Stories of Inventors - The Adventures of Inventors and Engineers by Russell Doubleday
page 21 of 140 (15%)
page 21 of 140 (15%)
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The Marconi station at Glacé Bay, Cape Breton, is now receiving messages for cableless transmission to England at the rate of ten cents a word--newspaper matter at five cents a word. Transatlantic wireless telegraphy is an everyday occurrence, and the common practical uses are almost beyond mention. It is quite within the bounds of possibility for England to talk clear across to Australia over the Isthmus of Panama, and soon France will be actually holding converse with her strange ally, Russia, across Germany and Austria, without asking the permission of either country. Ships talk to one another while in mid-ocean, separated by miles of salt water. Newspapers have been published aboard transatlantic steamers with the latest news telegraphed while en route; indeed, a regular news service of this kind, at a very reasonable rate, has been established. These are facts; what wonders the future has in store we can only guess. But these are some of the possibilities--news service supplied to subscribers at their homes, the important items to be ticked off on each private instrument automatically, "Marconigraphed" from the editorial rooms; the sending and receiving of messages from moving trains or any other kind of a conveyance; the direction of a submarine craft from a safe-distance point, or the control of a submarine torpedo. One is apt to grow dizzy if the imagination is allowed to run on too far--but why should not one friend talk to another though he be miles away, and to him alone, since his portable instrument is attuned to but one kind of vibration. It will be like having a separate language for each person, so that "friend communeth with friend, and a stranger intermeddleth not--" and which none but that one person can understand. |
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