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176 ILLUSTRATED WORLD
of sufficient capacity to do anything demanded.
And the source of the current which
the motor uses will be falling water!
In the age when this aeroautocraft dots
the landscape, rides the lakes and rivers
and darts through the air, every waterfall
"in the land—indeed, every waterfall
the world over—will be harnessed, and
will deliver wireless power to the ether.
Whoever will, may tap this constant
stream of power, and use it as much, as
often, and as long as he likes. Unquestionably
the use will be limited by law,
and a fee paid by every operator of any
wireless power craft, proportioned to the
size of his motor. But because the
stream of power will be constant, there
can be no circumscribing a journey by
time, distance or lack of supplies.
If the reader has followed this prediction
to this point without finding any impossibility
in the proposed structure, let
him not lay down this article in disgust
merely because while we have automobiles,
motor boats and aeroplanes, we
have not, as yet, wireless power. Let him
recall the enthusiastic ridicule given
Marconi when he proposed wireless
messages from continent to continent, and
the nonchalance with which these same
sceptics read their wireless-informed
newspaper on shipboard or sell stocks
in London via wireless from New York,
today. Let him remember that it was
mathematically demonstrated that a
heavier-than-air mechanism never could
fly—but it does! Let him recall the famous
prediction of a world-renowned
scientist, before a scientific congress, that
"it was axiomatic that man could never
know the composition of stars or sun because
he couldn't get to them, or them to
him." Then came Fraunhoffer, the spectroscope,
and now we know as much
about what composes the most distant
stars as we do about what composes the
earth!
But if it appeals as a poor argument
that because the impossibility of one year
is the fact of the next, let him consider
this fact. We already transmit power by
"wireless—wireless telegraphy and telephony
were otherwise impossible.
When it is demonstrable that nature
can accomplish anything, it is reasonable
to suppose that man can accomplish the
same thing. For years the argument
"well, birds fly, but man can't" was the
answer to this. It is so no longer. And
The Aeroautocraft Will Banish These Fuel
Troubles