Radiovoter

In Manhattan last week Nevil Monroe Hopkins excitedly announced that voting by radio was closer to realization than ever. Three years ago this tall, grey electrical engineer, who gets wide-eyed and trembly-voiced when his enthusiasm mounts, described his invention which he thought would enable radio listeners to signal at once to the broadcaster the fact that they were listening, and whether they liked or disliked what they heard (TIME, April 2, 1934). Radio sets would be provided with three buttons marked "Present" (tuned to the station taking the vote), "Yes" and "No." Each button would close a circuit through a 100-ohm resistance. When a number of buttons were pushed in concert at the announcer's request, the abrupt increase of the power load would be recorded as a sharp peak on a graph in the power station, and from the size of the peak the approximate number of listeners voting at that instant could be calculated.

This scheme was tried out in Hackensack, N. J. by Newark's station WOR. Rather than manufacture and install a large number of Hopkins radiovoting attachments, a crude equivalent was resorted to. Listeners were asked to switch on an extra 40-watt bulb in the house when WOR's announcer gave the signal for a vote. The resultant bulge on the powerhouse chart showed that about 6,100 listeners had thus balloted.

A serious defect then appeared. The sudden load increase nearly overtaxed the Hackensack generators; it was evident that the votes of an audience several times bigger would have wrought havoc with the power plant. Moreover, the broadcasters could not help wondering how many lazy or indifferent listeners had simply not bothered to switch on a bulb, although they were listening to the program.

In the revised Hopkins radiovoting method explained last week, both these difficulties are met. When the studio wants to learn how many sets are tuned in, it broadcasts a musical tone of a definite pitch. In the Hopkins attachment on the receiving sets a reed adjusted to this pitch is set vibrating. That action trips a relay circuit, starts a small induction motor which gradually adds an inducted load to the general power load. Overloading is thus eliminated and the voting current is recorded on a special meter. This automatic operation calls for no action on the part of the listeners. To get "Yes" and "No" ballots it would be necessary, of course, for the listeners to push buttons, but the fact that an auditor is listening in may be taken as approval of the program.

Dr. Hopkins is president of a company called National Electric Ballots Inc., which hopes to make lease arrangements with radio makers. There are 23,000,000 sets in the U. S. If Hopkins attachments were installed in the next 2,300,000 new sets before they are sold, broadcasters would be able to obtain votes from a 10% cross-section of the U. S. radio audience.

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