Come, let us mark a point in the coordinates of human history.
1887, 8 degrees 24 minutes east longitude, 49 degrees north latitude.
A small town in Germany, Karlsruhe.
This is the grand entrance to the lush Black Forest, with the Rhine River quietly winding through. It is a quaint little town where the sun scatters over the buildings nestled among verdant trees.
On this peaceful and serene afternoon, the sun shines through the gaps in the curtains of a building at Karlsruhe University, casting light on a young man's feet.
The room is dimly lit, with a long wooden table on the floor.
At the end of the table, there's a cylinder placed horizontally, tightly wound with layers of copper wire – an inductive coil.
In the middle of the table lies a set of barbells—at least, it resembles barbells.
This structure has, at each end, a hollow copper sphere as large as a human head, connected by a slender solid copper tube, two meters in length. At first glance, it seems to be an elongated and slimmed-down barbell, but different from a barbell because the copper rod in the middle is split, creating a two-centimeter gap that divides it into two.
The two hollow copper spheres are connected by wires to the inductive coil behind them.
And the inductive coil is connected by wires under the table to a battery.
Add to that the open copper ring the young man is holding, and the entire setup is complete.
He understands the purpose of every component in this device; the coil serves as a boosting device, elevating the feeble battery voltage to a sufficient height. The two copper spheres are capacitors, storing electric charge, one positively charged and the other negatively charged. When the accumulated charge in both capacitors reaches a certain level, the high-voltage current can instantly penetrate the gap's air—
The young man closes the circuit switch.
A soft "snap" sounds.
Like a flash, a pale blue electrical arc jumps through the gap in the middle of the copper rod.
But it's not over yet.
This is not the purpose of the experiment.
He lifts the C-shaped copper ring—with a small opening—and slowly approaches the table, then holds his breath.
One step, two steps, three steps...
A very faint "snap" sounds crisply, ghostlike—not from the experimental setup on the table, but from the copper ring in the young man's hand.
Transparent, sprite-like, weak electrical sparks burst from the opening of the C-shaped copper ring.
His eyes widen in astonishment; after relentless efforts, he has finally captured this invisible, intangible spectre floating in the air.
Mysteriously, an unseen force transmitted energy from the spark generator on the table to the copper ring in his hand, without any wires, medium, or connection. This small independent copper ring danced with flames—a true miracle.
Maxwell's theory was perfectly validated.
On this day, mankind consciously sent out the first electromagnetic wave into the universe.
This young man, who taught at Karlsruhe University, was named Heinrich Rudolf Hezi.
That year, he was thirty years old.
·
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Let's mark another point in the coordinates of human history.
July 11, 1998.
Comprised of Bai Zhen, Wang Ning, and Zhao Bowen, the Nanjing Shortwave Team participated in the IARU Shortwave World Championship. Using an Icom725 shortwave radio, they endured the scorching sun and set up the radio and antenna on Zijin Mountain, laying a small table on the grass under the shade of trees, starting their call-outs at eight in the morning.
The antenna, horizontally installed in a north-south direction, was a dipole antenna tied between two trees with ropes, resembling a clothesline from afar.
"CQ! CQ! CQ!" Bai Zhen held the microphone in one hand and a pen in the other, his English seasoned through a pickle jar, as he settled into the channel, "Bravo-Golf-Four-Mike-Xray-Hotel Contest! BG4MXH! QSL?"
"Juliet-Alfa-One-Delta-Charlie-Kilo! JA1DCK! QSL?" A clear reply came quickly through the headset.
Bai Zhen gave an OK sign and began logging the communication.
The caller's sign was JA1...1...
What came after that?
"Juliet-Alfa-One...again?" Bai Zhen had to ask him to repeat.
"Juliet-Alfa-One-Delta-Charlie-Kilo! JA1DCK!"
The J starting sign, a Japanese.
No wonder his English is worse than mine.
Bai Zhen thought silently to himself, meanwhile responding: "Roger! Roger! You are 59! QSL?"
"QSL! Thank you!"
"Thank you! 73!"
"73!"
Japanese people really butcher the English language.
This was their sixty-ninth contacted station, and everything was going smoothly.
The IARU Shortwave Championship is the world's largest event for amateur radio enthusiasts. Scoring is based on the distance and number of stations contacted, with more points for more stations contacted and greater distances. Contacting a Japanese station yields three points; connecting with stations in Europe or America would score five points.
"CQ! CQ..."
The next call immediately began, their goal was to establish contact with five hundred radio stations during the 48-hour competition period.
But before Bai Zhen could finish speaking, as soon as he released the microphone, an extremely sharp noise erupted through the channel, piercing his eardrums like needles.
"Damn it!"
"What happened?" Wang Ning and Zhao Bowen, who were playing cards off to the side, turned their heads.
"It seems like there's interference…" Bai Zhen pulled off his headset, "What's going on?"
"Where would interference come from on the mountain?" Wang Ning placed his Jianlibao drink on the table, took the headset, and put it on, "Heck!"
