F. W. Chesson						 File: FROGLEG
Waterbury, CT  06710					  






		A Unique Wireless Discovery From France.
	    From the AWA Old Timer's Bulletin of Feb., 1993 
				by
                         Frederick W. Chesson 

     "Nom d' nopm! Qu'est-ce...?"  Leave it to the French to 
come up with a radio detectgor worthy of inclusion in both both the
Dictionaire ,,,,, and the Larousse Gastronomique.  Indeed it might
well have required the services of a Guide Michelin Five-Star
Chef to prepare this unique organic signal transducer.
     From the February, 1913 issue of Popular Mecghanics (pp 231-32)
comes this "state-of-the-art" device: Le Detectueur Francais Cuisse
de Grenouille"...the French Frog Leg Detector!
     We owe it all to one Charles Lefeuvre, Professor of Physiology 
at Rennes University in Brittany. He continued Galvani's great classic
investigations of a century earlier into the bio-electrical properties
of Genus Rana, and discovered a truly remarkable application for the 
new Age of Radio.
     According to text and diagrams, the output of a receiver was first
connected to the detached lower leg's sciatic nerve.  One end of the leg
being securely clamped and the other connected to a pivioted recording
pen.  Thus, any muscle contractions were to be recorded on a moving tape.
     Results seem to have been impressive, with the Morse code letter D 
being clearly received from a time signal transmitter atop Paris' Eifel
Tower, some 230 miles away.
     Technicians may insist that the participation of Le Petit Grenouille
 was that of a mere transducer, and not a long-active one at that.  Yet,
given enough RF amplification Monsieur Rana's leg might well have responded
to signals of up to 5 WPM, if not faster. Mais oui!
     Whatever its inherent limitations, the detector still rates as the 
only known wireless device which the operator could, at the end of his shift,	
have EATEN, preferably lightly sauted in garlic....