Where it's fun to find out

This is the Van deGraff generator at the Museum of Science in Boston.


Cool, huh? It's the biggest one in the world according to the people who do the electricity show at the Museum. But, you ask, what does this have to do with radio? Ahhh, grasshopper...be patient.
The first radio transmitters were "spark gap" transmitters. They used a spark jumping an air gap between 2 conductors as a way to transmit morse code. Only problem was the signals it put out were across literally thousands of different frequencies. If you want to hear what it sounded like, turn on an AM radio in a lightning storm...doesn't matter which station but the weaker the better. You'll hear it when the lightning flashes. As the show went on it came to me. The first radio signals were sent with a gizmo much like this one, and not only did it change the world forever but it sparked (pun intended) the dreams of thousands of people...including me.