"Hams'" Progress

Sitting in his convalescent home at Asheville, N. C., ailing Herbert Clark Hoover Jr. fiddles familiarly with the switches of a radio receiver. As he fiddled one day this week a grin of satisfaction crossed his face. He had heard a code message from the Los Angeles headquarters of his company--Transcontinental & Western Air Inc., of which he is chief radio engineer (TIME, July 14)--travel across the U. S., relayed through 20 ground stations to the line's New York office. His company's nation-wide network, largest operated by any single airway system in the U. S.,* was completed. More powerful stations at Columbus and Albuquerque can be used to speed messages "overhead," in stead of through all the intermediate points. Next step will be the installation of still stronger transmitters at New York and Los Angeles for direct transcontinental conversation. But the primary purpose of the system is for communication between planes in flight and the ground stations nearest them en route. Radioman Hoover designed the system and supervised the installations until tuberculosis laid him low. But it was carried to completion by his No. 1 assistant and childhood friend, pink-cheeked, modest John Curtis Franklin, 26. "Jack" Franklin and "Herbie" Hoover, close neighbors, attended grade school together in Palo Alto, Calif. As high-school students during the War they had "ham" (amateur) radio stations in their houses, would shout excitedly across the street to verify what signals they could pick up. Both boys entered Stanford University where Franklin's father, Professor Edward Curtis Franklin, is famed as an organic chemist; both took graduate courses in Harvard Business School. When Herbert Jr. emerged from Harvard, already determined to make radio his career, his father is said to have offered to endow him for $20,000 a year should he choose to undertake independent research. Herbert elected to work for Western Air Express, without parental subsidy. Within two months he sent for able young Friend Franklin to join him. The T. A. T.-Western fleet comprises 36 radio-equipped planes. Radioman Hoover often listens to pilots exchanging messages 2,200 mi. distant as they fly between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Once in the quiet hours after midnight he tuned in just in time to hear the pilots of two mail planes swapping bawdy stories as they tore through the darkness.*

*"Combined systems of United Aircraft & Transport Corp. have a total of 30 ground stations. Outside the U. S., Pan American Airways Inc. operates 43. --In such manner, by telegraph operators chatting across the country in their idle moments, are the new (and old) bawdy jokes given currency swift and wide.

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