Radio Broadcast - 1924, January - 84 Pages, 8.2 ... - VacuumTubeEra

198 Radio BroadcastTHE ENTRANCE TO THE CAVEness from which issued a continuous breathof cool fresh air. The Cave is said to " breathe"but twice a year, taking a long inhalation duringthe winter months when the outside air iscooler than 54 degrees, and an equally long exhalationwhen the outside air is warmer. Itapparently holds its breath during the periodswhen the outer and inner temperatures arebalanced.At the brink of this great hole in the earthmy companion and I stopped and looked ateach other. Would we catch the Louisvillestation? Well,. . .Descending the long stairway we proceededinto the cave, deeper and deeper. The windswere blowing stronger, but we soon found thatwhen the entrance had been well passed thesecurrents ceased, or at least, were not perceptibleto our faces.The guide had lighted lanterns, and as wemoved forward along a narrowing passageway,not a little awed by the strangeness of the place,Isaid in half a whisper to my companion:"Hope we'll get WHAS throughall this."With characteristic cheerfulness, he answeredin the words of Dante:"All hope abandon, ye who enter here."About six hundred feet from the entrance,we emerged into the sublime Rotunda, withits arched ceiling sixty feet above the floor,unsupported by columns although its widestspan is about two hundred and seventy-fivefeet across. We were standing now 360 feetdirectly below the hotel in which we had sleptNear bythe night before.were the remains of woodenvats where in 181 1 and 1812lime nitrate was made insolution and syphonedthrough a crude log pipelineto the entrance there tobe made into saltpeter, andthence "waggoned" acrossthe mountains to Philadelphiafor the manufacture ofgunpowder.Our watches told us thatin three minutes WHASwould be on the air. Wesearched hastily for soil freeenough from rock to drivedown our iron ground-spike,and it is no wonder if ourfingers trembled a little aswe adjusted the instrumentsand made ready to tune-in.The guide watched us with large eyes. Hedid not understand these "goings-on." Althoughwe had told him our mission that wewere there to see if we could hear music beingplayed by a band in Louisville he refrainedfrom comment.For ten minutes we listened intently, tuningthis way and that. But not even a suspicionof a band in Louisville, or anywhere else, wasnoticeable. There was no static. There wasno anything. Our earphones were as silent asthe blackness around us. We had failed.This being undeniable, we then looked forthe cause of our failure. The instrumentswere in perfect adjustment. The aerial was thesame that we had used with success the nightbefore on top of the earth. Either the groundconnection was faulty or radio waves would notpenetrate Mammoth Cave. This conclusionled to a minute inspection of the soil.Here, indeed, could readily have been thetrouble, because the iron spike had penetrateda substance as dry as powder. Holding ourflickering torches lower we could find no symptomof moisture anywhere; all was finely pulverizedlimestone dust, so light that it could becrushed in the hand and blown as easily asflour. Surely we might as well have had noground connection as this.We turned to the guide then, explaining thetrouble and suggesting that we go on to aplace where we could find moisture. We threwin a few technical terms to impress him, but