18 "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" He Fixes Radios by Thinking!

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the house. It was a very large, wooden house, and I would run i like it repaired. We understand you might be able to do,some-
wires all around the outside, and had plugs in all the rooms, so thing about it."
I could always listen to my radios, which were upstairs in my lab. "But I'm only a little boy," I said. "I don't know how-"
I also had a loudspeaker-not the whole speaker, but the part "Yes, we know that, but we'd like you to come over anyway."
without the big horn on it. It was a hotel that my aunt was running, but I didn't know that.
One day, when I had my earphones on, I connected them to I I went over there with-they still tell the story-a big screwdriver
I
the loudspeaker, and I discovered something: I put my finger in ! in my back pocket. Well, I was small, so any screwdriver looked
!
the speaker and I could hear it in the earphones; I scratched the big in my back pocket.
speaker and I'd hear it in the earphones. So I discovered that the I went up to the radio and tried to fix it. I didn't know anything
speaker could act like a microphone, and you didn't even need about it, but there was also a handyman at the hotel, and either
any batteries. At school we were talking about Alexander Graham he noticed, or I noticed, a loose knob on the rheostat-to turn
Bell, so I gave a demonstration of the speaker and the earphones. up the volume-so that it wasn't turning the shaft. He went off
I didn't know it at the time, but I think it was the type of telephone and filed something, and fixed it up so it worked.
he originally used. The next radio I tried to fix didn't work at all. That was easy:
So now I had a microphone, and I could broadcast from it wasn't plugged in right. As the repairjobs got more and more
upstairs to downstairs, and from downstairs to upstairs, using the complicated, I got better and better, and more elaborate. I
amplifiers of my rummage-sale radios. At that time my sister bought myself a milliammeter in New York and converted it into
Joan, who was nine years younger than I was, must have been a voltmeter that had different scales on it by using the right
about two or three, and there was a guy on the radio called Uncle I
lengths (which I calculated) of very fine copper wire. It wasn't
Don that she liked to listen to. He'd sing little songs about "good very accurate, but it was good enough to tell whether things were
! in the right ballpark at different connections in those radio sets.
children," and so on, and he'd read cards sent in by parents
telling that "Mary So-and-so is having a birthday this Saturday at I The main reason people hired me was the Depression. They
25 Flatbush Avenue." didn't have any money to fix their radios, and they'd hear about
O n e day my cousin Francis and I sat Joan down and said that this kid who would do it for less. So I'd climb on roofs to fix
there was a special program she should listen to. Then we ran antennas, and all kinds of stuff. I got a series of lessons of ever-
upstairs and we started to broadcast: "This is Uncle Don. We increasing difficulty. Ultimately I got some job like converting a
know a very nice little girl named Joan who lives on New Broad- I
I DC set into an AC set, and it was very hard to keep the hum from
way; she's got a birthday coming-not today, but such-and-such. going through the system, and I didn't build it quite right. I
She's a cute girl." We sang a little song, and then we made music: ! shouldn't have bitten that one off, but I didn't know.
"Deedle lee1 deet, doodle doodle loot doot; deedle deedle leet, doodle loot doot One job was really sensational. I was working at the time for
doo . . ." We went through the whole deal, and then we came a printer, and a man who knew that printer knew I was trying to
downstairs: "How was it? Did you like the program?" I getjobs fixing radios, so h e sent a fellow around to the print shop
"It was good," she said, "but why did you make the music with I
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to pick me up. T h e guy is obviously poor-his car is a complete
your mouth?" wreck-and we go to his house which is in a cheap part of town.
1 O n the way, I say, "What's the trouble with the radio?"
One day I got a telephone call: "Mister, are you Richard H e says, "When I turn it on it makes a noise, and after a while
Feynman?" the noise stops and everything's all right, but I don't like the
"Yes."
"This is a hotel. We have a radio that doesn't work, and would
FPT :

"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! " He Fixes Radios by Thinking!

