BoletiÌn mercantil de Puerto Rico. (San Juan, P.R.) 18??-1918, 1902-03-13
The Possibilities OI The
Wireless telegraph

The London despatch concerning the
p'ars of Signor Malcooi for per
manant wireless telegraph station on
the Cape Breton coast, probably near Sgd
rey, is interesting in several respects. It
proves the firm faith of the inventor and
his financial supporters in the commercial |
value of wireless telegrsphy, and it suggests |
possibilities of world communication of the
most daring yet familiar kind. Msrconi |
would hardly have ventured, as he did a
few days ago. to challenge two of the most
eminent electrical authorities living to
intercept bis messages if he had not perfected
device TO remedy what was declared by
hostile critics to be an incurable defect of
bis system. II must be assumed that he
has discovered, by means of new arrange
ment of codes or in some other way, how to
send q message through the wide air with
as much secrecy as if it had been hidden in
q submerged wire, or pegged, as Prospero
| threatened his tricksy Ariel, within the
knotty entrails of an oak. The inventor
intends building this permanent station
ultimately for business purposes, knowing
we'll the uselessness of his system if any
promiscuous acandering of electric currents
should place the commun cations of com
merce or OF private persons nto the wrong
hands.
The lay mind, which is e,sily optimistic
/ in view of recent scienti lie achievements,
finds no difficulty in imagining wireless
telegraphy an established commonplace in
the near future. It's use ON Ocean-going
ships has already worn off the novelty, and
the remaining triumphs are those merely OF
more extended application of known
principle. But, admitting ignorance as to
whether we shall be soon sending messages
across the Atlantic at cent a word, is
there not something reasonably prophetic in
the remarkable conjur ction, or at least close
association, in the anticipations and realities
of sciences Imaginative minds outrun the
demonstrated truths of science in some cases
by centuries, in others by only few
decades or few years. The London
Spectator" thioks that very entertaining
book might be written by collectiong together
all the cases in which poets and plsywriters
and novelists have anticipated the triumphs
of later sciences. Some of these are worth
noticing, if only to show how lucky the
present generation is il the vantage ground
of solid fact from which it can surrey the
intellectual groupings in the dark of our an
| cestors.
1t is recalled by correspondent in
London Journal that the Spanish dramstist
Oalderon had a very clear provision of Mar
coni's wireless telegraphy. But this, on
examination, was found to refer to the prin-
| ciple of resonance acting on each other. Al
anticipation much nearer the fact is to bs
| found in the writings of Calderon's contem-
porary, Strada, who, in book published in
1917, a year after ShakcSpeare's death,
speaks of correspondence beIiceen two friends
"by the help of a certain loadstons which
had such virtue in it that if it touched two
several needles, when one of the needles 50
touched began to move the other, though at
never SO great distance, moved at the
same time and in the same MANNER" No
wires were needed, but when either of the
two friends wished to communicate, he di-
rected the needle of dial plate toward
every letter of the words he used, and the
distant friend saw the needle on his own dial
plate moving by sympathy to every letter
which that of his correspondent pointed at.
Some scientific admirers of Marconi, includ
ing Prof. Ayrton, think that we shall yet
approximate to the magic simplicity of this
device and talk familisrly across continents.
The precise and searching Imagination of
Swift sometimes led him into stsrtlingly in
genious anticipations of science, notably SO
in his descript on of the discovery the two
satellites of Mars by the Lsputan as
tronomers in GGulliYer's Travelsp. In
1877 Pro-. Hall, the great Wash
ington equatorial, actually discovered two
tiny satellites of Mars under conditions that
aPproximated SO closely to Ssift's guess that
the coincidence seemed almost uncsnny.
And it is declared that, by the same imagi- |
native insight, Fenelon foressw photography |
Rsbelais the moving platforms of today,
Bacon the airship, Ben Jonson the submsri.
ne boat and torpedo, while the Marquis of
Worcester described so many different devi-
ces in his famous "Oentury of inventions,
published in 1906, that one must shake ones |