Dawn of the Wireless Phone (1901)
Wednesday, December 1, 2010 at 5:54PM ;)
William Edward Ayrton (source: Wikimedia)Susan J. Douglas has a fascinating essay about early wireless telegraphy in the book Imagining Tomorrow: History, Technology and the American Future, which was edited by Paleo-Future Legend Joe Corn.
Douglas excerpts a prediction by Professor William Edward Ayrton that appeared in a 1901 magazine called The Century. In it, Ayrton said that wireless telegraphy would soon allow people to talk over long distances in a highly targeted manner. The phrasing of the piece is remarkably relevant to the mobile phone as Ayrton describes a person's ability to "call to a friend he knew not where."
In commenting on Mr. Marconi's paper (read before the Society of Arts in May) Professor Ayrton said that we were gradually coming within thinkable distance of the realization of a prophecy he had ventured to make four years before, of a time when, if a person wanted to call to a friend he knew not where, he would call in a very loud electromagnetic voice, heard by him who had the electromagnetic ear, silent to him who had it not. "Where are you?" he would say. A small reply would come, " I am at the bottom of a coalmine, or crossing the Andes, or in the middle of the Atlantic." Or, perhaps in spite of all the calling, no reply would come, and the person would then know that his friend was dead. Think of what this would mean, of the calling which goes on every day from room to room of a house, and then think of that calling extending from pole to pole, not a noisy babble, but a call audible to him who wants to hear, and absolutely silent to all others. It would be almost like dreamland and ghostland, not the ghostland cultivated by a heated imagination, but a real communication from a distance based on true physical laws.
This is the case for this wonderful handmaiden of modern development at the present moment. So much is absolutely assured; so much more is tentatively ascertained; vastly greater things are predicted for the future. That the fullest success may visit the inventor and his system, that this accompaniment to modern progress may be perfected beyond cavil, and that the whole world may soon come to enjoy the great benefits of this splendid exploit, must be the hope of every well-wisher of the progress and enlightenment of the human race.
From The Century Magazine of November 1901 to April 1902, quoting Engineering Magazine of July, 1901.
Previously on Paleo-Future:
Reader Comments (6)
Ah, this reminds me of a Popular Mechanics article written in 1909 describing the wireless future as predicted by Nikola Tesla.
"It turns out that the legendary inventor and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla (1856 to 1943) predicted mobile phones in 1909. In an interview with the New York Times (pictured below), published in Popular Mechanics, Tesla states that "It will soon be possible, for instance, for a business man in New York to dictate instructions and have them appear in type in London or elsewhere. He will be able to call from his desk and talk with any telephone subscriber in the world. It will only be necessary to carry an inexpensive instrument no bigger than a watch, which will enable its bearer to hear anywhere on sea or land for distances of thousands of miles." Read the full Popular Mechanics article from 1909 below."
http://recombu.com/news/nikola-tesla-predicted-mobile-phones-in-1909_M11683.html
I recall Arthur C. Clarke quoting this article decades later in an essay about the possibility of wrist-mounted satellite phones.
The phrase "...the person would then know his friend was dead" always struck me as slightly horrifying, as if one would be obligated to leave the ringer on at all hours and answer all calls lest people think you had flatlined. Fortunately the reality is a little different.
This sounds to me more like a pager, rather than a cell phone.
We still do not have the ability to phone anyone crossing the Andes, but soon Everest will have wireless. (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/bits-pics-video-calls-from-the-top-of-the-world/)
To debase myself by not living up to Mr. Ayrton's poetical command of the English language - that's super freaky. So is D. Burke's Tesla article.
So glad I found your blog! I thought no one, besides me, was interested in this sort of thing.
I think up until the 80s this prediction was viewed as bold as those about flying cars and jetpacks. You would easily meet a person telling you 255 arguments "why mobile phone won't ever take off".
What I find the most hilarious about past futurism isn't that they got so much wrong (wrong is the expected outcome, really) but that they somehow actually managed to get a few things right. It is remarkable to me that someone 100 years ago, when even radio barely worked and weighed a ton, would be able to make the predictive leap to mobile phones!
I'm chalking it up to luck.