RADIO: Lethal Machine

DANGER—HIGH VOLTAGE. It must be realized that the plate supply of even a low-powered transmitter is a potential lethal machine. . . .

That warning was put into the American Radio Relay League’s Radio Amateur’s Handbook by Technical Expert Ross A. Hull. Recently Expert Hull began experimenting with television reception, assembled specially powerful and sensitive equipment to receive RCA-NBC television transmission in his Vernon cottage (near Hartford, Conn.). He temporarily rigged up a 2½-kilowatt, 4,400-volt pole transformer. Last week it killed him.

Leaving his dinner guests, Ross Hull went into his radio room, put on his earphones, was found dead a few minutes later. His body was lying on the floor, hands and face burned, earphones charred.

A.R.R.L. engineers concluded that he had listened for NBC’s sound, had reached under the table to plug in his power supply for pictures. In withdrawing his hand he seemed to have brushed loose a high-voltage wire, got a shock which threw him to the floor. There the loose wire apparently completed the circuit to his earphones, may have carried through his head more than a full ampere of current.*

Such an accident was possible only with Editor Hull’s makeshift equipment. Nevertheless, television’s green eye, which only last June saw its first suicide, had taken its first notable life.

* As little as 1/10 ampere of alternating current can be fatal.