Category Archives: Scouting

Will U. S. Boy Scouts Be Used As Soldiers? A 1914 View

It’s not infrequent that some misguided person believes that Scouting has some sort of military connection, and that Boy Scouts are being trained to be soldiers. Of course, Boy Scouts are being trained to be soldiers. But they’re also being trained to be engineers or doctors or lawyers.

There are a handful of superficial similarities between Boy Scouts and soldiers. Boy Scouts salute, and soldiers salute. Unlike soldiers, Boy Scouts don’t salute one another. All the time I was a Boy Scout, the only thing I ever saluted was the flag.

And just like soldiers, Boy Scouts wear uniforms. Of course, never mind that postal workers, janitors, mechanics, and those of countless other occupations also wear uniforms. In some people’s minds, Boy Scouts look just like young soldiers, even though more of them probably go on to work for the Post Office or other uniformed services.

This misconception is apparently not new. The following editorial, originally from the Tacoma Labor Advocate, appeared in the Tacoma Times a hundred years ago, on August 31, 1914:

BOY SCOUTS ARE SOLDIERS

The Boy Scout movement has been opposed by members of union labor in almost all countries where it has been organized. Labor has claimed that this was simply being done to augment the army and navy and that in time of industrial strife the boy scouts would be used as soldiers wherever and whenever boys could be used. This has been denied, directly and directly, by many who were and are working for the boy scout movement. Now come dispatches to the effect that the boy scouts of some of the foreign countries are being used as soldiers in the war. Is it not plain that the same course will be taken here in the United States, that these boys will be used as soldiers whenever they can be to the advantage of those who profit by the use of the army or navy? Do not be fooled any longer, Mr. Working Man and Woman. The boy scout is merely one branch of the military forces of the country. They are simply being trained as soldiers by those who profit by the soldiery.


Elwood Hannsman: Boy Scout, Inventor, Lawyer

WashTimes23Aug1914A hundred years ago today, the Washington Times of August 23, 1914, shows these scouts at Camp Archibald Butt, a camp operated by the Baltimore and Washington councils of the BSA between 1914 and 1916.

The scouts are identified as E.L. Maschmeyer, Mitchell Carroll, King Ridgeway, Paul Grove, George Read, Elwood Hannsman, and Randolph Carroll.

windshieldcleanerThe scout second to the right is presumably the same Elwood Hannsman who went on in 1936 to secure U.S. Patent No. 2031830 for the windshield cleaner shown here. Mr. Hannsman was also issued U.S. Patents 2268072 for a direct reading gauge (1941) and 2100188 (1937) for another windshield cleaner. The assignee of all three patents was the Stewart-Warner Corporation of Chicago, which was presumably Mr. Hannsman’s employer.

And at some point, it would appear that Stewart-Warner sent Mr. Hannsman to law school, since he is listed as one of the attorneys for Stewart-Warner in a number of cases, including
Jiffy Lubricator Co. V. Stewart-Warner Corp., 177 F.2d 360 (4th Cir. 1949).

He was a member of the ABA Section of Patent Trade-Mark and Copyright Law. He was the Chairman of the Patent Sub-Section at the time of his death in 1954.  (ABA Journal, June 1954).


Thomas Edison Nikirk, 1901-1953: Boy Scout and Amateur Radio Operator

T.E. Nikirk in 1923

T.E. Nikirk in 1923.
(QST, Feb. 1923, p. 29.)

When I look for historical items for this blog, I usually start by browsing old magazines or newspapers looking for items of interest. In most cases, they’re interesting in their own right as showing what life was like in the early part of the twentieth century, especially with respect to the new field of wireless. I usually make some effort to follow up on the people involved, but the trail usually grows cold, and I’m often left wondering what happened to the people who had one newsworthy accomplishment.

Such was not the case, however, for one Thomas Edison Nikirk of Washington, D.C. Mr. Nikirk, born in 1901, was a thirteen-year-old Boy Scout in Troop 10 when he made the pages of the Washington Times on several occasions in 1914. The May 31 issue reported that young Mr. Nikirk had earned Personal Health merit badge. The October 11 issue reported his earning the Cooking merit badge.

The Wireless Merit Badge wasn’t created until 1918, so it’s unlikely that Thomas ever earned it. But had it been available, it’s likely that he would have been one of the first, as evidenced by this article in the paper’s June 7 edition:

Thomas Edison Nikirk a Wireless Operator

Scout Thomas Edison Nikirk, of Troop 10, is now registered as a wireless operator with permission to operate anywhere in the United States. He obtained his papers the first part of last week and has the distinction of being the only Boy Scout wireless operator in the District. Tom is in his fourtenth year, and has been for the past seven months a student of H.B. DeGroot, who teaches a wireless class in this city.

