Boys' Make-At-Home Wireless Receiving Station

A children's book to both entertain and educate, Boys' Make-At-Home Things was published in 1912 to an audience of children with a different set of ideas of how to spend their free time than the more technology-driven past-time projects of today.

The preface reads:

 "Make-At-Home Things for Boys aims to keep boys busy ad entertained. it furnishes them with simple directions for making toys and useful articles, all of which are carefully pictured. the aim of the book, is to give boys an idea of the craft possibilities which lie in the crudest materials, often the waste material of the home and in this way to develop real artistic ability."

That's not to say that there wasn't already some craving to get in on the newest techno craze either (or that there aren't crafty kids with a DIY mindset today either). Considering the time the book was published, that craze would be wireless telegraph - aka radio. 

Invented in 1895 by the Italian, Guglielmo Marconi, it was still relatively new, especially depending on where you lived. The first permanent wireless station in the U.S. was built in 1901 at Siasconset on Nantucket Island. Stations developed across the country and the idea of this chapter was to encourage boys to build their own small receiver to be able to "cut in" on anything that might be transmitting nearby them. Since the first commercial radio station with one-off broadcasts was created in 1920 (KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), these boys had a very Battleship-like game going on in that they might not pick up on anything for a while...











Here's the chapter:

The author of this book, Carolyn Sherwin Bailey, was born in 1875 in Hoosick falls and earned her childhood education from her mother (also an educator and author of children's books) as well as from Lansingburg Academy.