WIRELESS INACCURACIES
I have often wondered whether people realise that broadcasting, at present, is only possible or, shall I say is only popular, because of its extreme impracticability for most forms of secret communication.
Supposing two people had been able to converse privately and with absolute secrecy from other “listeners in,” then we should not mind trusting all our messages to Radio. At present, what can be coded can be decoded, and we are not entranced by the idea of entrusting our pennies to the winds of Heaven and the vagaries of a thunderstorm.
If wireless had really been selective in the first instance, broadcasting would not have been its initial phase.
Wireless at present is excessively inefficient; a few yards from a large broadcasting station the power is measured in millionths of a horse-power, is disseminated in all directions, and is almost without definite selectivity.
When the day comes when we can tune with absolute accuracy; when we can combine waves with accuracy and obtain a directional beam with the shortest waves for re-broadcasting purposes, then we shall obtain real happiness from the results.
Parliament must have its special wave length, the divorce courts of the future will be broadcasted to prevent people from catching cold by waiting outside. It will be quite easy for the Judge, at a doubtful passage, to press a switch and to say, “I think we will cut that out.”
One can imagine broadcasting of the future linking up every city from China to London; one can see special wave lengths for men, and equally special wave lengths for women. And we shall forget the time when ships at sea with ancient sets interfere with the murdering of music by the local amateur.
It has been said that, at present, those in authority find it necessary to choose special voices for the wireless broadcast-delivering. What an idea! The public want to hear everybody. They want to have local events broadcast, irrespective of the operator. They do not want a perfect voice, they want a perfect personality, and it is rather the wireless that must be altered to take any reception than the human voice whose very characteristics delight us.
We are too accustomed to relying upon our senses. We are apt to think that the ear is most delicate. It is nothing of the kind; it cannot even hear notes that delight the heart of a dog, and if one pictures life with the brain of a man, the ear of an antelope, and microscopic eyes, together with the nose of a dog, some little idea of the inefficiency of those few senses which we slightly understand can be obtained.
To live in any town would be impossible: the smells of Bond Street instead of pleasing the dog would tell us of rotting animal matter and alarm us to distraction. We could never sit down upon a beautiful piece of grass without listening to the worms and imagining ourselves with them. We could not bear to drink water for the peculiar bodies we would see in it. The wind in the trees, the people walking down our street or into our rabbit-warrens of flats, would sound like a battle from afar.
It is only a question of relative senses, easily tested by anyone who has the patience to fit an effective microphone to the amplifier purchased in mahogany case at the local “store.”
Wireless inaccuracies abound; anyone who hears its music will agree, but what of their effect upon our bodies!
The air, popularly speaking, must now be full of radio oscillations, and if you tell me that they are negligible in effect I may believe you, but if I hear there is no effect at all, I know that it cannot be true.
It is more than likely that, in the far future, the proper study of oscillatory theories, the proper investigation of the spectrum only very partially explored by a few, will lead us to a better understanding of the nature of life, and will help us to appreciate the theories of electrical sonics. Theories of preventing local thunderstorms, of growing babies and wheat effectively, by electrical or other similar oscillatory means, of helping ourselves to see by wireless and of affecting our health at the end of many generations for the better, may all be developed in the time to come.
If some health effect is produced, why should we not try to render it beneficial? A small effect can be very cumulative in nature. One has only to inspect a human nail to agree with that statement.