According to the 1916 Call Book, Nikirk held two call signs. His main call, licensed at 411 12th St. SE, Washington, D.C., was 3VU. He also held the call 3EE, which the book indicates was for a portable station. (According to the same book, his “Elmer,” H.B. DeGroot, was the licensee of special land station 3ZH.  It’s likely that DeGroot was affiliated with the Scout troop, since one Alfred DeGroot earned the rank of Eagle Scout on October 30, 1920, according to the National Eagle Scout Association database.)

According to the July 26 issue of the Times, young Mr. Nikirk, the ink barely dry on his new license, brought his wireless station to summer camp.  The paper reports that a number of national and council officials visited Camp Archibald Butt at Chesapeake Beach, Maryland. A number of them stayed overnight, and were able to see a demonstration of 3VU’s capabilities. The paper reports that Nikirk was “experimenting with his wireless outfit, receiving and sending messages at long distances. Recently he attempted to receive a wireless message from Washington, but did not succeed with the twenty-foot aerial now in use at the camp.”

(The Camp was operated from 1914-16 by the Washington and Baltimore Councils of the BSA, and was named after Maj. Archibald Butt, an aide to Presidents Taft and Roosevelt, who died in the sinking of the Titanic. I’m not sure of his connection with Scouting, but Butt is shown in this 1912 photo along with Lord Baden-Powell and President Taft.)

Undoubtedly disappointed by the poor July performance of the aerial, Thomas promptly set out to improve on it. The paper’s August 9 issue carries the following dispatch from camp:

CAMP BUTT RADIO TOWER IMPROVED

Thirty-Foot Aerial Expected to Send Messages for 100-Mile Radius.

Following many futile attempts with the thirty-foot wireless tower at Camp Archibald Butt, Cheseapeake Beach, Md., to transmit messages at long distances, a new aerial, twice the height of the one found wanting, has been devised and is now in operation with Scout Thomas Nikirk, of Troop No. 10, acting as wireless operator. Nikirk asserts that with the aid of the newly constructed aerial, he will, under normal conditions of the weather, be able to send and receive messages within a radius of 100 miles.

At some point between 1916 and 1920, Thomas moved to California. The 1920 edition of the amateur call book shows him licensed for 500 watts as 6KA, and the general call book shows him as the licensee of experimental station 6XBC, both at 1050 West 89th St., Los Angeles, Calif.

In many cases when I research an old name, the trail will grow cold at this point. But Thomas Nikirk went on to be a prominent California Ham operator, and continued to hold the call 6KA (later to become W6KA) until his death in 1955.

By 1923, Nikirk had by all accounts one of the best amateur stations on the West Coast. He is featured in two articles in the February, 1923, issue of QST. The first article (from which the photo above is taken) reports that his signals had bridged the Pacific, and had been heard off the coast of China, at a point reported as being 5830 miles west of San Francisco. And in addition, his signals had been copied in Europe. After listing the stations heard off the coast of China, QST opines:

With all due credit to the entire list of successful stations, we think that 6ZZ [in Douglas, Arizona] and 6KA are the stars, for they are in the China list and they also got over to Europe, including all the long 2500-mile drag over the Rockies and across the United States. That is real performance and represents so much more of an accomplishment than the Atlantic crossing by eastern stations.

It goes on to describe “6KA, the ether-buster of T.E. Nikirk at Los Angeles,” whose antenna was a “T”, with five wires on 14 foot spreaders, running 57 feet long and 73 feet high, and with a 9-wire counterpoise covering an area measuring 45 by 70 feet.

The transmitter consisted of a single tube rated at about 250 watts. The normal antenna current was 12-13 amps. It reports that the plate current could be run up to 8000 volts! Normally, however, he ran closer to 3000 volts.

How he managed to get that much DC voltage on the plate is described in another article in the same issue, authored by Nikirk, entitled, “Synchronous Rectifiers for Plate Supply: A 3600 R.P.M. Rectifier.”  In that article, he describes a mechanical rectifier consisting of a synchronous motor running at 3600 RPM, spinning a bakelite disc with two semicircular conductive edges. The high voltage AC from the transformer was fed to two brushes on opposite sides of the spinning disc. Two other brushes served as the output. The net effect was that the polarity reversed twice each cycle. Therefore, the output consisted of direct current.

