OUT OF THIN AIR professional, the situation changed. Old co-operating and sharing friends became professional competitors. Walter Hyndman was broadcasting over his newly-made transmitter one evening, and Walter Burke picked him up on his receiver. He promptly paid the younger Walter a visit and persuaded him to sell the transmitter. A few months later it was licenced under the call letters 1CK. At first he used Morse code only, but in the summer of 1922 it became a small broadcasting station. This was about nine months after my father commenced broadcasting. Until this time the transmission of the human voice, without wires, had been one-way only. But with what was called the new continuous wave method of radio, Dad impressed his voice on his 9AK transmitter and spoke to Walter Hyndman who was operating another transmitter a few blocks away in the Navy League building in Charlottetown . Walter spoke back; and so, by using the same method of modulation, the human voice was carried two-way on radio waves originating in Charlottetown . The number of hobby-experimentalists in wireless-telegraph and radio-telephone was increasing greatly. I suppose a parallel could be drawn with the number of computer hobbyists there are today as that technology develops. Clubs and leagues sprang up in an attempt to control, standardize, and share information. The most influential of these by far in was the Amateur Radio Relay League, in Hartford, Connecticut . Dad organized the Maritime provinces and was appointed their first divisional inspector, an appointment he held until 1923. It is estimated by 1922 there were fifty or more receivers on the Island. By the following year, the figure doubled. Receivers ranged from the very primitive crystal sets to the more advanced "howlers"—so called because they let out an unmerciful scream if not tuned properly. A few years later, Dad went on a personal quest to collect as many of these as he could and dump them. That was when the very sophisticated two to five tube-sets had come on the market. Reception on the Island was doubtful at all times, especially during the daylight hours. Indeed reception was so critical, daytime broadcasts were practically non-existent as far as Islanders were concerned. Nevertheless, people were catching the radio bug and more and more of them were equipping their homes with receivers. The rush for sets was on. The increasing demand provided the beginnings of a small busi¬ ness which later grew to be the Island Radio Broadcasting Co. Ltd . 28