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Teeth Can "Tune In" - SCIENCE NEWS LETTER for November 28, 1953

 …THE NAVY'S "Big Jim" radio station is so powerful that its operators may be able to "tune it in" on their tooth fillings.

Situated on a 6,000-acre tract about 55 miles northeast of Seattle, Wash., the million-watt station began flinging its official messages around the world to ships on and under the seas on Nov. 18.

Although the Navy has received no reports that anyone so far has "heard" dits and dahs in their mouths during try-out tests, the station's signal strength is so great that this is a distinct possibility.

However, Americans need not fear that the cryptic chatter of a telegraph key in their tooth fillings will keep them awake at night. The Federal Communications Commission states that this unusual type of reception is generally restricted to within a mile of powerful stations.

C. B. Plummer, chief of the FCC's broadcast bureau, explains it this way: When two unlike materials touch each other, current induced in them sometimes flows more easily in one direction than in another at the point of contact. This sets up small electric currents that can be heard as music or voice without a radio receiver. Early cat-whisker radio sets used the phenomenon.

Thus an amalgam filling touching tooth enamel can produce the tiny currents if the conditions at the point of contact are just right.

The radio commission that antedated the FCC once received a report from an elderly woman who claimed she could pick up a strong station on her frying pan.

A scientist at the National Bureau of Standards remembers a woman who said she heard music in her head all of the time. He could not recall, however, whether she could pick up commercials too.

Many persons who "hear" strange things actually have hallucinations