"Well," said the traveler, "perhaps there is another law, or perhaps there is a higher law than the law of gravity, which, when it is understood, will explain how planes can fly."
"That's just what I'd expect a religious fanatic to say," said a man who had been listening in. "Science can jump into the trash as far as you religious types are concerned."
"Not at all," said the traveler. "But your science is not perfect. You do not yet know everything about everything, what is possible and what is not possible."
"Go take your religion to a church and keep it away from serious people," the man concluded, stomping out of the room.
In the weeks that followed, the traveler was ridiculed and denounced in the newspapers, being called everything from a con artist to a prospective mental patient. (The scientific journals said nothing about the man because they considered the whole matter as beneath serious thought.) As a result, the traveler was often left to himself, and so he pulled out his tiny portable television set and began to watch it. Just by chance, some visitors happened to come by and see the little box. They were very impressed and urged the traveler to market his invention for putting a movie inside such a small space.
In a few days, word had spread about this mini-movie and several scientists were convinced (after some debate) to come see it, together with some engineers representing the movie projector manufacturers of the nation.
They were sufficiently impressed as they watched a few scenes, but when the traveler changed channels, their enthusiasm turned to gaping astonishment. The traveler switched all around, showing them twenty channels in all. Such was the amazement and even incredulity of the engineers that they already began to suspect some kind of trick. The scientists looked confused.
"You certainly have a lot of films stored in that little box," one of the engineers said. "How do you get them all in there?"
"The pictures are not in the box," said the traveler. "They are all over in the air around us. This antenna brings them in and the set makes them visible." The engineers laughed while the scientists sneered, the latter now sorry they had allowed themselves to be talked into coming to hear this notorious nut.
"Come now," one of the scientists said. "Do you expect us to believe that there are pictures floating around us in the air—pictures we cannot see? And that twenty sets of these pictures are all present at once, scrambled together, just waiting for that little box to take them and sort them out? What do you take us for anyway—a bunch of gullible greenhorn fools?"