Werner is selected by Hauptmann for radio research

Werner Pfennig is selected by Dr. Hauptmann for radio research after demonstrating an unusual ability to make unfamiliar components work. A classroom exercise becomes a turning point: Werner solves the tasks with startling speed, and Dr. Hauptmann responds by assigning him to the laboratory every evening. The selection joins Werner’s private, long-standing curiosity about how the world works to a technical project with military applications.

Identity and Introduction

The episode begins in Dr. Hauptmann’s technical-sciences class, where the instructor removes his brass-buttoned coat and directs the cadets to collect hinged metal boxes from a locked laboratory cabinet. The equipment inside—gears, lenses, fuses, springs, shackles, resistors, a coil of copper wire, a tiny instrument hammer, and a battery as large as a shoe—is far beyond what Werner has previously been able to use. Dr. Hauptmann draws a schematic for a simple Morse-code practice circuit and gives the class one hour to assemble it.

The other boys handle the components hesitantly. Frederick picks pieces from his box and holds them up to the light; most of the class appears daunted by the unfamiliar equipment. Werner, by contrast, is briefly carried back in memory to the attic room at Children’s House, where his mind had been full of questions about lightning, life on Mars, and arithmetic. The flashback connects his performance at school with an earlier habit of inquiry: the laboratory does not create his curiosity so much as give it new materials to work on.

The Selection in the Laboratory

Werner chooses a battery, two rectangles of sheet metal, penny nails, and the instrument hammer. In less than a minute, he has assembled an oscillator matching the schematic. Dr. Hauptmann tests the circuit and finds that it works. The instructor then gives the class another challenge, naming a disk-shaped magnet, a wire, a screw, and the battery as the only permitted parts. Although his directions appear to address everyone, his attention is fixed on Werner.

Werner places the magnet on the screw’s head and holds the screw’s point against the battery’s positive terminal. When he connects the battery’s negative side to the screw’s head with the wire, the screw and magnet begin to spin. He completes the motor in no more than fifteen seconds. Dr. Hauptmann’s mouth hangs partly open, and his face flushes; he asks the cadet’s name. Werner identifies himself by his surname, Pfennig. The exchange makes the selection visible as it happens: the instructor has watched Werner turn a handful of specified parts into a working device, and now singles him out for closer attention.

That evening Dr. Hauptmann tells Werner, “You will work in the laboratory after dinner. Every night. Even Sundays.” Werner agrees, and is told to start the following day. The assignment is not an occasional reward or a single demonstration. It immediately establishes a demanding routine, extending Werner’s school life into the laboratory every night of the week.

The Research and Its Demands

As the school’s routine continues—roll call, breakfast, phrenology, rifle training, and drills—Werner spends each evening with Dr. Hauptmann. Their work alternates between plugging numbers into triangulation formulas and engineering. Dr. Hauptmann wants Werner to improve the efficiency and power of a directional radio transceiver he is designing. The device must be quickly retuned to transmit on multiple frequencies and must measure the angle of the transmissions it receives. Werner is asked whether he can manage the task, and he reconfigures nearly everything in the design.

The work draws on the same practical intelligence displayed in the classroom, but it also enlarges its scope. In the exercises, Werner builds a circuit and then a motor from a short list of parts; in the laboratory, he is asked to alter a complicated design to meet several operational requirements. The movement from a working schoolroom demonstration to sustained engineering gives his selection a concrete consequence: his talent becomes part of an ongoing military communications project.

Mentorship and Significance

Dr. Hauptmann’s attention does not make him consistently open. Some nights he grows talkative, explaining the function of a solenoid or resistor in detail, identifying a spider hanging from a rafter, or describing gatherings of scientists in Berlin where, he says, conversations seem to reveal new possibilities. On those evenings, he is willing to discuss relativity, quantum mechanics, and whatever Werner asks. On other nights, his manner closes; he invites no questions and supervises Werner’s work in silence.

For Werner, the laboratory is charged with promise. After Dr. Hauptmann’s invitation, he feels a thrill in his chest and imagines firelit rooms lined with books as places where important things happen. The words “We live in exceptional times” recur as a framing idea for the work. Yet the research is not detached from the world beyond the laboratory. The telephone on Dr. Hauptmann’s desk connects him to powerful men far away, and Werner imagines that those connections could summon Messerschmitts from an airfield to strafe a city. His fascination with scientific possibility therefore grows alongside his awareness of the force that technical work can serve. The selection marks both an opening for Werner’s abilities and his entry into a project whose power reaches well beyond the bench.