A Glance Ahead at the Surprises Science Has

in Store for Us and a Prophetic Picture of Our

Great American Cities Half a Century Hence

As thevWife Sit* at the Telephone to Talk Everybody Will Be His Own Taxicafc.
to Her Hu&band m His Office, She Will With a Simple Wireless Arrangement in
See Him and His'.Desk" and All the Your Hat or Using Cane of Parasol.
r - Surrounding Room as Plainly as if You Will Go to Business or Shop-
She-Were There with Him. ping on Electric Skates at Any
Speed You Desire.
By Hugo Gernsback, Indeed, some of the sunlight power
Editor of Radio News* Science and Inven- plants can be located right in the heart
tion, and The Experimenter.
of the city, if desired, and such plants will
Member-; of American Physical Society.
be sufficient to take care of the power

F
EW-, people have patience- with a for our office buildings and smaller
prophet. Most people live .only to- manufacturing shops.
day^ to-morrow is an unknown The tops of our tallest buildings will be
quantity. .Tfee remarkable thing about the flat and glass-covered. They will have
scientific prophet is that, as a rule, his airplane landing platforms on which all
wildest flights of imagination have proved kinds of airplanes, or even the trans-
absolutely inadequate to the progress that Atlantic planes of the future will land.
actually occurred long before the time O.ur large office buildings, or, for-that
assigned In the prophecy was reached. matter, private houses, will have real gar-
When Jules Verne wrote his prophetic dens with large trees on top of the roofs,
books some fifty years agor he was ridi- as has already been tried experimentally
culed not a-little. He had "'invented" the with smaller plants in some of our large
submarine, almost down to the last nut cities.
All of our buildings and houses are due
and bolt He even had it propelled elec- for a great revolution. In the Winter-
trically, and there were few things he had time all of our buildings will be warm,
overlooked; When his story first ap- and in the Summertime they will be cooj.
peared, it was held.that the device was The future buildings and houses will be
fashioned along the principle of a ther-
impossible. Twenty years later his mos bottle. Each wall' will be double,
prophecy had been fulfilled. and' the space between the "walls will be
When we look back fifty years, it is filled with cork or some other poor heat
amazing to find the tremendous progress conductor.
that has been wrought by electricity, the At the present time as soon as we hea*.
mysterious fluid. • a room the heat is dissipated through
Fifty years ago there was no telephone. the walls and through the windows. By
There was no skyscraper, because we had having double walls and double or tripl"
no electric elevators. There was no elec- window panes, a small electric heater will
tric light, there were no moving pictures, keep a big room warm. In the Summer-
there were no electric trolley cars, no time, on the hottest day, our rooms will be
electric trains, no tunnels under rivers be- nice and cool, because no heat can get into
cause we had no electric trains to keep the room. All year around, windows will
us from suffocating. Wireless telegraphy be kept closed, the same as they are now
fifty years ago would have been held as in the Winter; of. course, there will be
preposterous. The suggestion to send a some ventilation in-order to give us air,
picture from- New York to London but this air will be cooled in the Summer
through the air without wires would have and heated in the Winter.
called forth a storm of ridicule. We must stop here, -dfirst, for lack of
How will this world look 'to us fifty space and second, because we do not wish
years hence? to be ridiculed. We dp not wish to delve
If the rate of population is maintained, into the future of what will be going on
as it has been in the past, all large cities inside' of these buildings, because we
will at least be three or four times as large probably would riot be believed.
as they arc now. A city like Chicago, for The following arc some of the impos-
instance, will probably have 10,000,000 sible things that will have become pos-
inhabitants. New York City will probably sible fifty years hence:
have anywhere from 12,000,000 to 15,- By that time, we shall be able to send
000,000, with other cities in proportion. all sorts of materials by radio. If you
How will this tremendous population be think that it is impossible to transmit a
taken care of, as, for instance, going to carload of coul thousands of miles, you
and from work? need only go back less than fifty years,
In ail our large cities transportation has when it would have been thought equally
become well nigh intolerable. It seems impossible to have the street cars; of Syra-
that it will be necessary^to have streets cuse, N. Y., run by the power generated
arranged in such a way that the various by Niagara Falls. Today no one thinks
traffics can be taken care of in a more anything of this.
adequate manner than is possible today. To anyone who doubts that solids can
Every city will probably have a so-called be transported through space it should be
belt line, similar to that shown in our pointed out that the same thing is being
illustration. The top level will be for done right now. Every time an X-ray
light passenger vehicles, autos and the picture is taken, solid particles leave the
X-ray tube, being shot right through the
like. glass walls of the tube. These small parti-
- There is no doubt that all of these will cles, which are being shot at tremendous
be propelled electrically by that time. In speeds, then impinge upon the photo-
the accompanying illustration you sec a graphic plate, if such is in the path, where
wire line running along the top of the they blacken the plate, which we see
structure. This line will give its power visually after the plate is developed.
by radio, not only to the automobiles, .A similar action takes place with
buses, etc., but it will serve to propel radium. Alpha and Beta particles, which
pedestrians as well. are given off by radium, are just as
Each pedestrian will roll on electric solid substances as bricks or pieces of
skates, such as have been constructed steel. These particles are shot off from
even today. An insulated wire running
from the skate to the head or shoulder the radium substances.
of the skater will be sufficient to take In time it will be possible to do the
the power from the radio power line, an-1 same thing by radio, tn other words, let
we shall then all be propelled electrically us say, a brick will be disintegrated into
at a pace at least four or five times as its elements and radiated out into space
fast as we walk today. the same as radio waves, or light waves,
Underneath the first level in the pic- are now radiated, to be reassembled at
ture we have the elevated railway much as the receiving station.
.it is now, electrically propelled, of course. This may seem quite incredible today,
