SCIENCE OF THE DAY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20152, 12 January 1929, Page 5 (Supplement)

SCIENCE OF THE DAY.

A REMARKABLE VISION. A suggestion that perhaps in the year 2428 artificial men may be created in chemists' laboratories wa3 put forward by Mr. H. T. IT. Rhodes, the general secretary of the British -Association of Chemists, when speaking at the Association's annual dinner at Birmingham, a few weeks ago. Chemical science, said Mr. Rhodes, had now entered upon tho phase of synthesis—the building up and making of new and valuable products out of meaner ones. Tho artificial production of dyes and silks wero two examples of this work.

" Wo know," Mr. Rhodes said, " the composition of protoplasm, that substance which is tho basis of life and which is carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen; and there seems to be 110 reason to doubt that the chemist will in the end accomplish its synthesis and thus cause life to manifest itself. Perhaps it will not end there; perhaps we shall bo able by a process yet undiscovered so to incubalo and to nurse, as it were, this substance of protoplasm as to produce a living being liko ourselves. To those who dismiss this as a dream of the future, rather idlo, perhaps, and cvon rather wild, I would point

to the enormous stride made in synthetic organic chemistry even in the last fifty years. What may not happen in five hundred years ? " Suppose it were possible perhaps in a thousand years hence for a chemist thus to produce synthetic living beings, they would perhaps be set to do the workaday work of the world, thus setting free those being naturally begotten to undergo fresh conquests of knowledgo and of nature. This may be as I have said, nothing more than a dream of tho future, and, like other dreams, it may be absurd, but when we review the immense conquests in which the chemist has already realised much, it is unwise to dogmatise and say this cannot be." WONDERFUL RECORDING DEVICE. On a miniature stage erected in the studios of British Talking Pictures in London, Italian marionettes, the secret of whose manipulation has been handed down from father to son for nearly four centuries, are now going through their performance for the benefit of one of the latest achievements of modern science, the De Forest phonofilming device. The record thus made will reproduce not only the movements of the marionettes, but also the dialogue of tho hidden Italian actors and the musical accompaniment. NEW SOUND RECORDER. A device has been invented which records sound and reproduces it immediately in full volume and with clarity and accuracy. A short test speech spoken into an ordinary microphone comes back distinctly one minute after it is finished, It is recorded on a few inches of magnetised wire. No wax, no chemicals, or other fixing materials are needed.