Feynman and the radio
he fixes radios by thinking!
Podcast here https://stuartwiffin.substack.com/p/podcast-feynman-and-the-radio
I say, “What’s the trouble with the radio?” He says, “When I turn it on it makes a noise, and after a while the noise stops and everything’s all right, but I don’t like the noise at the beginning.” I think to myself: “What the hell! If he hasn’t got any money, you’d think he could stand a little noise for a while.” And all the time, on the way to his house, he’s saying things like, “Do you know anything about radios? How do you know about radios—you’re just a little boy!” He’s putting me down the whole way, and I’m thinking, “So what’s the matter with him? So it makes a little noise.”
But when we got there I went over to the radio and turned it on. Little noise? My God! No wonder the poor guy couldn’t stand it. The thing began to roar and wobble—WUH BUH BUH BUH BUH—A tremendous amount of noise. Then it quieted down and played correctly.
So I started to think: “How can that happen?” I start walking back and forth, thinking, and I realize that one way it can happen is that the tubes are heating up in the wrong order—that is, the amplifier’s all hot, the tubes are ready to go, and there’s nothing feeding in, or there’s some back circuit feeding in, or something wrong in the beginning part— the RF part—and therefore it’s making a lot of noise, picking up something. And when the RF circuit’s finally going, and the grid voltages are adjusted, everything’s all right.
So the guy says, “What are you doing? You come to fix the radio, but you’re only walking back and forth!” I say, “I’m thinking!” Then I said to myself, “All right, take the tubes out, and reverse the order completely in the set.” (Many radio sets in those days used the same tubes in different places—212’s, I think they were, or 212-A’s.) So I changed the tubes around, stepped to the front of the radio, turned the thing on, and it’s as quiet as a lamb: it waits until it heats up, and then plays perfectly—no noise.
When a person has been negative to you, and then you do something like that, they’re usually a hundred percent the other way, kind of to compensate. He got me other jobs, and kept telling everybody what a tremendous genius I was, saying, “He fixes radios by thinking!” The whole idea of thinking, to fix a radio —a little boy stops and thinks, and figures out how to do it—he never thought that was possible.
https://rewordify.com/n8nbkz34w4qm81
Why is this episode so amusing for Feynman?
What does he say it teaches about human nature?
Can you find other stories with a similar theme? (Benjamin Franklin, lend, book)
vocab turn it on, put me down, as quiet as a lamb
Was Feynman intimidated? (Why/why not?)