Reading for the Week-End

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12199, 25 July 1925, Page 11

Reading for the Week-End

N the tirst flush of the knowledge of radio and the discovery that with the help of a few shillings and three pennyworth of wire, music, could be collected from the ether, everyone be-, came a radio expert. It was impossible to. ... , , . .pick up a paper without hearing of some further teat of distance, and “America on a crystal se .L tecamealmost a music-hall joke. to-day radio is accepted as part of our normal lives, and we at© begin* uing to ask for service. A moment’s thought, brings the conviction that before many years have gone by broadcasting pictures will be sent to our homes, The busy man will fe.m touch with his office on hie train and motor-car. Tne whole world will he m close communication. The fact that in 'the next war-aeroplanes, and probably tanks, will attack, us, controlled by an invisible ‘brain" many miles away, has been absorbed by the public almost comment. . We are even told that radio has given us so much that there can ( be little more to learn. Wireless has taught us more about light, it is teaching us about the actual composition of matter, it may tell us more of the meaning of life itself.

WHAT IS WIFELESS? Yet, to be frank we have really practically no idea at all what wireless is. When faults have been temedied and energy is no-longer broadcasted into the ether, we shall be on the brink of a wireless discovery whose, magnitnde baffles all description. , But there is one great discovery to come which may alter the whole path of civilisation. f- , ,

About six years ago’ I ventured to say that the day when wireless power could be ethereally transmitted would arise. I demonstrated that fact by working models at a publio lecture. The other day at a meeting between the Ratho Association and the Postmaster-, General it was observed that the new Wireless Bill actually makes provision, not merely for the transmission of speech, of signals, or of television; but for the sending of energy. A few years ago the suggestion was treated almost as a joke. Now Governmental provision is actually made forbits possibility!

It is no betrayal of confidence to say that those in authority definitely consider that the day. is. not far distant when cheap light, heat, and power will be transmitted over long distances by what we now know as wireless.

Consider the possibilities of this discovery. Electrical cooking and electrical heating are not found in the homes of the poor. But with wireless power it is a different stoiy. It has already been suggested in official circles : that when the day of wireless power transmission arrives, Britain may be able to draw cheap power from the waterfalls and courses in' Norway and Niagara.

It has already been foreseen that the international aspect of this question will be-almost revolutionary. By what', means shall we prevent tapping. of the power on the way; and what; will it mean to this world when factories need . no longer be built near ' fuel ground and when countries too cold to be( productive can be fed with heaf and power by wireless like watei to a desert land? In the house of the far distant future ,we shall have receiving Aerials built into the bouse, we shall have light'’sent to us by wireless, we shall have electrical power available to relieve domestic dutids of their present drudgery. Labour reduction in its truest spnse tvill bo possible. Our dwindling coal fields will not'alarm us so much and we shall, let us hope; turn round: and fcless the day, when a Postmaster-Gen-eral lived whose vision may lay! the foundation stone of one of the greatest blessings mankind has ever known. No great development, no epochmaking discovery can produce these , results. It must he left - to, mass development, to the experiments of amaWura and the expenditure of many tens of thousands of pounds in research by our manufacturing houses. Only a few years ■ ago- the seeming

miracle of communication without ‘wires ovsr a distance . of a few - yards was . acclaimed as representing the npal -Avoid of science, /•■■*= , Science has no finality, there is no 1 end to the knowledge, of-life which may through the ages be attained by mankind. It is not long since .Nikola ; Tesla stated that it, was well within 1 tho compass of our intelligence to’ ilr laminate a house by inductive means at a distance of over two' miles-from a power station.

It is becoming a general admission* not only that matter has a common' origin, and that materials diffef only in virtue of the various arrangements of their composing particles, but that electronic motion is the basis of all' conversion of power which has originated in the heat of the- sun. .

There .caii, therefore): ’be nothing to •prevent an ultimate state of affairs when by the ..transmissiofi of. oscillation to this ether matter may itself, be changed, our wealth 1 may bo varied,,’ and all'space may tremble to the. tune of countless'/units of electrical power. What a Comfort to the.’poor housewife to know that slid ’eari; thast the. bread, iron her -sheets; and! light her' i hoiuse! with the power so' .conveniently | provided by a few .pretty-picture postcard waterfalls in America.