Making waves with a passion

By David Maurer

Published: September 14, 2008

It was an honor Stacy W. Norman neither expected nor sought.

So the Charlottesville man was somewhat taken aback when Jack Chamberlain, a reporter for The Daily Progress, showed up on his doorstep in early October 1962. The journalist had dropped by after learning that Norman was one of 70 amateur radio pioneers to be honored at a banquet in New York City.

Norman had been 16 when, as a result of the Radio Act of 1912, he applied for and received one of the first amateur radio operator licenses. The act was instituted, in part, after the Titanic sank on April 15 of that year.

The act made it a federal law for all seafaring vessels to maintain round-the-clock radio contact with nearby ships and coastal radio stations. It also required all amateur radio operators to be licensed.

Modern Electrics

Norman’s interest in radios had started in 1909 when he flipped through an electronics magazine that he spotted on a rack in his father’s store in Macon, Mo. It’s likely the magazine was Modern Electrics, which was started by Hugo Gernsback in April 1908.

Gernsback’s goal was to create a technical magazine for the rapidly growing number of amateur radio enthusiasts. His timing couldn’t have been better. In just three years, circulation went from 2,000 to 52,000.

Norman was particularly fascinated by the stories about ordinary people like himself who were communicating with others via radios. Another feature of the magazine was providing mail-order information for the purchase of radio parts and equipment.

Excited by the prospect, the 13-year-old scraped together $3 and sent it to a New York company to purchase a modern radio receiver. When the long-anticipated package finally arrived, its contents didn’t amount to much.

It’s a coherer

What the teenager got for his money was a simple device called a coherer. It consisted of a glass tube containing metal filings and a drop of mercury. Norman explained that incoming radio waves would cause the filings to stick together, or cohere.

The purpose of the mercury was to de-cohere the filings. The attraction and detraction took place at the speed of light, resulting in intelligible sound.

At least that was the way it was supposed to work. But like the cheap boomerang that refuses to return to sender, the coherer remained as mute as a mime despite Norman’s best efforts.

One problem was that there were so few amateur operators broadcasting in those days. And situated as he was in northeastern Missouri, he was definitely out of radio range of ships

at sea.

“I learned later that there was an amateur station in Kansas City, about 100 miles away, but I never got it,” Norman lamented.

As frustrating as the coherer was, Norman didn’t abandon it when he and his family moved to Seattle. Now that he was repositioned near a great many ships, his wireless efforts started being rewarded.

The new kid on the block met other boys in high school who were also interested in amateur radio. They shared knowledge and traded magazine articles that described how to build radio sets.

“It wasn’t very expensive, but one had difficulty locating parts,” Norman said of the early years of radio. “My first big thrill was when a commercial operator said he had heard me 500 miles at sea.”

As equipment improved, the number of radio operators also increased. The Radio Act of 1912 sought to bring order to the airwaves. Requiring a license was just the start of governmental regulations. Just a few years after receiving his license, Norman sold all his equipment when the government reduced the wavelength that amateurs could operate on.

But the radio bug had Norman in its grip. When he joined the Navy during World War I, he became a chief radioman and radio instructor in the Navy Radio Service.

After serving several years in the Navy, Norman got out and went to work for the Radio Division of the Department of Commerce. This was the predecessor of the Federal Communications Commission.

During World War II, Norman worked in radio intelligence. One of his primary tasks was intercepting and monitoring radio messages sent by German spies operating in South America.

One message sent by a German spy had to do with the departure from New York of the HMS Queen Elizabeth. The ocean liner had been converted to a troopship, and the message said it would have 20,000 American soldiers onboard.

The ship was immediately contacted. It changed course and arrived in England unscathed, possibly avoiding one of the worst maritime disasters of the entire war.

After the war, Norman was put in charge of radio station inspections and operator examinations for the FCC. He also resumed his amateur radio hobby.

When he retired in 1957, Norman and his wife moved to Charlottesville. One of his favorite retirement pastimes was contacting different countries via radio. At the time of the reporter’s visit the total stood at 125.

Norman told Chamberlain the thing he most looked forward to at the banquet was greeting other old-time radio operators he had been communicating with for years, but had never seen in person. He downplayed the significance of being one of fewer than 100 acknowledged pioneers of amateur radio in the entire country.

“Well, there are many of us old goats left,” Norman had said with a laugh.