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Default Alfred Powell Morgan: the Eternal Boy Turns 120

((This has been around awhile but it needs to be seen here. Bret.))


Alfred Powell Morgan: the Eternal Boy Turns 120



"His real name was Alfred Powell Morgan, but Peter Pan might have been a better moniker for the man who led many a lost boy into the Neverland of radio and electronics through much of the 20th Century.



For ham operators who came of age in the last half of the last
century, Alfred Morgan is chiefly remembered for a set of four books,
beginning with The Boys’ First Book of Radio and Electronics.
Published by Charles Scribner’s Sons, these titles were staples of
elementary school libraries....

His real name was Alfred Powell Morgan, but Peter Pan might have been
a better moniker for the man who led many a lost boy into the
Neverland of radio and electronics through much of the 20th Century.


For ham operators who came of age in the last half of the last
century, Alfred Morgan is chiefly remembered for a set of four books,
beginning with The Boys’ First Book of Radio and Electronics.
Published by Charles Scribner’s Sons, these titles were staples of
elementary school libraries. In this year, the 120th anniversary of
Morgan’s birth, it’s worthwhile to take a look at the books that
inspired so many amateurs and to learn a bit more about the
multifaceted author behind the titles.


The Boy Genius Takes Off


Alfred Morgan’s name first appeared in print in a New York Times
article describing his youthful attempt to test-fly a homemade
aircraft. The year was 1909 and the test was, unfortunately,
unsuccessful. Subsequent efforts must have been more satisfactory
since Morgan’s debut as an author was a book entitled, How to Build a
20-foot Bi-Plane Glider.


Airplanes, of course, were the rage in the early decades of the 20th
Century. Radio was another emerging technology and Morgan’s attention
soon turned to wireless communications as the cornerstone for his
professional life. According to a brief autobiographical sketch, the
young Morgan struggled to find publications appropriate for his age.
As an adult, he vowed to create those publications, which he had
lacked as an adolescent. In this endeavor, unlike his first attempt to
fly, Morgan was supremely effective.


The Boys’ First Book of Radio and Electronics appeared in 1954. It
kicks off with some detailed descriptions of the experiments of
Heinrich Hertz and the commercialization of radio by Guglielmo
Marconi. As a 4th grade student I confess to skipping these
fundamentals together with details on radar and television. Instead, I
went straight for the middle of the book, for a chapter that begins
with the words, “For less than one dollar you can buy a marvelous
scientific device — namely a ‘tube’ for a radio receiver.”


My first project was the crystal radio, a project so important that it
warranted a full page illustration. As a broadcast receiver, my radio
was a dud. All it picked up were conversations from the telephone line
located above what passed for an “antenna.” Nevertheless, the crystal
radio appeared in all of Morgan’s books, serving as a standard
introduction to schematic diagrams.


With The Boys’ Second Book of Radio and Electronics, in 1957, Morgan
broke new ground in several areas. First, he introduced transistors,
those “versatile midgets which can do the work of vacuum tubes.” There
followed a handful of transistor projects using such devices as the
now legendary Raytheon CK722 and General Electric 2N107. After the
chapters on transistors, Morgan returned to vacuum tube projects
including a design that was perhaps inevitable for the late 1950s in a
country newly under the threat of nuclear annihilation: a home-made
Geiger counter or, as he called it, a “Gamma Sniffer.”


Of Morgan’s quartet of Radio and Electronics books, the third provides
the best all-around coverage of radio and electrical fundamentals
together with the usual collection of projects beginning, naturally,
with the crystal receiver set then extending to tube receivers,
transistor sets, a powerful transistorized public address system, home
intercom and electronic organ. If the publisher, Scribner’s imprint of
Simon & Schuster, were to reissue only one of Morgan’s many books,
this 1962 title would get my vote. The book provides a solid
foundation that is relevant even today; and Morgan resisted topics
such as radar, Geiger counters and homemade phonograph players that
appear in his other books.


The final chapter is priceless. Entitled, “Be Your Own Electronics
Engineer,” Morgan presents a variety of transistor circuits without
his usual meticulous construction details and charming illustrations.
Instead, he supplies hints and tips on how to turn a schematic into
hardware.


The grand-slam book in the Radio and Electronics series was published
in 1969, only 3 years before his death at the age of 82. Born in 1889,
Morgan grew up along with radio and he made the most of this
opportunity. His first detectors used noxious acids and were firmly a
part of the “string and sealing wax” school of experimental physics
(see Figure 1). By the end of his life, Morgan employed
semiconductors, the physics of which didn’t exist at the beginning of
his career.


If Alfred Morgan had done no more than author the four Boys’ Books of
Radio and Electronics, he would be well remembered for inspiring a
generation or two of amateurs. But Morgan was already famous in ham
radio circles long, long, before he published the books that I found
so captivating in the early 1960s. Indeed, his renown extends all the
way back to the dawn of Amateur Radio in the United States.


A Homebrew Education


Alfred Morgan prefaced his 1942 publication, First Radio Book for
Boys, with a brief biographical sketch. By his own account, Morgan
first became interested in the new technology of radio in 1903 and
garnered sufficient details from articles in Scientific American to
build a simple spark set that could communicate several hundred feet.


