WIRELESS POSSIBILITIES TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW SERIES +DAEDALUS+, or Science and the Future By J. B. S. Haldane +ICARUS+, or The Future of Science By Bertrand Russell, F.R.S. +THE MONGOL IN OUR MIDST+, or Man and His Three Faces By F. G. Crookshank, M.C.F.R.C.P. +WIRELESS POSSIBILITIES+ By Prof. A. M. Low In Preparation +TANTALUS+, or The Future of Man By F. C. S. Schiller E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY WIRELESS POSSIBILITIES BY A. M. LOW _Late Hon. Asst. Professor of Physics at the Royal Artillery College Author of “The Two-Stroke Engine,” etc._ [Illustration: Logo] _With four diagrams_ NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 681 Fifth Avenue Copyright 1924 By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY _All Rights Reserved_ Printed in the United States of America TO JOHN LOW PREFACE The effects of history upon the advance of science are often noted, but the result of the march of progress is more often entirely neglected. It would seem desirable that the future should be studied with reasonable accuracy if we are to protect ourselves from the ill-effects and obtain the benefit from the good fortunes of invention. A.M.L. WIRELESS POSSIBILITIES INVENTION Considering the very evident fact that we owe every detail of our lives, every little comfort which separates us from the cave-man, to the science of invention, it seems strange that so long should have elapsed before this remarkable faculty received proper recognition. Invention, in many ways, is the science and art of continuity of thought. The inventor is often referred to as a strange person; very true, very necessarily true when we realise that his doings must be strange or new, to be of value. To train oneself to forget the smell of the beefsteak when hungry and to continue the natural sequence of ideas which may be passing through the mind, is to train the brain to improve. If we can but sweep a crossing a very little cleaner than that next to our own, perhaps we have surely accomplished one of the greatest duties of all. If not one day is spent without something learnt, surely we have achieved the greatest object of work and enabled ourselves to realise that there are no such things as basic facts. Invention is not labour, for the latter is doing something we do not wish to do in some one else’s time, and invention like all good things is a work of love. Possibly that is why it is never paid! We are too apt, I think, all of us, to rejoice in our greatness as her devotees rejoiced in the greatness of Diana of the Ephesians: we should realise every time we undress that we are little removed from the animal, and that before many centuries have passed we shall be held in almost universal contempt. If that does not stir us to do our best, we are indeed a nation of shopkeepers. But even the proprietor of the meanest store relies on his powers of prophecy for his profits.