[FOREWORD]
BY LEE DE FOREST, Ph.D., D.Sc., D.Eng.
Father of Radio
No book in two generations, no book since Jules Verne, has undertaken to do what Hugo Gernsback in the first decade of our century has here so outstandingly achieved.
He is gifted with a mind eternally alert, trained from childhood to observe and think. His unbridled imagination has ever fed on the facts of science and technology which his habit of omniverous reading has been continually storing within his brain. As result of this unusual combination his tireless energies have been directed, since childhood in Luxembourg, to writing popular science in a fashion peculiarly attractive to young men and boys who, like himself, possess a keen interest in all realms of physical Nature.
His first essay in this field was his monthly magazine, Modern Electrics, the first to attempt to outline in language understandable by American youth the newly developing science of wireless communication. He made of this first venture into the publishing business a medium wherein, amid serious newsy articles regarding current electrical developments, his eager imagination could find full play. The most outstanding, most extraordinary prophecies which this young clairvoyant had at that time conceived—all based on his keen observations and appreciation of their real significance and trend—he chose to record in the guise of a fanciful romance bearing the strange, cabalistic title of this book.
The author, even at that early date (1911) had a clear conception of future television, then quite unheard of, almost undreamed of. He dubs it "Telephot" and outlines its revolutionary utilities. His hero, Ralph, explains to his enamorata how man has mastered weather-control. Only today has a professor shown New York City how to end its water famine by man-made torrential rains. Years in advance of their advent he describes libraries of microfilm projected on large screens; and news printed electrolytically, without printer's ink. Today we begin to read of this as being partially commercialized. His "Menograph," or thought recorder, is today crudely realized in our lie-detector. By means of his "Hypnobioscope" most of scholastic studying is done while the pupil sleeps. Who is bold enough to scoff at the possibility of such a delightful method? For one, not I.
"Most of the studying was done while one slept," explains Ralph—a statement truly applicable to many a somnolent student's performance today!
Ralph explains, as of the year 2660, the resuscitation of animal (human) life years after the body has been drained of blood. Yet only yesterday a Russian doctor claims to have accomplished this "miracle." His 750-year future has already begun to be realized. Many Utopias are here foretold, such as absolutely permanent non-wearing, metallic highways, where trolley-cars and gas-driven autos are only ancient memories, long obsolete.
"Only electrobiles were to be seen." Here the author badly misjudged the future trend of auto-travel, away from the electric.