Phantom Dinner

All over the U. S. they came together, 67 groups, big and little, of Boston Tech men in their own home cities; and sat down to their dinners, heard the radios being tuned in, and pushed back their chairs, lit their cigars, waited for the big speech of the evening. The main dinner of the evening was being held in Manhattan, but it was an "All-Technology Phantom Radio Dinner" such as only technical men could imagine, devise and carry out. An interlocking chain of broadcasting stations brought them all together, from Massachusetts to California. The main speaker of the evening was not in Manhattan, as other speakers were not. Dr. Samuel Wesley Stratton, President of Technology (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), made his speech in the Walker Memorial Building at Cambridge, Mass. General James Guthrie Harbord, President of the Radio Corporation, spoke from Washington, D. C., as did Vice President Charles Gates Dawes. At intervals the Tech glee club tuned up in Cambridge, the little groups all over the country joyously joining in a widely dispersed chorus on "Take Me Back to Dear Old Tech." The main speaker--"main" because, though they knew his good works, they had never known his voice--was at his home in Rochester, N. Y. The Tech men eagerly awaited his words, the words of George Eastman, camera man and music lover, who had contributed over 15 millions to their alma mater yet had steadfastly refused to address a Tech audience since they first began asking him in 1916. At that, his words came from behind the barrier that space and wavelengths afford retiring natures. But to the farflung "phantom" diners they were real words.