Shown here in the July 1913 issue of Popular Electricity is Chicago amateur radio operator Harry Hong Sling, a fifteen year old Chinese-American. According to the magazine, he was probably the only wireless amateur to have a station in the Chicago “Loop”. The station shown here was on the fourth floor of the building where he lived, which was probably 324 South Clark Street. The magazine notes that the station’s helix, rotary spark gap, condenser, and telegraph key were constructed by Harry. The mast, shown here, was on the roof of the six story building and boasted a height of 80 feet. The magazine notes that the dome in the background is the Chicago post office.

Based upon this article, it appears that the station was located at 324 South Clark Street, where Harry’s father, Hong Sling, operated a successful grocery business, Sam Lung and Company. The elder Sling purportedly introduced Chop Suey to the Midwest. He was born in China in 1855 and came to the United States in 1875. He first worked for two years as a manual laborer in Wyoming and then moved to Utah where he was a labor contractor and railroad agent. His savings allowed him to invest in businesses in Hong Kong, the United States, Cuba, and Panama.  He moved to Chicago in 1892, and Harry was born on October 28,1898.

According to both the Popular Electricity article and the biography of his father, Harry attended the Jones Public School in Chicago through the eighth grade. Interestingly, after this picture was taken, Harry attended the Lane Technical High School on Chicago’s affluent North Side. The Lane School featured here previously, as the school where Elizabeth A. Bergner, 9DET,  taught radio in 1922.

The Popular Electricity article noted that Harry was to travel to China within a few months to “study the Chinese language and customs, for China is as strange to him as an American boy except as his father and mother have told him about the country by stories and pictures.”