There is wonderful advancement in telegraphing, pictures and fac-simile documents being sent over the wires, when wires are required; although in most cases wires are not needed; and what few there are, lie hidden from public view. There are, indeed, some inventors so expert that they can telegraph pictures in natural colors, taking advantage of the great improvements in photography, by which any object can, at one exposure, be photographed permanently in its proper colors.
By the new system of telegraphic printing, news is set up in several cities simultaneously, in column width, all ready to be worked off on the great hourly papers, which with their beautiful colored illustrations, are a marvel as well as a convenience.
A newly-discovered process transmits from the scene of any great event, as a conflagration, convention, or battle, an accurate photograph in colors, which is reproduced in one or a hundred cities, there to be printed in the local journals, which latter have become, in fact, hourly bulletins of the on-goings of the neighborhood and of the world at large.
Telegraphic and telephonic communication with moving railway trains has been for forty years an accomplished fact, so that the business man, desiring to keep up his correspondence from and with his office, while travelling, can readily do so; and may, in fact, from time to time, talk with those at home; while a statesman may from his seat in a pneumatic or electric railway car, address his fellow-legislators in session assembled.
Vessels at sea may be communicated with by both telegraph and telephone, no wire being employed. Soundings are automatically indicated and recorded as the vessel moves along, so that the log not only is made up as the voyage progresses, but serves as a chart to guide the course.
In the homes of the masses as well as in those of the millionaires, there is little of comfort or convenience to be desired. The luxuries of 1893 are the necessities of 1943; while to these have been added refinements undreamed of fifty years before.
Houses made of concrete in one piece, without joint, defy wind, storm and the intrusion of “rats and mice and such small deer.”
In every house, there is a system of piping and wiring by which heating-gas, lighting-gas and oxygen; hot and cold, salt and fresh water, steam and electric lighting and telephone service are laid on; while thorough ventilation is effected by a system of exhaust operated from a central station. The sanitary appliances are under control of the municipal authorities; and disinfecting solutions are as necessary a part thereof, as the supply of fresh or salt water which flushes out the waste-pipes.
The law, which is the conservator of health as well as of morals and of peace, compels every house to have bathtubs in proportion to the number of people living therein; and bathing is practically made compulsory. Public baths in which, as in the days of the ancient Romans, men meet for social converse and the transaction of business, are maintained in every town of any importance; medicated and electrified plunges and showers being under the management of experts in hydropathic sanitation.
In the houses of the wealthy, and in the clubs, the opera is “wired on,” just as hot and cold water, warm and cold air, electricity, and other conveniences are in the same way “laid on.” In fact, the celebrated preachers are heard by those who prefer to stay at home; every one may sit in his or her chair and get the utterances of the most distinguished orators as well as of the most celebrated singers and musicians.