It was crammed to the ceiling with the weirdest collection of electrical equipment I have ever seen. Generators, dynamos, electric motors. There was enough radio equipment to set up a modest broadcasting station. And in one corner was something big enough to be a cyclotron. Fradin had just about everything in his laboratory.
"Now," said Marvak to the little inventor, "you will please prove the truth of your assertion that power can be transmitted by radio."
That was the thing that Fradin had said. Power by radio! It doesn't sound like much, but let me tell you, it's plenty big. With it, science could come darned close to remaking the face of the globe.
How?
This is the power age. Practically all of our industrial achievements—and through them we have achieved what passes for civilization—have come about through cheap power. Coal, the steam engine, the dynamo, water power. Maybe, not so long in the future, we'll have atomic power, but we don't have it yet. All we have now are coal and water. And possibly 90% of the water power in this country and probably 95% of the water power on earth are going to waste, simply because the waterfalls are usually in mountains and the places where the current is to be used are in cities hundreds and even thousands of miles away. Transmission losses over high lines are so great that electrical energy cannot be efficiently transmitted very far. So the water power goes to waste.
But here we have radio transmitted power. No high lines, hence no high line losses. Of course there would be other losses, but if Fradin said power could be transmitted by radio, he would know how to cure the losses. Radio transmitted power would make electricity so damned cheap that every home in the country could have it.
And this is only part of the picture that Fradin's invention brought into being. Supposing power could be transmitted by radio. Suppose automobiles could pick it up and use it. Then the extremely expensive internal combustion engine that goes into every car could be replaced by cheap motors. The price of cars could be cut in half. Everybody could have one. And operation costs would be next to nothing.
Ocean liners? No more bully, costly steam engines. Boats could take their power out of the air.
And airplanes. There was the most important item of all. No gasoline engines in planes, no engine failures, no crashes because the motor conked out. Air flight spanning the globe.