Bill Thompson

Being born in North Dakota and, you know, my mother, single mother, after she left that first guy, trailer house in the middle of this little town called Cavalier, North Dakota.

I had no options.

I was a horrible student.

That's crazy that you're so smart, but you were a horrible student.

I wouldn't, yeah, I'd call myself curious before I'd call myself smart.

But, you know, my mother, you know, I don't know if you remember, you would remember this, but maybe other people my age would.

you'd get these Scholastic book order forms that you'd bring home from school and you could order books.

There'd always be on the back page, there'd always be little cool stuff, like you could get a pair of gloves or a hat or something.

Anyway, one time there was a coil radio that you could order with an earpiece, and you'd put this coil radio together with an earpiece, no battery,

It was just the electromagnetic radiation would activate the coil and the coil would, you could listen to radio chatter.

Really?

With no battery?

Yeah, yeah.

Just tiny little radio.

How did it, what was the power?

The electromagnetic radiation.

And you would just, kind of like a record, like, you know, how you hit a record.

Electromagnetic radiation would hit the coil and the coil would feed up to an amplifier or up to an earpiece.

And the earpiece, you could hear chatter and you could tune it.

Did the earpiece have a battery?