William Edward Ayrton Quotes
We are gradually coming within thinkable distance of the realization of a prophecy I had ventured to make four years ago, 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 ... a real communication from a distance based on true physical laws.
William Edward Ayrton, 1847-1908, English physicist and inventor, First anticipation of the modern cell phone, Lecture on Marconi’s work with radio, English Society of Arts, May 15, 1901
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It took a while but radios and TVs were produced in portable versions, and of course now we have Wi Fi, the Internet and Smart Phones and Tablets. Tesla was one of the great American immigrant scientists. He found in America the kind of intellectual and operational freedom that did not exist in the rigid, monarch-controlled, Austro-Hungarian Empire. He developed patents and techniques that formed the technological bases of radio, telephone long distance, TV, cell phones, Wi Fi, just to name a few. Most important he was Thomas Edison’s great nemesis. Edison invented DC electric generators that could power factories or entire streets in a neighborhood. Tesler invented and developed AC electrical technology which could power entire cities and he could move electricity over long distances which Edison could not. Tesler was one of the first scientists to conceive of and try to implement “Big Science” where there were huge capital investments to develop machines and systems to do what had never been done before—philosophically like the CERN Hadron Collider. Tesler even convinced a large corporation to finance the construction of a massive building and tower so he could experiment with the wireless transmission of electricity. However, as the industrial democracies have learned, Big Science can only be funded by governments and it often takes sever working in consort to afford the huge investment that is required. In Tesler’s era, the federal and state governments did not fund scientific research so his work was not only technically ahead of his time but also conceptually. He anticipated most of the problems and need for a national power grid that was challenging America even at the beginning of the 21st century.
One of the great scientists of all time was totally wrong when it came to predicting the practical utility of the technological developments of science. In all fairness to Kelvin, once he had actually tried the new technologies, he became a great enthusiast for them and helped introduce them to the world.
The Commerce Department was then in charge of Radio regulation and policy. Hoover, a great administrator and businessman, had a terrible record with policy making. He almost always zigged when he should have zagged. He let General Douglas MacArthur loose to brutalize protesting veterans, would not use the Federal Government to provide any relief or stimulus as Roosevelt did in the Great Depression, and here, where he took a very left wing position on Radio Advertising, he was wrong again as it was the very thing he wanted to avoid that provided all the sponsors resources for all the great radio program development.
William Edward Ayrton, FRS was an English physicist and electrical engineer.
