Through his mind ran the argument he had so often propounded to the
men of his profession. He was firmly convinced a person electrocuted
in an electric chair, was not dead and that he could be revived with
a high frequency apparatus. Many an electrical equipment operator has
been successfully revived after receiving equally as heavy or even more
powerful electrical shocks from high tension apparatus in electrical
central stations. These operators lay on the ground as though really
dead; their hearts do not beat and any doctor would pronounce them
dead; yet many of them are brought to life again.
After official electrocutions an autopsy is performed upon the body,
and the heart removed. This, of course, kills the person, but the
electrical shocks do not necessarily kill.
No state, he had contended, making use of the barbaric electrocution,
would dare to apply high frequency apparatus to a criminal after he had
been removed from the electric chair. It would expose the fact that
many an individual had not been legally and according to law, executed
in the electric chair.
When Carl stopped counting the doctor asked him “Do you hear me?”
Carl wanted to reply in the affirmative, but his voice failed him. So
he nodded his head in answer to the query.
The young physician promptly exclaimed, “Hell you do!”
Carl meekly thought, “I ought to know better.”
He now heard Dr. Thuillier, the chief surgeon, say, “Well, where is
that young American?”
Then someone placed a hand on his left arm and he became unconscious
instantly. From that time on, until three hours later, he knew nothing
of what was happening to him.
Besides the doctors and nurses participating in the operation, there
were several other doctors or internes present to study the case. To
these, Dr. Thuillier explained the nature of the accidental injury and
the method of operating. The work was quite complicated because of the
delay that had ensued since the time of the accident. At the end of an
hour, however, Carl was wheeled back to the ward and put to bed, with
Nurse Grace to watch over him until he came out of the ether.
While still under the ether, Carl dreamed that he had at last perfected
an invention on which he had been working for years. This invention was
the one thing that could be acclaimed as one hundred per cent. perfect.
His long cherished dreams had come true! He had devised an apparatus by
means of which he could throw upon a screen scenes from any part of the
globe, that is, the actual scenes of happenings as they were taking
place at some distant point the very moment we projected them upon the
screen in front of his machine. Incidents taking place thousands of
miles away were pictured before one’s eyes as if they were at the scene
itself. If he wanted a street scene say of San Francisco, Tokio, Paris
or London, all he would have to do would be to place the indicator upon
the dial map, pointing to the city in question, and it was done--the
scene was before his eyes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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