According to a 1939 issue of Radio News, Nikirk served as chairman of the Federation of Radio Clubs. He is also the author of a Stray in the December 1946 issue of QST regarding the use of floor wax to repel water on transmission line.

According to his front-page obituary in the San Marino (Calif.) Tribune, July 14, 1955, he died of a heart attack. The paper reported that in addition to his ham station, he was the owner of an electronics store in Pasadena. He was a member of the Institute of Radio Engineers, the Pasadena Amateur Radio Club the ARRL, and a newly formed medical electronics group at Cal Tech. During World War 2, he served in the Air Force.

The call sign W6KA is still assigned, and is now held by the Pasadena Radio Club, of which Nikirk was a member.

Finally, it appears that Thomas Nikirk’s Troop 10 was in existence until about 1940. According to the NESA database, nineteen Scouts from that troop earned the rank of Eagle between 1919 and 1940. As noted above, one of those Scouts was Alfred DeGroot, who became an Eagle Scout in 1920, and who I suspect was the son of 3ZH. Surprisingly, one of those Troop 10 Eagle Scouts was science fiction author and religion founder L. Ron Hubbard. According to the  NESA database, his Eagle Board of Review date was March 28, 1924.

The Washington, D.C. Council, of which Troop 10 was a part, is now known as the National Capital Area Council of the BSA, and covers much of Maryland and Virginia, as well as the U.S. Virgin Islands. From the list of “Troop 10” Eagle Scouts, it appears that the troop number was reused multiple times, since there were Scouts from both Maryland and Virginia who became Eagles in the years 1959-1964, 1973-1977, 1989-1999, and 2001 through the present. The current caretaker of the Scouting legacy of Scout Thomas Edison Nikirk is Troop 10 of the Piedmont District of the National Capital Area Council, located in Warrenton, Virginia.


A Parental Kidnapping Solved, 1919

BLrewardposterIt appears that the pages of Boys Life magazine were used to solve a parental kidnapping case in 1919.

This ad looks somewhat out of place in the November, 1919, issue of Boys Life magazine.  It reports that Graydon Hubbard, age 12, was an active member of his Scout Organization at Brookville, Indiana, when he and his brother Harold, age 8, were “stolen from their home early last July.”

The ad goes on to say that Graydon “will undoubtedly make an effort to get in touch with the nearest Boy Scout Unit to the point where they are located,” adding ominously, “if they are in this country.”

“If any Boy Scout–or Scout Master–learn their location–and will advise the Cincinnati Office of the William J. Burns Int. Detective Agency, Inc., of their address–upon receipt and verification of same–the above reward will be paid.”

The advertisement appears to have been successful, and it seems that some Scout in Riverside, California, must have collected the reward money. The November 30, 1919, issue of the Indianapolis Star reports that the boys’ mother, Mrs. M.P. Hubbard, was indicted in Indiana on a charge of kidnapping after the father, M.P. Hubbard, had been granted custody.

The boys were returned to Indiana from Riverside,California, by the chief of police and his wife, along with a private detective from the agency named in the advertisement. The article reports that Mrs. Hubbard had assumed a different last name and “had taught the children to go by that name.”  The article goes on to say that she had recently been named defendant in a lawsuit brought by the former husband.


More Radio Scouting, 1922

1922RadioScouting

 

This photo, form the New York Tribune, July 9, 1922, shows William Hodson, a Boy Scout from Troop 108, Brooklyn, along with two other scouts, operating a receiver. But it’s not just any receiver. It’s a “three-coil duo lateral regenerative set with loud speaker attachment.”

 

Radio Scouting in 1920

RadioScoutMap1920

 

Among the many hats I wear is that of counselor for the Radio Merit Badge.  I was also on the staff of K2BSA at the 2013 National Scout Jamboree.

Radio has a long history with scouting. The first edition of the Scout Handbook includes several pages on how to construct an “up-to-date wireless apparatus for stationary use in the home or at the meeting place of each patrol.”  Wireless Merit Badge was originated in 1918 and was renamed Radio in 1923.  And in 1920, scouts were called upon to relay government bulletins to their communities.  This small item appeared in the Ogden (Utah) Standard-Examiner of May 19, 1920.

RadioScouting

It reports that the Naval radio station in New York was sending out a daily message to scouts from the National Council of the BSA, “predicated upon appreciation of the war service of radio operators who learned wireless telegraphy when they were scouts.” It reports that the signals had been received from 42 states, including all on the Pacific coast.

