Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/56

 will be visible before the receiving teleautoscope wirelessly ex rapport with the former. Thus by telephone, by phonograph, and by teleautoscope, a wireless conversation will combine all the advantages of a personal interview and a written correspondence.

No doubt the post-office system of this country, despite occasional lapses, is as nearly perfect as any human institution, in the present state of society, can be reasonably expected to be. But it is equally certain that in so far as postal communication is required at all in the new age it will have to be vastly improved both as to speed and precision, compared with what we now, sometimes rather thanklessly, enjoy. For instance, that impatient age will certainly not tolerate the inconvenience of having to send out to post its letters and parcels, or the tardiness of having these articles sorted and passed on for delivery only at intervals of half an hour or so. We may take it for granted that every well-equipped business office will be in direct communication, by means of large-calibred pneumatic tubes, with the nearest post-office, And however rapidly and however frequently the trains or airships of the period may travel, the process of making up van loads of mail matter for despatch to remote centres, and redistribution there, is far too clumsy for what commerce will demand a hundred years hence. No doubt the soil of every civilised