Bringing in the Dempsey Fight

the Patriot reported:

CHARLOTTETOWN BOY 0N ROAD TO ENGINEERING FAME

Radio News, a magazine published in New York in the interests of Experimental Wireless Telegraphy, has in its April number a very well written article by Walter Hyndman, the seventeen year old son of Mr. WE. Hyndman of the Department of Public Works of this city.

He has taken an article published in the November issue of the same magazine and by considerable thought and work, devel- oped this article into working plans from which anyone inter- ested may construct a similar piece of apparatus. The power of imagination which enabled him to place all the various switches and controls in the most convenient position for the operator are especially to be praised.

The 1922 list at the Public Archives in Ottawa prints the names of 14 enthusiastic amateur station operators in PEI. As well as Walter Hyndman, there was G.G. Houston, Charlottetown,—Dr. “Gil” Houston whose hobby for a lifetime was “ham” radio. In'Summerside, there was Harold Gaudet, and Messrs Whitney, Mackie, MacKay and Pritchard. And there were many others including Walter Burke of Charlottetown.

Walter Burke was one of the newer kind of enthusiasts, those with a limited technical knowledge who not only read everything they could get their hands on about radio but they spent all their spare time on it. Dad built Walter Burke his first radio receiver in the winter of 1921. Walter Burke was about twenty years older than my father and some thirty years older than Walter Hyndman, but they were were all working for the same goal—to develop this new form of communication.

By 1922, Station KDKA Pittsburg, one of the earliest broadcasting stations in North American, could be heard in Charlottetown. Mr. Burke, a devout Methodist, heard a religious service and was imme- diately inspired with the idea of broadcasting services from his own church, the First Methodist, in Charlottetown.

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