Growing Up in Alpine, Texas--How a Childhood Experiment Helped Lead to a Career in Science

Walter Steiger, Ph.D.

Octogenarian Walter Steiger is the founder of astronomy in Hawaii and Professor Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Hawai`i at Manoa. He is also among the very first scientists to visit the Mauna Loa Observatory, where he spoke at the famous atmospheric observatory's dedication on 28 June 1956. Here Dr. Steiger describes how a childhood experiment led to his lifelong interest in electricity. You can read Dr. Steiger's history of astronomy in Hawaii here. Editor.

Figure 1. Dr. Walter Steiger stands before an exhibit that describes his pioneering introduction of formal astronomy in Hawaii, the solar observatory at the summit of Haleakala on the island of Maui. The exhibit shown here is at the Imiloa Astronomy Center on the campus of the University of Hawaii at Hilo. Photograph by Forrest M. Mims III.

Alpine was a great place for a boy (age 7 to 12) to grow up in the 1930s. I could wander all over town on my bicycle, and my mother would never worry about where I was.

The rented house we lived in had a windmill in the back yard that provided our drinking water. The storage tank was up on a platform about 15 feet high and underneath was my playhouse. Or maybe I should call it my first laboratory.

I collected various kinds of electrical stuff and tried to figure out how they worked. One day I got hold of an old automobile Klaxon horn. I could see that it had two terminals to which were connected electric wires. I also noticed that the lights in our house had two wires. So, the logical deduction was that the two wires for the light might also work on the horn. In modern jargon, that was my hypothesis.

The next step was to experiment. Somehow, I had a bit of skepticism that it might not go quite that simply, so when I set up the experiment, I ran a long wire from the house out into the middle of the back yard. Then I backed off about 15 feet before turning on the juice. Sure enough, there was a horn-like sound, but it lasted only about one tenth of a second and was followed by a big bang and a puff of smoke. So I learned that there are at least two kinds of electricity. But now I had the opportunity to take the horn apart and learn that it consisted of a motor that drove a shaft with a pin across the end that rubbed up against a zigzag piece of metal that was attached to a diaphragm, and when the shaft rotated it set the diaphragm into vibration. Since the motor sped up to run and then slowed down to stop, it produced the characteristic ooUUgha sound of a Klaxon.

Was the experiment a failure? Not at all! It kindled an interest in electricity that stayed with me for the rest of my life.

Afterthought: If I had grown up with all the toys and gadgets that kids have now days, would I have been motivated to experiment with an old car horn?

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The Citizen Scientist (03 July 2009).