More details, including the illustration shown above, are given in the July 1920 issue of Boys Life.  The message was sent each evening from station NAH at 9:30 PM Eastern time at 25 words per minute, with a 1500 meter (what we would today call 200 kHz) spark signal. The 30-50 word messages “always contain something of interest to boys. Sometimes they are from the Department of Agriculture or some other government department, with a request for each operator to make the message known to the public immediately.” The recipient was expected to have a system of reaching those in his neighborhood, such as “farmers’ telephone, semaphore, Morse flag, blinker or heliograph,” or even a “good horse, a bicycle, motorcycle, automobile, sea-scout cutter or other vehicle.”

The Boys’ Life article concludes by admonishing every scout to have arrangements to receive the daily NAH bulletins, and to do his part when a test message or other urgent communication comes through.

The June 1920 issue of Boys’ Life points out that “neither the army, navy, postal service nor any land telegraph or telephone company can cover the country as quickly, at present, as the scouts will be able to do if they grasp their opportunity and make use of the Navy’s cooperation.” The article also admonishes that “every tenderfoot, second-class and first-class scout should consider signal practice with buzzer sets or radio sets at once” to avail themselves of this opportunity, the value of which to our government would be beyond calculation.

 

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Regenerative Receiver from 1950 Boys Life Magazine

I found an interesting construction article for a one-tube regenerative receiver in the September 1950 issue of Boys Life magazine.  (From this link, you’ll need to scroll down to page 56 to read the article.) The authors are listed as Fred Roden and Glenn A. Wagner, and it reports the receiver in use at Albany, NY, where it picked up London, England, “clear and strong.” According to the 1952 Call Book, Roden was W2KED. He’s also listed as trustee of a Colubmia High Radio Club, W2OML, in East Greenbush, N. Y. Wagner seems to have been an author of many hobby articles for Boys Life, but I couldn’t find any indication that he was a licensed ham.

BLSept1950Schematic

Schematic from September 1950 Boys Life. Note correction in text.

The article was a bit short on construction details, and at least one of them was wrong. According to an editor’s note (by Pedro, of course) in the November issue (page 3), there should be a connection between pins 6 and 8 of the tube. And there are no operating details explaining how to get the radio to come to life. Interestingly, the regeneration control is identified as a “volume” control, with no instructions on how to operate it. I would have thought that the lack of details would have proved frustrating to many scouts who tried to make this receiver. But according to the Pedro’s November editor’s note, many of them noticed the error in the schematic. And the caption on the schematic indicates that “any good radio repairman or electrician can give you valuable assistance in assembling the materials.”

The circuit uses a single 6SN7 dual triode. One half is used as the regenerative detector, and the other half is used as an audio amplifier. The two stages are coupled with an audio transformer, and it provides enough output to drive a pair of headphones.  From the coil dimensions, I’m guessing that the receiver covered about 3-6 MHz.

The circuit is virtually identical to the one appearing in the 1950 handbook, which is available online at this link. It’s also very similar to the AA8V Twinplex Regenerative Receiver, with a couple of exceptions. The AA8V design uses a capacitor rather than a transformer to couple the two stages, and also includes a separate volume control, in addition to the regeneration control. AA8V uses a metal chassis, whereas both Boys Life and the Handbook mount the components on a board, with a metal front panel.  The Handbook version calls for a power supply of 180 volts.  The Boys Life version calls for a 45 volt B battery.  This could easily be supplied by five 9-volt batteries in series.  The Boys Life version runs the filament with a filament transformer, which the Scout can plug right in to the household current.  I’m guessing that the current version of the Guide to Safe Scouting would nix this idea, but four D cells in series should be adequate to supply the filament voltage.  The plate current for a receiver of this type is quite low, so the 9 volt batteries should last a long time.  If you use flashlight batteries for the filament voltage, you might go through those rather quickly.

Here’s a video of what appears to be the Handbook version in operation.  From its location in GI, it’s pulling in a DL calling CQ TEST in some contest.  In short, you can do quite a bit with one tube, even if you were a Boy Scout 63 years ago!

The parts should be easily obtainable.  You can get “new old stock” tubes at places such as Antique Electronic Supply.  In addition, the 6SN7 is one of the “audiophile” tubes still being manufactured in Russia and China.  This audio transformer should be close enough if you want to stick to the Boys Life/Handbook version.  Otherwise, you can go with the AA8V design, which seems to use only readily available components.