This railway, however, will -make much but it is not at all so to the up-to-date
greater speed than we now know, due to scientist who can see into the future.
the different manner of construction, as Fifty years hence, we shall not be
v/ell as to better track-and other vital ele- using'our wasteful electric bulbs either,
ments of construction. Below the elevated which waste over OS per cent of the-
railway we have continuous moving plat- energy put into them. We shall have cold
forms. There will be three such moving light, and we shall utilize nearly all th"
platforms alongside of each other. The energy, instead of ihrowihg,,riearly all of
first platform will move only a few miles Cities Will Grow Bigger and the Great Pressing Problem of Transportation of Persons and Things Will Be Solved by Moving Plat- it away in wasteful heat. '• .
per hour, the second at eight or ten miles forms, Avenue* for Wireless Propelled Skaters, and Tunnels at Enormous Depths Below the Surface, While the Weather Con- Movies by radio! Why not? You will
per hour, and the third at twelve or fif- be -able to have a moving picture pro-
trol Station Will Provide Rain or Sunshine at Will. duced in some central plant and projected
teen mile's, per hour. . ' • • • ' '," . .••'••. From Drawing Copyright b y "Practical Electrics.' in your home, on your yacht, or on your
You step upon -the slowest moving one camping trip, the "picture being- sent by
from terra firma and move to the faster radio, an»5 received and projected upon
ones and take your seat. Then arriving ening rain, or, if necessary, produce rain be greatly stimulated, as recent high fre- into us, and how in popular parlance it the aerial you are able to draw stinging
your screen. All this is perfectly possible.
at your station, you can either take the as needed during the hot spells or during quency experiments on plants have shown. "peps us up." If we could be under such sparks from the car a.nd from the oc-
Fifty years hence, we shall surely have
lift to the top platform or else you can the night. , Our crops and plants will grow practically stimulus twenty-four hours a day and, cupants, because the automobile, due to
The qUesti6n is often asked: "What ef- , two to ten times as quickly and the crops as we all know, it is perfectly harmless, conducting its rubber tires, is insulated - from tha' the "telephot," whereby we shall be en-
get off upon the "elevated level" and take ground, while you, standing abled to see each other over the phone,
the fast train there, which stops only fect do radio stations have on living- beings will be more productive under this electri- it certainly ' would increase our working-
.ficatioji. Under, such stimulation it will efficiency to a very marked extent. It on the ground, are not insulated. Now, instead of being satisfied with the. voice,
every thirty or forty blocks. Or, if you and on plants?"
do not wish this, you can descend by the At the present time there is practically , be quite possible .to raise'crops at least would probably do away with sui-h then, the power of NAA is comparatively
weak compared with the radio super-sta-
as we are today. Much progress has been
made on this invention, and many models
same ejevator down to the local subway. no effect for the simple reason that the twice or perhaps more often during the common ailments as headaches. It would tions we shall have in the future. built, and while so far .nothing practical
On the other hand you can take an broadcast stations, as well as. the com- year; and the most interesting part about improve our digestion. Rheumatism would
Perhaps it will be possible for children has. been developed, we are getting there
inter-urban subway, or if you desire you mercial radio ' stations, send out/a very this is that it will cost the farmer abso- be practically unknown, and the "nervous UTHjcr such electrification to grow up more by 'degrees.
can go still further-down^where you strike diminutive amount of power. lutely nothing except for fertilizer. And wrecks" would only be found in ancient
Fifty years from now, with super-radio this he requires anyway. histories. In a small way, the electrifica- quickly without bad effects. Under con- The. chances are that if someone run?
the long distance subway^ traveling at the across this fifty years from now, he will
rate of about two hundred miles per hour. stations generating millions or billions of
/
Outside of these effects there are, how- tiqn effects just mentioned may be ac- stant electrification it may be possible,
kilowatts, the situation will probably ever, other physiological effects on the tually experienced today in the vicinity fifty years from now, that a child of six severely condemn the writer of this for
This willbe at a depth of 400 feet.- will be mentally and physically equal to his great lack of imagination, for, no
The .lower street level is given over to change. The beneficial .action will then human body that should be mentioned. of any large radio station. matter how wild the predictions may seem
trucking only. There are no pedestrians, be felt by everyone, no matter where, TSvery one knows of the Beneficial effect For instance, the Government station the youth .of eighteen today.
at Arlington, Va. (NAA),. is so powerful The future city will receive its power now, they will .look very tarne fifty years
on this level. «- located on this globeV By that time, the that we experience when we * grasp the hence. If someone had tried to explain
Fifty years hence our scientists will high frequency currents will have be- handles 'of a small electrifying; machine, that if you walk underneath the aerial by radio, of course, from distant water-
falls, or from distant sunlight power radio to you fifty years ago, or the X-ray,
have solved the problem of controlling the •come sufficiently powerful to have a vital- known better under the popular name.of wires, which are 800 feet above your
or radium, he would have been put down
weather, at least as far as our cities arc izing effect on every human being. We the electric shocking machine. Tech- head, you will experience a tingling sen- plants. are going
Tremendous quantities of energy
to' waste today, all of which can as ripe "for the insane asylum, and you
concerned. Huge high frequency electric shall all be electrified then in the full .nically this is known as Faradization. sation on the soles of your feet as you
We know how this treatment stimulates step on the moist earth. If an automo- bo collected and sent to our large centers may rest assured "that we arc no different
current structures, placed on top of our meaning of the term. , _ • ' , . today.
largest buildings, will either diapel threat- Not only that, but plant life will also our'nerves, how it injects new vitality bile drives along the road underneath by wireless.
(C) 1625, by American Weekly, Inc. Great BrlUUi HSghts Bcsorved.