COMMUNICATIONS AND OZ

by Kenneth R. Shepherd

Originally published in The Baum Bugle, vol. 32, no. 1 (Spring 1988), pgs. 6–7

Citations

Chicago 17th ed.:

Shepherd, Kenneth R. “Communications and Oz.” Baum Bugle 32, no. 1 (1988): 6–7.

MLA 9th ed.:

Shepherd, Kenneth R. “Communications and Oz.” The Baum Bugle, vol. 32, no. 1, 1988, pp. 6–7.

(Note: In print, this article was supplemented with illustrations that have not been reproduced here. However, typographical errors have been left in place to accurately reflect the printed version.)

 

In 1913, L. Frank Baum established contact with the Emerald City of Oz by means of wireless telegraphy, ushering in a new era in Ozian history. For his readers, Baum’s use of radio to communicate with his fairyland helped establish Oz as a real place, a place one could visit and with whose citizens one could converse. Soon, however, radio technology in Oz itself outstripped the infant American communications industry. Within a few years of Baum’s wireless message, the Emerald City was on its way to becoming a leader in this field.

For a period of about four years, Baum was in regular radio contact with the Emerald City, but the mystique of wireless faded quickly in both Oz and America. References to radio communication both with and in Oz in the Royal Histories after 1916 are few, and modern contact with Ozites is rare. It is worthwhile, however, to examine the role which communications, by radio and by other means, has played in Ozian history, with special emphasis on the efforts of the Royal Historians to contact Oz. Methods have varied little over the years; perhaps future historians might benefit from the examples of their predecessors.

Mr. Baum never recorded exactly how he learned of Oz. However, in the introduction to his Fairylogue and Radio Plays, an entertainment consisting of motion pictures, slides and lecture which toured briefly in the fall of 1908, he intimated that he first heard about the country from a fairy he met in a clover field. This story may be apocryphal; The Oz Scrapbook (New York: Random House, 1977) describes it as “whimsical,” which may indicate that the Royal Historian included it for its entertainment value rather than historical accuracy. On the other hand, historian Rachel R. Cosgrove stated in the introduction to The Hidden Valley of Oz that she received her Oz news from a talking bird, a story which lends credulity to Baum’s Fairylogue tale.

Novelist Philip Jose Farmer suggests in A Barnstormer in Oz that Baum learned of Dorothy Gale’s experiences chronicled in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from Dorothy herself. This explanation seems more plausible. Baum could have received further news of Oz through correspondence with Dorothy; certainly he emphasizes in several of his introductions how much the contributions of children have helped him in his work. We also know that Baum and Dorothy knew each other, and they apparently had some form of personal contact; she had him appointed “Royal Historian” sometime before 1910. They seem to have grown quite close and, when Dorothy left America to settle in Oz, Baum lost not only a personal friend, but his major source of Ozian information. Does Dorothy refer to this when she says at the end of The Emerald City of Oz, “You will never hear anything more about Oz because we (she and Toto?) are now cut off forever from the rest of the world”? She goes on, “But Toto and I will always love you and all the other children who love us.” The evidence is not conclusive, but it is strongly suggestive.

Dorothy’s message to Mr. Baum just before Glinda made Oz invisible was written “on a broad white feather from a stork’s wing,” and it was the last word Baum was to have from any citizen of Oz for about two years. Eventually, the combination of financial pressures and the constant pleas of children for more Oz stories led him to attempt an experiment, detailed in the introduction of The Patchwork Girl of Oz:

Finally one of the children inquired why we couldn’t hear from Princess Dorothy by wireless telegraph, which would enable her to communicate to the Historian whatever happened in the Land of Oz without his even seeing her, or even knowing just where Oz is.

This seemed a good idea; so the Historian rigged up a high tower in his back yard, and took lessons in wireless telegraphy until he understood it, and then began to call “Princess Dorothy of Oz” by sending messages into the air.

And that was the way Dorothy heard that the Historian wanted to speak to her, and there was a Shaggy Man in the Land of Oz who knew how to telegraph a wireless reply. The result was that the Historian begged so hard to be told the latest news of Oz, so that he could write it down for the children to read, that Dorothy asked permission of Ozma, and Ozma graciously consented.

Baum’s interest in electricity has been well documented, and it is not at all unlikely that he could have done just what he says he did. One of his earlier books, The Master Key, was a scientific fantasy about electricity, and his son Robert S. Baum, to whom the book is dedicated, was an early electrical gadgeteer. In the period between 1900 and 1904 alone, American magazines as diverse as Cosmopolitan, Atlantic Monthly, McClure’s and Woman’s Home Companion carried articles with information on constructing simple radio sets. It would be very surprising if, between the two of them, L. Frank and Robert S. Baum could not have put together a workable amateur radio station. Certainly it need not have cost much; A. Frederick Collins in The Book of Wireless (New York and London: D. Appleton & Co., 1915) sets the price for serviceable homemade sending and receiving sets with aerials at less than fifty dollars.

