The Wireless Age

Radio Record, Volume IV, Issue 30, 6 February 1931, Page 29

The Wireless Age

‘A Vision ot the Future

AT is the future’ of wireless, apart from such obyious things as television and greatly improved wireless communication venerally? That the human race will some day send all their merchandise across: the world by wireless waves is distinctly possible; the articles will be converted into electrical particles-transmitted as wireless waves at their constant speed of 186,000 miles per second, and then reconverted back to their original form at the receiving end. The embryo stage of this is seen in the case of electro-plating, where the particles of silver travel through the liquid to the article which is’ being electro-plated. It is even possible that in some future time man himself may travel as a wireless wave in the same way--converting himself into electrical particles at the transmitting end and being reconverted back again at the receiving station. As Marconi foreshadows, all future communications of the world are bound to be by wireless... All Nature’s methods of communication are by the vvireless or ether rays, as we can see in the case of the heat and light rays from the sun; there are no electric lighting or power lines connecting the earth to the sun. ‘We get our light and power by wireless.

. All our great electrical power stations of the future will be like little sunsradiating their light and: power by wireless, and gone for ever will be the present-day electric light and power lines and wires. Nor will there be any overhead or underground telephone or telegraph wires, for every house. will have its own wireless: telephone for use in the same manner as the ordinary wire telephone of the Post Office to-day. Waging War with Robots. (CERTAIN types of wireless waves will enable us to control the weather, rid the air of fog and smoke; other rays will fertilise the ground and ),1ake crops grow twice as quickly as at pre-sent-already this has been done in the infant science of electro-culture, as it is called. While humanity may still continue to wage war for many centuries to come,

it ig likely that owing to the facilities provided by wireless control, no human being will. actually take part in. them; in fact.an.international law may make it illegal for human beings to fight in the flesh, and all wars will have to be fought via the medium of wireless controlled battleships, tanks and aeroplanes. These manless battles will be directed from control rooms in the capitals of the countries engaged. OCrewless battleships will be manoeuvred by wireless control and television from Whitehall. Big guns will have disappeared from the decks of the vessels, and in their place wireless death rays will spit forth, melting hostile craft and boiling the sea with their intensity, Chess-playing by wireless is the beginning of this, All our transport will some day be wireless controlled. Huge liners infinitely larger than any present day ocean greyhound may cross the Atlantic without a eaptain or chief engineerand only a skeleton crew-both the course of the vesel and its engines being controlled by wireless from ports like

London or New York. The Indian Air Mail pilot, instead of accompanying the machine, will sit in the control tower of the super-Croydon of to-morrow and control the course and destinies of the *plane more safely and securely than if he were actually holding the joystick with his hands. Startling and Wonderful. N the realm of medicine and surgery, wireless possibilities are just as great, X-rays, radium rays and ultraviolet light are merely wireless rays of the same family which gives us concerts. Just as some wireless rays will kill, ' others will bring life and health; certain wireless rays may revive the drowned or those who, by accident, might die of shock in the usual way, And beyond all these possibilities lie other far more startling and wonderful, for we are only at the dawn of the wireless age-the full light of day has yet to break forth in all its glory.G. H. Daly, in "Popular Wireless."