Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/127

 is severe, we shall bring but a poor imaginative equipment to a task so colossal as that of guessing what the next century will be capable of if we refuse to believe that something in the nature of Hertzian waves, or something propagated as these are propagated, can be used to carry impulse to machinery at a distance from the source of power. The imaginative faculty which boggles at this effort will probably overlook the fact that the mere transmission is only a part of the difficulty which is pretty sure to have been overcome by this time next century, It will not be enough to launch waves capable of being used where they are intended to be used. We must also discover how to launch them so that they may be incapable of being used anywhere else. I read the other day the report of a police-court case in which a man was charged with "stealing electricity" (which seems a rather doubtful indictment from the point of view of the lawyer) by obtaining the use of a public telephone station without paying the usual fee. The electricians of a hundred years hence will certainly have to find out how to prevent the purloining of wireless force, and perhaps the police will have to devise means of detecting this at present somewhat recondite crime. This question of wireless transmission lies within the province of discovery rather than that of invention. Before it can receive actuality we have to do more than utilise existing