WRITTEN SO YOUR DOG CAN UNDERSTAND IT

Here's the cover to that April 1925 issue of Popular Mechanics, subheaded, "Written So You Can Understand It." The article it illustrates tries to help you understand why these guys would drag a forty-five pound box of tubes up a Canadian mountainside: Howard Stern won't be on for another half century, at least. They strap the massive radio to a pack horse and get their just desserts: the horse drops it immediately and renders it useless. It then endures "the buffetings of a somersaulting roll down through the shattered rocks" in a way that would make Wile E. Coyote facepalm.

Persevering, they return to the hills with their set, presumably by dogsled (There's an interior illo depicting just that. The cover illustration is repeated there as well, but strangely, without the dog). Rin Tin Tin deserves to pick the station. That vertical wire is the aerial, not an attempt to plug the radio into a streetlight. The antenna allows them to hear a score of stations "from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles," and in the rush of broadcasters all fighting to be heard at once, they pick out Calgary, Oklahoma City, and stations "as far south as Baton Rouge." Hope the dog likes 20s jazz.