WIRELESS WAR.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19039, 8 December 1923, Page 15

WIRELESS WAR.

HORRORS OF FUTURE. SCIENTIST’S DREAM. Professor A. M. Low, the celebrated ■scientist and inventor,. who recently outlined the possibilities of signalling Mars, has taken another peep into the future, and has drawn a remarkable picture of warfare in A.D. 2023. , . There are among the many marvels which ne predicts: Jots of water charged with electricity to electrocute horses and men. Wireless sight and heat, the latter destroying, inter alia, the rigging of aeronlanes. Wireless tanks and aeroplanes. Armoured boats, capable of flying and of diving under water. Battleship engines developing wireless power to destroy aircraft within hundreds of yards. _ ... Professor Low discusses these tnings in ihe September Nineteenth Century, and recently ho amplified the vision for the benefit of the Daily,.News. “You will probably remember experiments made some time ago in which smoke columns and water jets were used as wireless aerials,’’ be said. “I have experimented with highly-charged jets of slightly acidulated water, and I have given people very powerful shocks. Over a distance of a few feet the effect is really extraordinary. “It is easy to see that on a much larger scale my model could become a most powerful weapon. It will make cavalry obsolete. “Nikola Tesla, the Serbian inventor, has conducted experiments on the induction of an electric current over large areas. With a quiu sample apparatus, and usin" a power of only throe horse-power, I can destroy a thin iron wire placed at a distance of 3ft or 4ft. TTie limiting factor at present is lhat the wire must he in circular form, and thus make a dosed circuit.

“Noise inay plan an important part in future warfare. It has very curious effects on human beings. The more hiahlv civilised thcv become the more noise affects them “I can imagine an aggressive use of selected noises to undermine the moral of the population, and the development of all sorts of anti-noise devices.”