Magnetic Uproar

It was one of the greatest auroras borealis to hit the northeast U.S. in a quarter of a century. It dazzled gapers one night last week from New Mexico to Maine, south to Atlanta. In places in the latitude of New York the display covered the entire sky from horizon to horizon. Astronomers, noting an unusual sunspot outbreak two days before, were prepared. But radio men were not.

The sunspots poured streams of subatomic electrical particles earthward. Striking the upper levels of the earth's atmosphere, they excited oxygen and nitrogen atoms into luminescence, also set off a magnetic storm. Some consequences:

> Direct short-wave channels between the U.S. and Europe were blacked out. NBC could short-wave to London only via Buenos Aires.

> WOR incurred the wrath of Brooklyn when static cut it off from Pittsburgh in the middle of a Dodger-Pirate game.

> A giddy mix-up of telephone and radio communications in Jersey City turned station WAAT into a vast party line.

First conversation, an obbligato to a program of Bing Crosby records, was between two Jersey City men-about-town, who dwelt on the previous night's amours. Said one: "So everything was all right, eh?" Said the other: "Wow!"

Next, two telephoning girls broke into a news program to discuss a change in plans, necessitated by the fact that one of their boy friends had walked out in a pet. Segment of the unabashed conversation:

"I'm sure I don't know what the hell's the matter with him, the old -- -- ---."

Inundated with inquiries, WAAT finally managed to find an excuse: during the magnetic uproar its line from studio to transmitter had picked up conversations from a parallel telephone cable.

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