ANTICIPATIONS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 15, 2 September 1911, Page 2

ANTICIPATIONS.

The “Scientific American” recognises that scientific fact often follows undisciplined fancy. It illustrates this curious sequence by giving an interesting list of “Dreams that came true.” In 18G9 the Sue*; Canal was opened to the world’s traffic. But in the sixteenth century one Christopher Marlowe, not an engineer, nor a practical seaman, but simply an imaginative dramatist, was writing of that possible exploit. “Thence marched I into Egypt and Arabia, and here, not far from Alexandria, whereat the Terrene and the Red Sea meet, being distant less than full'a 'hundred leagues, 1 meant to cut a channel to them both, that men might quickly sail to India.” Wireleess telegraphy' 1 was anticipated by Strada, the Italian historian, born in 1572. Tic imagined a dial instrument, 1 which received and registered the thoughts of friends, though seas and mountains or deserts might lie between. Roger Bacon foresaw the defids of dynamiters, when he wrote about possible high explosives: “A small portion of matter about the size of the thumb properly disposed will make a tremendous sound and coruscation by which cities and armies might be destroyed.” We can go to Ben Jonson for an excellent description of the torpedo, which ho imagined as “an invisible eel,” employed by the Hollanders to sink the shipping. “It is an automon, runs under water, with a smug nose, and has a nimble tail made like an auger, with which tail she wriggles between the costs (ribs) of a ship, and sinks it straight.” Hero of Alexandria saw in vision the prototype of the steam turbine, and also described a machine which worked on the principle of the “penny in the slot.” Even the X-rays were the' sport of fancy long before they became the business of grave men, though Dr Andrew Blair rather misdated them when ho predicted their appearance in the “Annals of the Twenty-ninth Century.” In his fantastic adventures at that period, he is shown a wonderful method of making things transparent. Students of zoology studied animals whose skin was like a glass case, revealing the muscles within. “In others all was perspicuous except the bones, with the view of their being subservient to the study of osteology’.” As for Bulwer Lytton’s “Vril,” its wonders wore worked, no doubt, by radium—though we have u;.t. yet got quite so far as the powertipp'al wand which killed when the i.caret merely pointed it at the victim and said “die!” and was the very ie-atest motiiod of capital punishment.