"Now, with the development of the world system," continued Tesla, "we shall be able to telephone without wires just as well as telegraph, and to any part of the world just as easily as we now talk to a friend in an adjoining house over the modern wire circuits."
Before going with Doctor Tesla to his great plant out on Long Island to see how he is carrying on these tremendous theories of his, the boy asked him a few more questions about them, for it is a big and intricate question.
"What application will you first make of the wireless transmission of power?"
"My first concern," replied the magician of electricity, "will be to make air and water navigation safe. We have plenty of demonstrations of the value of the wireless telegraph in saving human lives when ships are in danger, in the Republic and Titanic disasters. But also we know that the wireless can be greatly improved upon. With a perfect system of communication, both by wireless telegraph and telephone, consider what it would mean to the navigators of air and ocean craft.
"By the art of telautomatics, which is a part of the broad scheme for the wireless transmission of power, many of the worst dangers of air and water navigation will be avoided, which is right in line with the modern tendency of preventing trouble rather than waiting for it to happen before remedying it." He then went on to enumerate the various telautomatic devices that will be carried by ocean liners and airships of the future, as mentioned in the early part of this chapter.
"Just for instance, how could telautomatics have saved the Titanic?" the inventor was asked.
"You understand, of course," answered Tesla, "that the devices I propose would be of almost inconceivable sensitiveness. They would be the centre of electrical waves, and, as soon as the iceberg got into the path of these waves from the wireless transmission plant to the ship, it would cause the electricity to register an impression of danger ahead. Of course mariners would become so expert in the reading of these danger signals that they could tell the meaning of each one, and alter their course or reverse their engines according to the needs of the case."
"How much have you accomplished in telautomatics at this time?"
"I have made a little submarine boat that will answer to every necessary impulse. The boat contained its own motive power in a storage battery and gear for propulsion, steering sidewise, or upward or downward, and all other accessories necessary for its operation. All of these were worked from a distance by wireless impulses, sent by an oscillator to the circuit in the boat through which magnets and other devices operated the interior mechanism.
"This proved to me the possibility of a high development of telautomatics. When my system is complete, a crewless ship may be sent from any port in the world to any other port propelled by wireless energy from a power plant anywhere on the face of the earth, and controlled absolutely by telautomatics."