QST/April 1916/Of Vital Interest to All of Us

by William H. Kirwan

 In nearly all our largest cities, those who contemplate self-destruction are arrested until they can prove that they have changed their minds. More plainly, those of us who cannot protect ourselves are protected by law.

This same argument should hold good in the wireless field and every wireless man should be protected from the consequences of a rash act. All of us have been very badly deceived at some time or other in the various products manufactured by various wireless concerns and advertised as reliable wireless goods.

It is un-American to sit still while someone robs you, and it is also un-American for any one to permit it. The writer’s aim and ambition in this life is to so corral these unreliable wireless concerns and so instruct all of our wireless men that their wonderful claims for their apparatus will be accepted, if at all, with a grain of salt.

Every magazine devoted to the art of wireless telegraphy should be more than willing to assist the amateurs in this respect.

The writer would suggest that an experimental laboratory he installed at the various headquarters for the wireless magazines and that all amateurs be instructed before buying anything whatever, to consult the headquarters for their opinion, not only as to the merits of the article but as to the reliability of the concern advertising it.

The writer has no axes to grind, as he is in a position to be bit occasionally and not feel it, but some of the smaller brothers, to whom a dollar represents weeks of saving, would probably not feel so well about the matter. The writer has been working along these lines for years and believes now that he has enough evidence in hand to convince the most skeptical that the sole aim of some of these wireless concerns is to unload a great amount of worthless wireless hardware or junk on the unsuspecting amateur.

 Various devices have been tried out at the writer’s laboratory and wonderful claims made about lots of the apparatus have been found to be without the slightest foundation whatever.

The writer is open to suggestions from any one and believes that if we get the boys started, some concerns will be obliged to sit up and take notice.

This will be submitted to all the magazines and if you read it in one magazine and do not see it in another, you may rest assured that that magazine does not have your interests at heart.