WAR BY ELECTRICITY.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 8, Issue 82, 5 April 1916, Page 7

WAR BY ELECTRICITY.

•By GUGLIBMO MARCONI.)

The next war will most certainly be more scientific than this one. Engines, of destruction are bound to grow more; enormous and fantastic. Inventors are working everywhere to this end. Means are being devised to imrove torpedoes and use them in other ways. For a long way efforts have been made to control sea torpedoes from a distance. It is difficult to do, but not impossible. Finally, I have beard of nn air torpedo for use by Zeppelins which a Swedish captain is said to have invented.

All this is not much -when we reflect that electricity lias great surprises in store for us. Electricity has infinite power, yet it has ndt yet been employed as an arm of destruction.

I don’t say we shall see in the future battlefields without, guns, rifles,, greor bombs, but theoretically it is possible.. Jt ig -obvious that if efectrieal apparatus could h<3 invented- to throw out waves such distances as to blow- up powder, we should see some extraordinary things. One man placing two wires in tact might blow up battleships at. sell, munition depots and arsenals in a single minute. Suddenly, as though with a magic wand, ammunition boxes would blow up on the battlefield and shells ispKode in the very mouths of guns. Cartridges would spontaneously go off in the soldier’s belt. This would mean a reversion to bayonet or sword fighting. The most fantasic dreams of Jules Verne 1 and Wells are of little count compared with the possibilities modern science opens up.

i I am now working on war inventions and not an apparatus that enable men to see through walls, as -has been said. My activities are being bent to things of more immediate value.