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Rockets and People
nas.A wire net for counterbalance was suspended above the ground. Barbed wire
surrounded the entire area, and it was considered closed to the public. However,
the factory trade union committee organized tours for workers and school children
to the radio station.
At the station, I got my first glimpse into the work of the powerful wireless
transmitter sending its dots and dashes into the ether in a series of blinding sparks.
Next, they showed us what they called the accumulator hall.“Twelve thousand of
these glass jars produce 24,000 volts. Any contact with them is lethal,” explained
our tour guide. It was frightening, mysterious, and terribly interesting. In another
hall, the high-frequency generators were humming. Here, for the first time, I saw
the famed machines of Professor Vologdin. 5 I later met the Professor himself when
I was a student. I went on at least three tours of the Khodynskaya radio station,
trying to understand why it was possible to hear it thousands of versts away. 6
Perhaps living in such close proximity influenced my subsequent passion for electricity
and radio engineering.
My cousin Mikhail Solomonovich Volfson often came to visit us. He was six
years my senior and knew how to hold interesting conversations about the
wonders of technology. He introduced me to the literary genres of adventure and
science fiction, which often resulted in conflicts with my parents. As soon as the
opportunity arose, I set aside Turgenev’s Sportsman’s Sketches and became absorbed
in Aelita, Captain Grant’s Children, or one of the books from James Fenimore
Cooper’s famous Indian series. 7 Somehow Father took me to Moscow, and for the
first time I found myself at a real movie. It was the Ars movie house on Tverskaya
Street. On the screen I saw the Martian beauty Aelita and was completely stunned.
Here was my calling in life. It was possible to receive secret signals via radio from
Mars:“Anta, Odeli, Uta!”This meant:“Where are you, son of Earth?”
And so I became mad about radio engineering.This enthusiasm went in tandem
with an enthusiasm for airplanes. About five kilometers to the east of our house
was the notorious Khodynka.There, on the day of the coronation of Tsar Nicholas
II, hundreds of people died in a stampede for free vodka. In the twentieth century,
they filled in the multitude of pits and ditches and it became the Central Airfield
of the Republic. I used to love to go to the airfield with my friends, and sometimes
alone.After making myself comfortable in the sweet-smelling grass, I’d watch
the takeoffs and landings of the airplanes, which looked a lot like bookcases whose
shelves were tied together with string.
5. Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences Valentin Petrovich Vologdin (1881-1953) was a
famous Russian scientist in the field of radio engineering.
6. “Verst” is an archaic Russian unit for distance. One verst is equal to slightly less than 1 kilometer.
7. Aelita, written by Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1883-1945), was a science fiction novel originally
published in 1923. It tells the story of a Soviet expedition to Mars. In 1924, director Yakov Aleksandrovich
Protazanov (1881-1945) produced a famous film of the same name based on the novel. It was the first science
fiction film made during the Soviet era that depicted spaceflight.
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