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"AERO-AUTO-CRAFT"—THE CAR OF THE FUTURE 177
if nature can show us that power—vast,
irresistible, boundless power, is conveyed
through the ether, there is nothing whatever
unthinkable in the idea that we
can learn to transmit power through the
ether. Heat—which is power—comes to
us in unthinkable amount, via the ether.
Is wireless-power, man made, so unthinkable?
The aeroautocraft of the future will
have a wireless power receiver upon the
upper surface of the monoplane and will
draw its ability to fly, to run, to swim,
from the power currents sent out from
countless central stations, very much
as the trolley car of today takes its power
from its central station anywhere on its
line. The difference will come in the
elimination of the wire!
Is it hard to conceive? If so, it is because
of the habit of thought which
makes what isn't harder to comprehend
than what is. If it were possible to bring
any of the great and intelligent thinkers
of the past, back to the present—Plato or
Hero or Socrates or Euclid, and ask him
which he would consider more difficult—
to project the human voice through the
THE THIRD COMBINATION—THE CURTISS AUTOPLANE
On previous pages we have illustrated an aeroplane that swims, a launch that is also an automobile; here is a practical
automobile, put out by a reputable designing and manufacturing firm, that is also an aeroplane. Here are the three
prerequisite machines; dare anyone say that the aeroautocraft, combining three instead of two qualities in one. is an
idle dream f
air a hundred miles, or power to lift a
man's weight or kill a dog through the
same distance—what would he answer ?
If you told him he might accomplish both
with or without a single strand of fine
wire strung on poles, would it alter his
inability to answer by so much as a single
thought? Of course not! But today we
know power is transmitted only mechanically,
by belts, or electrically, over wires.
and never think that to send ten thousand
horsepower through two slender copper
cables is no whit less astonishing than to
send the same through the ether!