Modern Living: The Electronic Disease

Model planes go catatonic in midflight. Automatic garage doors open mysteriously in the night. Truckers' chatter interrupts ministers' sermons over church public address systems. Traffic lights go berserk. TV pictures flutter. And a solid-state sewing machine suddenly shouts to a startled Indiana housewife the password of the invading force, "Breaker! Breaker!" These strange goings-on are caused not by UFOs or other extraterrestrial goblins, but by RFI (radio frequency interference), an electronic epidemic spread by the nation's 15 million Citizens Band radios (TIME, May 10).

The populist community of the air —using many CB...

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