Personal Glimpses - Dreams That Come True

Whatever the attitude of the incredulous on the subject of dreams, it can not be denied that one man's dreams have developed a habit of coming true. That man is Nikola Tesla, the inventor of the wireless telephone. His latest dream, based on the success of a transcontinental and transoceanic wireless telephone, is that we shall before many decades be ringing up Venus or Mars and talking across millions of miles of space with creatures whose physical structure is unknown to us and whose very existence has been a myth. "My demonstrations in Colorado Springs in 1899," said Tesla in a recent interview, "proved that not only could telegraphic signals be sent across the globe, as I predicted in 1892, but that the faintest modulations of the human voice could be imprest upon the planet as a whole and reproduced at any point irrespective of distance." When this theory has been worked out, as the inventor promises it shall be shortly, we shall have a "world-system" telephone, on which we may call up any other subscriber in any country on the globe. Perchance we shall have also an interplanetary system as well! Remember! — Tesla's dreams come true. What of these other dreams of his, given in an interview recently published in The Manufacturers' Record? —

The next art to be inaugurated is that of picture-transmission by ordinary telegraphic methods and existing apparatus. This idea of telegraphing or telephoning pictures is old, but practical difficulties have hampered commercial realizations. A number of improvements of great promise have been made, and there is every reason to expect that success will soon be achieved.

Another valuable novelty will be a typewriter electrically operated by the human voice. This advance will fill a long-felt want, as it will do away with the operator and save a great deal of tabor and time in offices.

A new and extremely simple electric tachometer is being prepared for the market, and it is expected that it will prove useful in power-plants and central stations, on boats, locomotives, and automobiles.

Many municipal improvements based on the use of electricity are about to be introduced. We are soon to have everywhere smoke-annihilators, dust-absorbers, ozonizers, sterilizers of water, air, food, and clothing, and accident-preventers on streets, elevated roads, and in subways. It will become next to impossible to contract disease-germs or get hurt in the city, and country folk will go to town to rest. and get well.

We are progressing at an amazing pace, but the truth is that even in the fields most successfully exploited the ground has only been broken. What has been so far done by electricity is nothing as compared with what the future has in store.