A. M. Low

“ WIRELESS POSSIBILITIES
INVENTION
Considering the very evident fact that we owe every detail of our lives, every little comfort which separates us from the cave-man, to the science of invention, it seems strange that so long should have elapsed before this remarkable faculty received proper recognition.
Invention, in many ways, is the science and art of continuity of thought. The inventor is often referred to as a strange person; very true, very necessarily true when we realise that his doings must be strange or new, to be of value. ”

“ We could not bear to drink water for the peculiar bodies we would see in it. The wind in the trees, the people walking down our street or into our rabbit-warrens of flats, would sound like a battle from afar. ”

“ If wireless had really been selective in the first instance, broadcasting would not have been its initial phase.
Wireless at present is excessively inefficient; a few yards from a large broadcasting station the power is measured in millionths of a horse-power, is disseminated in all directions, and is almost without definite selectivity.
When the day comes when we can tune with absolute accuracy; when we can combine waves with accuracy and obtain a directional beam with the shortest waves for re-broadcasting purposes, then we shall obtain real happiness from the results. ”

“ To live in any town would be impossible: the smells of Bond Street instead of pleasing the dog would tell us of rotting animal matter and alarm us to distraction. We could never sit down upon a beautiful piece of grass without listening to the worms and imagining ourselves with them. ”

“ It may be impossible for the Commander-in-Chief of the future to conceal a document from the eyes of wireless; and who knows but that the electrical operation of thought may be reduced to a science so that our very ideas are not secret without protection?
How many of us to-day could risk all our thoughts being known? It would probably improve moral standards if they were published: science tends to effect an average improvement. ”

“ We actually transmit very few senses: we merely convert their nature by utilising different portions of the spectrum. Light has undoubtedly its tone values, as in the case of sound, and it has not yet been definitely established with what portion of the body vision is actually obtained. It is likely that light is projected along the electro lines of force by the movement of electrons but whether the ether consists of electrons themselves, whether it exists in many forms, or is merely a result of the mass effect of thought, [Pg 45] we do not yet know. ”

“ Sound, the regular oscillation, and noise, the irregular oscillation, of the air, are really the beginning and end of wireless as it is known to the public to-day.
I would go further when thinking of the public. They do not want to sit with a telephone upon their heads, even if their ears may be improved thereby. They require to walk into a drawing-room, and having stood for a moment upon the mat, they must be able to cross the room, touch a button in a fretwork cabinet, and by the [Pg 15] movement of a lever be able to place themselves in touch with any part of the world. ”

“ It is not generally known that, during the War, experiments were made with a sound-reflector for listening to different types of aeroplane and submarine, by means of a microphone placed at the centre of a concave mirror. The difficulty was that of distortion, which is the whole source of trouble with sound producers to-day. Distance is no difficulty and when we can obtain purity and realism as well as distance, the latter is no difficulty at all; then [Pg 35] only will be the time when we shall have that spontaneous mental realism of vision that will help radio to alter the world. ”

“ At present wireless messages are chiefly of service where secrecy is not of such importance as speed; but an enormous number of experiments are being conducted upon beam wireless, directional wireless, and in the combination of the Radio oscillation with some other oscillations such as those of visible or invisible light. By these means secrecy will be obtained when we discover how to use small powers for long distance, but at present Radio is chiefly of value as a time-saver. ”

“ We may, one day, obtain far greater sensitivity of direction, greater carrying power, from small initial output with a degree of selectivity almost infinite, in comparison with modern working.
To use a light beam along which we can talk, to use a light beam initially and to turn it into light when required, is by no means difficult; it suggests the direct method of wireless vision, but from the mechanical aspect the problem is still less complicated. The difficulties of Radio Television to-day are constructional; in the far future it may be a question of pure physics. ”

“ We are told that before long it will be quite easy to hear birds singing in trees and the waves beating against the seashore. Quite right, quite easy to do it now, but if a bird singing in a tree sounds like a man moving his condenser or walking about with a pair of squeaky boots, is it progress? ”

“ As a scientific proposition it is easy, but the results are not good enough at present, and, if we can improve, let us first consider the loud speaker.
The talking cinema will come as a matter of course. It is so easy to record sounds upon the film by [Pg 30] photography with reproduction by the selenium cell or the neon tube; it is easy to photograph the wave; it is easy actually to impress the sound wave upon the film with the picture, or to use a gramophone; but reproduction is not like a human voice. Neither as yet is any reproduction ever like the voice itself. ”

“ Each picture of an arm about to light a cigarette shows the arm constantly closer and closer, and before one picture has had time to die out the other is thrown upon the screen. The result is an illusion of motion. ”

“ No loud speaker of to-day really produces voice and song which sound exactly like voice and song. It all too much resembles a bad gramophone, but without the advantage of the user having the choice of the music. ”

“ It is more than likely that, in the far future, the proper study of oscillatory theories, the proper investigation of the spectrum only very partially explored by a few, will lead us to a better understanding of the nature of life, and will help us to appreciate the theories of electrical sonics. Theories of [Pg 42] preventing local thunderstorms, of growing babies and wheat effectively, by electrical or other similar oscillatory means, of helping ourselves to see by wireless and of affecting our health at the end of many generations for the better, may all be developed in the time to come. ”

