MuckFlash

St. Paul, MN. -1 March 2009- After having a metal plate and several screws surgically implanted in his chest, Greg Dewill was told by doctors to expect some changes. To everybody’s surprise, however, four months after the procedure, Dewill unceremoniously announced to friends and family that his nipples now comprised the antenna and speaker output for a working radio.

“It was certainly a strange way to start breakfast,” recalls Dewill’s wife, Stacey. “But that’s Greg for you, always tinkering with something new.”

Dewill underwent the surgery after a snowmobiling mishap landed him in the hospital in critical condition. The plate and screws went in shortly after to repair his shattered ribcage. Dewill didn’t give them another thought until he awoke one morning several weeks later to a strange sound. “It was a morning talk show, clear as bell, though low, like a bug buzzing in your ear,” Dewill said.

When Dewill mentioned the odd condition to his doctors, they told him there was little they could do, short of operating again. Rather than merely live with the condition, though, Dewill, an amateur inventor for many years, began to experiment with different ways of altering and amplifying the signal. He began with simple bits of tinfoil, and, through a process of trial and error, moved up to copper wire and top of the line ham radio equipment.

The final system uses a copper coil as an amplifying antenna for the plate’s reception, which routes through the left nipple. By combining the coil with a transformer on the right nipple, Dewill can tune into a range of signals and adjust the volume. On clear nights, he can reliably entertain the family with a full range of FM or AM programming.

“It’s quite something,” says Dewill, “It’s the kind of thing that proves there’s a silver lining in any situation.”