"There's a ghost screaming." Zhao Bowen also listened, "Check the 6-meter band?"
"There's a Sadako on the 6-meter band."
"12-meter?"
"There's a chestnut on the 12-meter band."
"What the heck is a chestnut?"
"There are ghosts screaming on every channel." Bai Zhen casually twisted the radio's tuning knob, somewhat surprised, "We are being fully suppressed by something."
Wang Ning and Zhao Bowen instinctively looked up to the sky, wondering if any aircraft had passed by?
This kind of incident meant the competition was ruined, but Bai Zhen was not willing to give up; he turned down the volume and slowly twisted the knob, sweeping through various amateur channels.
Perhaps there really was a strong source of interference nearby, as this source exhibited indiscriminate suppression on any channel, drowning out all effective signals.
"No other way." Wang Ning squatted back down to continue playing cards, "Old Bai, don't bother with it anymore, come on, play cards!"
"Play cards!" said Zhao Bowen.
Bai Zhen ignored these clowns; he lay down over the table, struggling to tune the radio, and after more than ten minutes, it was still ineffective. Even an experienced HAM like Bai Zhen had never seen a situation like today's—he even secretly wondered if Nanjing City had been attacked by an EMP? Was there a war? Was the American Empire attacking?
"Old Bai, stop guarding it...it's hopeless, do you want a popsicle? Let's go buy popsicles."
Wang Ning shouted weakly from under the shade of a tree, fanning under the hem of Bai Zhen's vest.
In mid-July, Nanjing was so hot even dogs couldn't muster any spirit.
Bai Zhen wiped the sweat from his forehead, suddenly perked up, "Wait... wait! I hear voices!"
"What voices?" Wang Ning and Zhao Bowen, sitting far under the tree, stopped playing cards, panting with their tongues out, as hot as dogs.
"People are talking..." Bai Zhen slowly turned the knob, frowning, "The voice is very weak, I can't quite hear it."
The Icom725 couldn't filter out all the noise; amidst the noisy background, Bai Zhen could hear faint human voices, squinting his eyes, focusing.
"CQ..."
"How can you confirm your identity?"
"…Look up to the sky, it's right above your head!"
"Meteor, look, it's a meteor!"
"We must place this thing in the predetermined location, otherwise we can't kill it, the power of nuclear weapons is limited."
"They are coming down from the sky."
"Save me, please, save me..."
Men and women's chaotic voices mixed together, Bai Zhen listened puzzled, who were these people babbling in the channel?
"We will meet again."
With a "snap!" all voices abruptly stopped as Zhao Bowen turned off the radio's switch.
He removed the headset from Bai Zhen's head, "Stop messing around, let's go down the mountain to buy some food! Buy old-fashioned popsicles! Old—popsicles—yo ho—!"
That year, the world competition ended in failure for the trio due to inexplicable interference.
The following year, Bai Zhen failed the college entrance exams and enlisted in the North Sea Fleet as a communications soldier, serving for twelve years until his retirement in 2012. After returning to civilian life, he continuously worked as a Didi driver in Nanjing City.
Zhao Bowen was admitted to the Physics Department of Nanjing University in the same year that Bai Zhen enlisted, and after completing his doctorate, stayed on as a faculty member, currently serving as the associate researcher at Nanjing Zijin Mountain Observatory, working in space physics and electromagnetism to this day.
Meanwhile, Wang Ning wandered around for many years and eventually started working in the Nanjing Municipal Radio Monitoring Office, serving as the head of the radio monitoring station until today.
···
Let's place a point in the long river of time.
Now.
At this moment.
You are looking at your smartphone screen—whether it's Apple, Huawei, Xiaomi, Samsung, or OV, fundamentally, they are no different from the C-shaped copper ring in Hezi's hands back in the day; all text, images, sounds, and videos are modulated into electromagnetic waves, received by mobile antennas via communication base stations and wireless routers, and then demodulated into signals that humans can understand, entering your eyes and ears.
Every single second of this world, long waves pass through the deep oceans, short waves oscillate in the ionosphere, UV waves dash recklessly through cities, forming another world in places invisible to our naked eyes.
It has been over one hundred and thirty years since the electromagnetic wave was first detected by mankind in 1887. Theoretically speaking, due to the conservation of energy, the very first electromagnetic wave that humans actively emitted still oscillates in this universe, although it has decayed to such an extent that no one can catch it anymore. It wanders like a tiny ghost in this noisy human world, perhaps causing a sudden spark in an electronic component in your smartphone's integrated circuit, so faint that besides this universe, no one else would take notice.
In that moment, you rub your sleepy eyes, unaware that across a span of a hundred and thirty years, you have received a greeting from that young man named Hezi.
This is a story about radio. This story took place in 2019, nearly two years have passed since then. In these two years, the author spent a lot of effort visiting various places, gathering materials, and finally had the confidence to compile this story into a manuscript for the public, striving for accuracy. If any party mentioned reads this humble work, I hope they comprehend with a smile.
All characters appearing in this text are aliases.