SEEING BY WIRE

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 10, 11 July 1914, Page 10

SEEING BY WIRE

A REMARKABLE PROPHECY IN FIFTY YEARS' TIME. "Seeing by wive" vva« the startling suggestion conveyed in a lecture before the Institute of Automobile Engineers by Dr. A. M. Low, a well-known scientific experimenter. r Dr. / Low gave a demonstration, for the first time in public, with a new apparatus he Jiad invented for seeing, he claims, by electricity, by which it 1a possible "f6r persona ueing a telephone tobee each other at the same time." "There is nothing so very wonderful about it, after all," said Dr. Low to a,. Daily Chionicle representative- in his study at Shepherd's Bush. "If it is possible to reproduce one pencil of light over a wire— and that has been done in the transmission of a photograph from London to Paris — is there any reason why we should not reproduce a series of pencils of light ; in other words, a photograph? There as no reason at all ; a.nd that ie what my apparatus does, although I admit that the photograph is somewhat blurred." Dr. Low, who holds the high degree of a Doctor of Science of London, went fufther. "We can reproduce the tones of the human voice by means of a, wireless telephone," he said, "and the number of tones of the human voice are a good many thousand. Suppobyig we had only 20 variations of light and shade, that would be enough to produce a picture. So that it is obvious you could reproduce it without a wire." The scientist uttered a, femarkable prophecy. "I am certain," he said, •"that the time will come when the people will be able to see themselves by wireless. I daresay I shall bo dead by that nine, but I aJn positive that in time, say 60 years, people sitting in a room in London Will be able to witness a sqeiiie taking place on the deck of a steamer in mid-Atlantic. Mark my words, half a century hence ->people will day of us 'How funny ! The people in those old days could not see a man without going to look at him!'" Another prediction upon which Dr. Low ventured' was that one of his machines could be planted in a field and iteed for the qtiujy of military operations taking place at a distance. This would be introducing a new complication into warfare, and would be realising with a vengeance Napoleon's idea of strategy, ''seeing what the enemy i« doing pn the other side of a mountain." The apparatus^ whicji Dr. Low (who is only 35 years of age) has_ invented, is extremely difficult to describe except ih highly technical language. It is a screen, consisting of a large number of cells of selenium, over which a ruler ia moved rapidly by a small fnotoi 1 worked with , a current of high 'frequency, and of about 50,000 volts pressure. It is fitted in a box at the side of the telephone. The receiver at the other end in made up of a series of thin slats of isteel, through which the light passes. Selenium, which is used tor the cells, is a ' non-metallic chemical element, Which "was v discovered in 1817. It is a conductor of electricity. Its conductivity jfi v, increased by light, and its properties have already been utilised for transmitting photographs by telegraphy.