You can see one of these homemade sets in the illustration facing Baum’s prologue to The Patchwork Girl of Oz. The Shaggy Man is sitting, pen in hand, ready to copy down Baum’s questions which, thanks to artistic license, are sparking out of the cylindrical tube by Shaggy’s right elbow. This tube is called a tuning coil, and it allows the listener to adjust his set for the best reception. The arrow-shaped pointer from which the sparks are coming is the early equivalent of the tuning knob or channel selector on the modern radio or television.

Neill’s drawing does not make clear the specific function of the tube. Most tuning coils were positioned vertically, and they did not spark. However, induction coils, which were used in transmitters, were generally horizontal and did spark. In calling the cylinder a tuning coil, I assume the sparks in the illustration to be Neill’s artistic interpretation, as the letters almost certainly are. However, the apparatus could be magically enhanced, or Neill could be representing a very early transceiver, a rig that both sends and receives.

A receiver would normally have more parts than are shown in the picture. It would need an aerial or antenna, earphones, and a power source, as well as a detector (probably a crystal) for changing the wireless energy into audio signals. None of these are identifiable in the illustration, although the block at the near end of the coil may enclose the detector.

Baum kept up wireless communication with Oz for some time; he told his readers in the introduction to Tik-Tok of Oz that he received the story which became The Scarecrow of Oz from Dorothy over the airwaves sometime before 1914. However, as time wore on, he used the idea of radio contact less and less. There were probably several reasons for this: Baum’s health was failing, and, as wireless gradually lost its mystique, it became more mundane, losing the trappings of fantasy. Perhaps the chief contributing factor, however, was the ban on transmitting and receiving placed by the U.S. Navy in April of 1917, on the verge of America’s entry into the First World War. Radio reception was not again permitted in the United States until April 12, 1919. Transmission was not allowed until September 26 of that year, after Baum’s death.

Later historians of Oz, for reasons of their own, chose not to use the radio to communicate with the fairyland; perhaps the airwaves were too crowded after the war. Ruth Plumly Thompson left the distinct impression that she actually visited the Emerald City annually. She makes veiled references to her trips in the introductions to Kabumpo in Oz, Grampa in Oz and The Hungry Tiger of Oz. John R. Neill never indicated how he got his news, but presumably he accompanied Miss Thompson on occasion and got to know the way well enough to find it for himself when he became Royal Historian. According to the foreword in The Shaggy Man of Oz, Jack Snow devised a sort of television to receive both pictures and sound from Oz. Most recently, however, authors have resorted to personal contact. They get their news from sources in Ozma’s court, as did Eloise Jarvis McGraw and Lauren Lynn McGraw for The Forbidden Fountain of Oz, or from Dorothy herself, as did Dick Martin for The Ozmapolitan of Oz.

Although communications from the outside world faded as time went by, radio technology in Oz itself continued to develop for quite some time, quickly surpassing the American science. Shaggy’s apparatus is very primitive compared with some of the innovative machines which later appear in the royal Histories. By 1914, the Wizard had perfected a pair of miniaturized transceivers which could be carried in a pocket. During the adventures of Tik-Tok of Oz, Ozma used one of them to talk with Shaggy, Betsy Bobbin, and their party in the Nome Kints cavern: “Ozma … caught up a similar instrument (to one Shaggy was holding) from a table beside her… the two instruments recorded the same delicate vibrations of sound and formed a wireless telephone…”

Curiously enough, this is the last we hear of these useful machines. Communications in Oz being poor, it seems strange they were not kept in use. Nonetheless, the Wizard continued to experiment with radio equipment. “With the aid of a powerful radio   to the Wizard of Oz,” Ozma eavesdropped on Dorothy’s stow in Grampa in Oz. No doubt it was a most unusual machine, since it could receive signals from a place where there was no transmitter. Perhaps it was this same rig Jack Snow described in The Magical Mimics in Oz and which the Wizard kept “in his apartment in the Royal Palace in the Emerald City, (and) sometimes turned on and listened to with much interest. But he never listened for long, as he was subject to headaches when listening to anything but good music.

The Wizard also made attempts to modify the Magic Picture so that it would receive sound. It may have been partly capable of audio reception by itself, for Ozma and her friends used it to eavesdrop on the Nome King as early as The Emerald City of Oz. However, the Wizard had to enhance it with a small magical device for the Queen to hear Emperor Happy Toko’s song in The Royal Book of Oz, and he placed a spell on it so the Royal Family of Septentria could hear and be heard as well as see and be seen in The Ozmapolitan of Oz. We are uncertain, however, if its audio capacity was the result of the Wizard’s actions or merely due to the nature of the picture itself.

It seems that the Wizard also kept up transmissions to America. In the introduction to The Cowardly Lion of Oz, Ruth Plumly Thompson asked that any Oz news heard over the radio be reported to her. Certainly it seems that the Wizard still receives broadcasts from the United States from time to time. If such is indeed the case, it might prove useful for future historians of Oz to listen to their radios late at night. If atmospheric conditions are exactly right, they might hear O.Z. Diggs relaying the latest in Oz news.

I am especially obliged to the following members for their comments and criticism: John Bell, Ruth Berman, John Fricke, Melody Grandy, Patrick Maund, Fred Meyer and Mary Rakestraw. I have done my best to incorporate their suggestions into the body of this paper, and their efforts are most sincerely appreciated.

 

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