Crystal Radio

By G. E. Shuman


The boy of ten years or so lay in his bed, in his room, in his home, in the small rural Maine town. It was late at night in whichever season it was, in that year, whichever year it was, about forty five or so years ago. The child loved these late night moments of solitude. Being one of six children in a very small home, he was fortunate to have even this time of quiet, and more fortunate to have his own room. The room, like the quiet, was never something he could count on having for long.

In these late and silent, slightly eerie moments, the boy loved the chance to listen to a magical device; his crystal radio. The radio was a simple thing he had built himself, of thin wire and a few parts from the store. He had read instructions for making the radio in several places. One was his Cub Scout manual; another was a project book from the library. Several facts about the boy’s crystal radio never ceased to amaze him. The first was the very idea that he had made it himself, of a toilet paper tube, a spool of hair-thin, shellac coated copper wire, a strip of metal from a vegetable can, a cheap plastic ear phone, and a grain-of-rice sized strange part called a germanium diode. These items, when wired together correctly and mounted on a small square of wood, really did make a radio. And it was not just ANY radio. It was a crystal radio. That was the second, nearly mystical fact about the thing that amazed the child. His simple device employed a crystal to make it work. The crystal was in that tiny glass germanium diode, and it was something to be marveled at, by a child of ten years or so, those forty five or so years ago. Yes, those strange words; crystal, germanium, earphone, diode… all together made a working radio, and HE had made it. Another mysterious fact about the radio was that it required no source of power to be supplied by the boy. It did not plug into the wall, and used no batteries. It had no on/off switch, as it never had to be turned off. It looked like a small piece of wood, with a toilet tissue tube and some wires mounted upon it, exactly as it was, and it worked.

Night after night, the small boy of ten years or so waited up late to hear the broadcasts through the radio he had made. He would move that piece of tin-can-tin, slowly across the coil of tube-wound wire, and tune in words and songs that no one else in the house could hear. In the dark of those late and eerie nights, it was impossible to know from how far away the words and the music came. Some signals were from the very next town, but others had bounced off clouds and flown across many miles, to be received by the thin antenna wire stretched around the small boy’s little room, and detected by that tiny germanium crystal diode. The boy imagined that, if he listened intently enough, some night he might even hear a voice or a tone from much further away, as some alien world called out to the only earthly ear that would listen… his.

By now you have certainly supposed that the small boy in the story above was me, and if so, you would be right. In my childhood I made several crystal radios. One was built into a get well card, (perhaps the world’s first musical card,) which I presented to my dad in his hospital bed after he had undergone some surgery or other. In those days there were no TV’s in hospitals. Imagine that. Dad had actually passed some time listening to the little radio. At least he later made me believe he had. My very first crystal radio was even more basic than the ones described above. The only true radio part it contained was the little plastic earphone. It lacked even the crystal diode. In the diode’s place, believe it or not, was a Gillette blue-blade razor blade, tacked onto the piece of wood. A large, bent safety pin detected the radio signal when scratched across the surface of the blade. I have always been a minimalist. To me, less is almost certainly more. Those years ago it both surprised and greatly pleased me, and still does, that some wire, a razor blade and a safety pin could, and still can be used to produce a perfectly acceptable quality of radio reception. The sound was just fine, and literal music to my ears.

You may wonder why I have put you through all this talk of my youthful, geeky obsession with crystal radios. Many adults and certainly most children have never even heard of them. My reason is that I have recently re-discovered the radios, and my obsession, on eBay. (Some people just never grow up.)

One evening last week, I learned, through a casual conversation with one of my adult daughters, that my seven year old grandson, Jackson, loves putting things together. "He’s especially interested in anything electronic," Chrissy confided in me. She had to say no more.
The package from the eBay seller arrived on my doorstep yesterday afternoon. This evening Jackson and I have some serious assembling to do.


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