HOW WE MAY SEE HISTORY BY MEANS OF TELEVISION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19075, 21 May 1930, Page 8

HOW WE MAY SEE HISTORY BY MEANS OF TELEVISION.

To-Day’s Signed Article

By

A. Corbett-Smith.

(An interview in A.D. 1972, with Professor Murini, of Pisa University.)

Will it be possible in the future for the radio inventor to give us the speech uttered by our ancestors 100 or 1000 years ago? A fascinating idea, certainly. And it is one with which set. Petal authors have toyed since the coming of radio. Historic television is conceivable from a scientific angle. Let us pretend for a minute or two, shall we? Let us imagine an “inventor ” in, say, 1972. One, Protestor Mur ini, of the University of Pisa. For fifteen years he has been experimenting. He has triumohed. I have secured an interview with him.

“M Y STARTING POINT, observed the professor, “really lay in that remark of Solterro’s a couple of hundred years ago—that nothing in the world was ever lost or destro3 r ed. Even fleeting images. That it went on existing somewhere, although, perhaps, in another form.” I did not remember Solterro, but I nodded assent. “The recapture from space of electromagnetic vibrations,” continued Murini, “has, of course, long since been accomplished. But what of the unfathomable era of time before science came to apply radiomagnetism to the transmission of human speech, of light? Was no recapture possible there? Must science remain powerless? I decided to experiment, and with light first of all. My basis must obviously be reflection.” “But how ?” I began. The Main Principle. Murini raised his head. “The public has alread\' been informed upon my contraction of the corpuscular and wave theories of light energy. I need not repeat to you the theory which later I fully established,. But one of the first things I discovered was that only by working from the plumb centre of a radiating circle could I win any adequate results. In other words, I must search for the reflected image from the precise 'spot whence that image was originally transmitted.” “And what, professor, may I ask, was your main principle?” “The prismatic antrobe of the Diplow Brothers gave me the secret. It was the application of the zeta theory of internexual infinities which ” But 1 cannot reproduce the flood of technicalities which Murini hurled at me, I am no scientist. But the medium, I gathered, was a form of radio telescopic mirror in quadruplicate, giving images microscopic in size. The objective was the centripetal bar (if so one ma3' term it) of the ether waves reflected back to earth from selected distant stellar points of the second and third magnitudes. “May I see an illustration?’* I asked. “What was 3'our first success?” Television Illustrated. “A pure accident,” replied Murini, turning over a portfolio of photographic print enlargements, about 24 x 15 inches in size. “But, as so often happens, that fraction of a second in an early experiment gave me a result which in clarity, I have hardly excelled.” I recognised the picture at once. Or, rather, the locality. It was the Acropolis of Athens, crowned by the Parthenon. But a Parthenon, not in the noble ruin of these days, but at the height of its glory during the Golden Age of Greece. The approaches, the broad steps, the sun-drenched courts were thronged with folk passing up and down. Beneath one of the might}' pillars two little children were placing a doll into a small go-cart. _ A fruit-seller leaned over his stall watching them. That this was the truth and no cinematograph “fake” I could not doubt for an in-

stant. The detail was too certain, too unexpected and strange for any invention. The picture was, in effect an instantaneous photograph in colour taken some 2400 y*ears ago. Murini smiled at my expression of utter stupefaction. “I agree,” he replied to my unspoken comment. “That is the best. These others are of interest, but casual and inadequate.” And one b>' one he handed me the prints for examination. Seeing 2000 B.C. I could identify no other, but Murini explained. “This,” he said, “I secured from the Tokio Observatory, in the heart of a great cit3'. I take that figure in the foreground to be a fisherman in a coracle. The date is, perhaps, 2000 B C. But one cannot tell.” “And what periods of time have y r ou investigated?” I asked. “Calculating from the distances of my stellar points from earth and the speed of light waves—you will remember that a lightra3 r from the sun ninety-two million odd miles distant, reaches earth in some eight minutes —these early images of mine all represent a period of form two to four thous* and > r ears ago. This, for example, I secured from the summit of the Second Pyramid at Gizeh, built circa 3640 B.C. You will observe that the picture might well be one of to-da\'. But I am swiftly extending and accurately measuring my researches in both directions of time.” Continuity. “Do I understand, professor, that you will give us radio transmission of scenes from history in continuity movement?” “Undoubtedly,” Murini replied, “Come, I will show 3'ou.” In a small theatre adjoining his laboratory Murini displa>'ed for me three films, each of some fifteen seconds duration. The colours were somewhat crude and the pictures themselves were rather blurred or under* exposed, but the scenes, as depicted, gave vivid promise of swift and certain technical improvement. One film showed the busy qua>*-side of the port of Athens, presumably of the same period as the Parthenon picture; the second, the orchestron, or arena, of a great open-air theatre, with the chorus in movement; the third, secured near the ancient Tamar, in Palestine, suggested some kind of a fight between a score of men before the mud walls of a small town. A camel, placidly chewing up a tent in the foreground, gave a note of comic relief. “That,” remarked Murini, “may well be a scene from the advance of the ancient Jews into Canaan.” I had observed that all the pictures were in bright sunlight. “In perhaps a year’s time, my young friend, 3'ou and a few million others will.be able to witness these historic events living again upon your own home-screens. Education will suffer another revolution. But — you will honour me with your company at lunch, and afterwards I have something more to show 3'ou.” (Anglo-American N.S. Copyright.)

CNOW is a bad absorber of heat from the sun, and air in contact with it is cooled. It is also a bad conductor of heat, and when the ground is covered with snow it retains its heat, which cannot pass through the snow above. Thus snow on the ground is cold for the animals above it but warm for the plants beneath.