Of this early effort, Morgan observed, “The battery, too, was home-
made. Four carbon rods and four zinc rods suspended in fruit jars
containing a mixture of sulphuric acid, bichromate of potash and
water, generated current for the coil. I had a great deal of trouble
with my parents over this battery… The coherer and spark coil were
endured with suspicion but the battery soon became a distinct social
outcast.”


Morgan’s parents evidently endured a number of other experiments
besides the homemade battery, for by 1910 Morgan had accumulated
sufficient expertise to publish a most influential book: Wireless
Telegraph Construction for Amateurs. QST called this text, “the
standard handbook for amateurs.” It’s easy to see why. Even this early
publication exhibits the same clear writing style and meticulous
detail that made the Boys’ books so effective. One can imagine that a
ham of 1910 would need no more than Morgan’s book to get on the air.
Two years later, Morgan capitalized on the success of the technical
book by producing a volume aimed at explaining radio to the general
public (see Figure 2).


Having written the book on radio, Morgan’s next step was almost
inevitable. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for
1 year but found the entrepreneurial calling irresistible. Around the
same time that he published Wireless Telegraph Construction, Morgan
went into business manufacturing radio components. The Adams-Morgan
Company of Upper Montclair, New Jersey, became noted for supplying
components to the US military, the nascent broadcast industry and
radio amateurs.


A Radio Partnership


The success of the component business was compounded in 1915 when Paul
Forman Godley joined as a third partner in the Adams-Morgan firm. Paul
Godley was the foremost radio receiver designer of the age. He first
achieved notoriety by adapting Edwin H. Armstrong’s regenerative
circuit to the “short” wavelengths used by amateur operators. Godley
held the amateur call sign 2ZE, while Morgan’s was one dit away at
2ZI.


With Godley onboard, Adams-Morgan began selling a line of “Paragon”
receivers. Several models were produced including the Paragon RA-10,
which achieved a measure of fame in the 1921 transatlantic test (see
Figures 3 and 4). In 1921, Paul Godley was invited by the ARRL to
journey to England and Scotland in an attempt to receive radio
communications from US hams. From our perspective in the early 21st
Century, it’s hard to imagine why an American would be sent across the
Atlantic Ocean for such a test. Why couldn’t British amateurs simply
give a listen?


The answer to this puzzle involves the reason Amateur Radio exists in
the first place. Commercial operation in the early days of radio used
high power, huge antennas and wavelengths on the order of 1000 meters.
The “short” waves, those 200 meters and down, were considered so
useless that they were fit only for amateurs. British amateurs at the
time were permitted to use only the 1000 meter wavelengths. So there
was real justification for sending an American operator who was expert
at receiving the vastly shorter wavelengths around 200 meters. Godley,
inventor of the Paragon, was the man for the job (see Figure 5).


To make a long story short, the test was successful. Godley heard US
hams on his experimental superheterodyne receiver and on the Adams-
Morgan regenerative Paragon.


Unfortunately, Godley’s partnership with Morgan was not a smooth one
and after a number of differences plus a few more Paragon models, the
arrangement dissolved. Godley left the firm in 1924. The Adams-Morgan
Company lingered a few more years but disappeared entirely around
1928. Nevertheless, the fame of the Paragon was well established along
with both that of the manufacturer and of Godley who was known as
“Paragon Paul” to the end of his days.


Morgan subsequently turned much of his attention to writing dozens and
dozens of books on a great variety of subjects, including the series
that inspired my generation of hams. The final paragraph of his
autobiographical sketch reveals a sentiment with which hams everywhere
can identify: “I have never lost a sense of awe for radio science or a
fellow-feeling with the lad who likes to putter with antennae and
oscillators….It is for him that I have written this book.”


http://www.arrl.org/news/alfred-powe...-boy-turns-120
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Default Alfred Powell Morgan: the Eternal Boy Turns 120

On Apr 23, 4:47*pm, Bret L wrote:
((This has been around awhile but it needs to be seen here. Bret.))


((No, not really. Boon.))
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Bret L Bret L is offline
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Default Alfred Powell Morgan: the Eternal Boy Turns 120

On Apr 23, 4:50*pm, Boon wrote:
On Apr 23, 4:47*pm, Bret L wrote:

((This has been around awhile but it needs to be seen here. Bret.))


((No, not really. Boon.))


(((Oh, but really, it does. Bret.)))
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Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason! Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason! is offline
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Default Alfred Powell Morgan: the Eternal Boy Turns 120

On Apr 23, 4:53*pm, Bret L wrote:
On Apr 23, 4:50*pm, Boon wrote:

On Apr 23, 4:47*pm, Bret L wrote:


((This has been around awhile but it needs to be seen here. Bret.))


((No, not really. Boon.))


(((Oh, but really, it does. Bret.)))


((You don't have the brainpower to determine that, Bratzi. Shhhh!))
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Boon[_2_] Boon[_2_] is offline
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Posts: 1,425
Default Alfred Powell Morgan: the Eternal Boy Turns 120

On Apr 23, 4:53*pm, Bret L wrote:
On Apr 23, 4:50*pm, Boon wrote:

On Apr 23, 4:47*pm, Bret L wrote:


((This has been around awhile but it needs to be seen here. Bret.))


((No, not really. Boon.))


(((Oh, but really, it does. Bret.)))


((No, it doesn't. Nothing against Morgan personally, it's just that
you're the last person in the world who knows what other people should
and shouldn't see. Boon.))
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