I was lazy, went and purchased a new computer, I have been interested in voice recognition for many years, even have some ideas on how it might be improved, although the voice recognition is not too bad in this new computer

Cat whiskers: Those were the days.

I remember building one of those cat whisker radios when I was 14, I even got enough money by working for a printing company during the summer to purchase an amplifier tube and a audio transformer so I could power a speaker from the signal.
The radio worked well when tuned to the strongest local station, until I disconnected the batteries.
I did not have switches in the battery wires and after removing the “a” battery I started disconnecting the “b“ battery, when for some reason the loosely hanging wire for the filament swung around and touched the “b” battery’s terminal.
The bright flash inside the tube told me right away that my hard earned money gave me only short amount of pleasure.
I did learn to be more careful with wires that carry current.

Besides; the speaker worked without the amplifier tube when I hooked the detector to the high impedance side of the transformer, it was not as loud but then it did not need to be.