instruments have rechecked Grand Island's report in the local territory. By paying for the long distance call, any broadcaster in the land can telephone Grand Island, have his station's frequency corrected free in three minutes. Incidentally the monitor station will help spot and uproot unlicensed wireless outfits such as U. S. agents last summer found rum-runners to be secretly operating from summer mansions on Long Island.

In charge of this far-flung aerial police-work is middling tall, middling stocky Station Manager Benjamin Wolf. Born at Williamsport, Md., 45 years ago, he tinkered around with a telephone company, joined the Navy at 21, was graduated from its electrical school in Brooklyn. Assigned to the U. S. S. Maine as radio operator, he went on the fleet's world cruise (1907-08). When the Department of Commerce's radio bureau was established he became one of its first field inspectors. Back in the Navy as a lieutenant during the War, he was district communications officer at the Puget Sound Navy Yard. Later he served the U. S. Shipping Board as its Pacific coast radio supervisor for five years. With his bride of less than a year he now lives in a Grand Island apartment, drives a Packard sedan, goes in heavily for amateur athletics, listens carefully to all radio programs.

*Divided as follows: 16,000 amateur stations, 600 broadcasters, 2,000 ships, 1,000 Government stations, 400 miscellaneous or experimental transmitters.

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