WIRELESS POSSIBILITIES
WIRELESS POSSIBILITIES
BY
A. M. LOW
Late Hon. Asst. Professor of Physics
at the Royal Artillery College
Author of “The Two-Stroke Engine,” etc.
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, butthe result of the march of progress is more often entirely neglected.
It would seem desirable that the future should be studied withreasonable accuracy if we are to protect ourselves from the ill-effectsand 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 ourlives, every little comfort which separates us from the cave-man, tothe science of invention, it seems strange that so long should haveelapsed before this remarkable faculty received proper recognition.
Invention, in many ways, is the science and art of continuity ofthought. The inventor is often referred to as a strange person; verytrue, very necessarily true when we realise that his doings must bestrange or new, to be of value. To train oneself to forget the smellof the beefsteak when hungry[Pg 10] and to continue the natural sequence ofideas which may be passing through the mind, is to train the brain toimprove. If we can but sweep a crossing a very little cleaner thanthat next to our own, perhaps we have surely accomplished one of thegreatest duties of all.
If not one day is spent without something learnt, surely we haveachieved the greatest object of work and enabled ourselves to realisethat there are no such things as basic facts.
Invention is not labour, for the latter is doing something we do notwish to do in some one else’s time, and invention like all good thingsis 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 asher devotees[Pg 11] rejoiced in the greatness of Diana of the Ephesians: weshould realise every time we undress that we are little removed fromthe animal, and that before many centuries have passed we shall be heldin almost