“ We have been so often told that power can be transmitted by Radio that we are apt to look upon this statement with contempt. This is quite wrong: power will one day be transmitted by wireless; power can at present be inductively sent over quite [Pg 73] a large air gap, though the energy available quite close to any wireless station is practically negligible to-day.
When motor-cars and ships are controlled or stopped by wireless, it is not the wireless which does the work; the therial oscillation merely sends signals to the ordinary operative mechanism. ”

“ The effects of history upon the advance of science are often noted, but the result of the march of progress is more often entirely neglected.
It would seem desirable that the future should be studied with reasonable accuracy if we are to protect ourselves from the ill-effects and obtain the benefit from the good fortunes of invention. ”

“ The science of wireless is but a few years old. We know about it little more than our schoolboy sons, and in many cases not so much; let us therefore be open-minded if we are still ignorant.
Commercial invention trusts too far to mass thinking: an original mistake is very closely related to an accomplishment. ”

“ All this is so easy that no one can doubt that we shall soon listen in to native jamborees; no one can doubt that we shall hear the strange cries of partisans at a baseball match taking place a few miles from New York; no one can question these things, and when reproduction becomes so accurate that the very nature of the people is revealed to us through their speech, surely we [Pg 32] might be a little more neighbourly even with those whom we now pretend to love? Relations are notoriously quarrelsome. ”

“ If thought is a process of energy-conversion—and who will deny it?—what form of screening prevents its use, and why should its reception be confined eventually to life upon this particular and very troublesome planet? ”

“ How, therefore, dare we neglect the dreadful sounds we hear in the name of radio music?
If a piece of silvering, one thirty-secondth of an inch, be scraped from the back of a mirror and fastened to the outer part of a celluloid diaphragm (made by water-floating a drop of amyl acetate in which celluloid has been dissolved) , it only requires a horn and a beam of light to render visible the waves of sound. A diaphragm movement of a millionth of a millionth of an inch is sometimes audible.
It is the science of wireless that is [Pg 34] beautiful; it is the possibilities that are wonderful ”

“ To train oneself to forget the smell of the beefsteak when hungry [Pg 10] and to continue the natural sequence of ideas which may be passing through the mind, is to train the brain to improve. If we can but sweep a crossing a very little cleaner than that next to our own, perhaps we have surely accomplished one of the greatest duties of all. ”

“ Remember that if I am addressing a man by wireless who is one hundred miles away, someone who is listening on a telephone will hear my voice [Pg 22] before I am heard at the end of the big hall where I am speaking, because the velocity of sound is only 1100 feet per second, and wireless, like light, travels much faster. Sound can also be actually refracted. ”

“ They will tell you boldly that their wireless set with a couple of dozen foreign-made valves can be heard right [Pg 17] across a large street, a street by the way in which we still permit as much nerve-shattering noise to occur as is thought necessary. This means that we must have quite a big movement on a diaphragm of large size, and a large diaphragm is made to move by the electrical oscillation, itself not very accurate; naturally, if it is heavy, like a poker or anything else, it has a will of its own, and therefore it continues to move when the wireless oscillation has told it to stop. ”

“ They do not want a perfect voice, they want a perfect personality, and it is rather the wireless that must be altered to take any reception than the human voice whose very characteristics delight us.
We are too accustomed to relying upon our senses. We are apt to think that the ear is most delicate. ”

“ Most people are not content with a gentle sound: they find it necessary to express their joy at having reached their home by dancing; consequently they want plenty of sound, and they do not mind if it turns into noise. ”

“ It is only natural that wireless should first have been applied to Love and War. I remember well one of the most remarkable applications of wireless mentioned in the press in the early days was that of a cable sent to an unfortunate man in mid-ocean, informing him that an all too successful arrival of twins had taken place. ”

“ In a few years time we shall be able to chat to our friends in an aeroplane and in the streets with the help of a pocket wireless set, and be able to do practically everything by the aid of radio that we now do with our voice. ”

“ The average loud speaker can often be greatly improved by padding the horn with some kind of tape, and as an example of the great difficulties of proper transmission let it be made quite clear that with most cases of wireless communication the sending is nearly perfect. ”

“ It is nothing of the kind; it cannot even hear notes that delight the heart of a dog, and if one pictures life with the brain of a man, the ear of an antelope, and microscopic eyes, together with the nose of a dog, some little idea of the inefficiency of those few senses which [Pg 40] we slightly understand can be obtained. ”

“ We are too apt, I think, all of us, to rejoice in our greatness as her devotees [Pg 11] rejoiced in the greatness of Diana of the Ephesians: we should realise every time we undress that we are little removed from the animal, and that before many centuries have passed we shall be held in almost universal contempt. ”

“ This is a form of energy or combination of phenomena which amounts to wireless sight, but it does not help us to see shapes or forms or to say if the light is from a candle, the sun, or an arc lamp.
By increasing the number of cells from one to, let us say, twenty, we could possibly indicate the difference between the moving shadow of a cross or a circle, but to radiate detail is a very difficult problem, which doubtless will be partially solved within the next few years. The electro-magnetic theory of light and the phenomena exhibited by the neon tube, present many opportunities. ”

“ Vision at a distance is, therefore, very necessary as our inclination for travel decreases and its comfort increases.
It is also important from the point of view of “speeding up,” which we have no reason to suppose will cease. All operations have steadily increased in speed for many generations. ”