you'd think he could stand a little noise for a while." a that; they were all labeled. And if wax had been drippingfrom
And all the time, on the way to his house, he's saying things the condenser, it was too hot and you could tell that the con-
like, "Do you know anything about radios? How do you know denser was burned out. If there was charcoal on one of the
about radios-you're just a little boy!" resistors you knew where the trouble was. Or, if you couldn't tell
He's putting me down the whole way, and I'm thinking, "So what was the matter by looking at it, you'd test it with your
Rit
what's the matter with him? So it makes a little noise." voltmeter and see whether voltage was coming through. T h e sets
in But when we got there I went over to the radio and turned it were simple, the circuits were not complicated. T h e voltage on
esl on. Little noise? My God! No wonder the poor guy couldn't stand the grids was always about one and a half or two volts and the
thi it. T h e thing began to roar and wobble-WUH BUH BUH BUH voltages on the plates were one hundred or two hundred, DC. So
ha BUH-A tremendous amount of noise. Then it quieted down and it wasn't hard for me to fix a radio by understanding what was
Fe played correctly. So I started to think: "How can that happen?" going on inside, noticing that something wasn't working right,
co I start walking back and forth, thinking, and I realize that one and fixing it.
pe way it can happen is that the tubes are heating up in the wrong Sometimes it took quite a while. I remember one particular
of order-that is, the amplifier's all hot, the tubes are ready to go, time when it took the whole afternoon to find a burned-out resis-
na and there's nothing feeding in, or there's some back circuit feed- tor that was not apparent. That particular time it happened to be
ing in, or something wrong in the beginning part-the RF part a friend of my mother, so I had time-there was nobody on my
-and therefore it's making a lot of noise, picking up something. back saying, "What are you doing?" Instead, they were saying,
And when the RF circuit's finally going, and the grid voltages are "Would you like a little milk, or some cake?" I finally fixed it
adjusted, everything's all right. because I had, and still have, persistence. Once I get on a puzzle,
So the guy says, "What are you doing? You come to fix the I can't get off. If my mother's friend had said, "Never mind, it's
radio, but you're only walking back and forth!" too much work," I'd have blown my top, because I want to beat
I say, "I'm thinking!" Then I said to myself, "All right, take this damn thing, as long as I've gone this far. I can't just leave
the tubes out, and reverse the order completely in the set." it after I've found out so much about it. I have to keep going to
(Many radio sets in those days used the same tubes in different find out ultimately what is the matter with it in the end.
places-2 in's, I think they were, or 2 1 2-A'S.) SO I changed the That's a puzzle drive. It's what accounts for my wanting to
tubes around, stepped to the front of the radio, turned the thing decipher Mayan hieroglyphics, for trying to open safes. I remem-
on, and it's as quiet as a lamb: it waits until it heats up, and then ber in high school, during first period a guy would come to me
plays perfectly-no noise. with a puzzle in geometry, or something which had been assigned
When a person has been negative to you, and then you do in his advanced math class. I wouldn't stop until I figured the
something like that, they're usually a hundred percent the other damn thing out-it would take me fifteen or twenty minutes. But
way, kind of to compensate. He got me other jobs, and kept during the day, other guys would come to me with the same
telling everybody what a tremendous genius I was, saying, "He problem, and I'd do it for them in a flash. So for one guy, to d o
fixes radios by thinking!" T h e whole idea of thinking, to fix a radio it took me twenty minutes, while there were five guys who
-a little boy stops and thinks, and figures out how to d o it-he thought I was a super-genius.
never thought that was possible. So I got a fancy reputation. During high school every puzzle
Radio circuits were much easier to understand in those days that was known to man must have come to me. Every damn, crazy
because everything was out in the open. After you took the set conundrum that people had invented, I knew. So when I got to
apart (it was a big problem to find the right screws), you could MIT there was a dance, and one of the seniors had his girlfriend
see this was a resistor, that's a condenser, here's a this, there's there, and she knew a lot of puzzles, and he was telling her that