In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

242 ARRAYS
without physical risk. [see Timepieces] What matters is the presence of
an officer at the scene of battle-presence as an agent yet not necessarily
as a body. Although no such technical or military device yet exists,
something similar to it is expected to evolve. On Wednesday, January 27,
the British engineer John Logie Baird introduces to the public his "televisor,"
which makes possible (on a very rudimentary level) the wireless
transmission of moving pictures (Chronik, 21). Baird emphasizes that
such "seeing by telephone" is nothing but the logical consequence of
"hearing by telephone," a feat which has become commonplace in government
and business over the past fifty years (Elsner, Milller, and
Spangenberg, 195). Meanwhile, the wireless transmission of still pictures
is being integrated into the speed-oriented technical repertoire of the
press in France (Annees-memoire, 121) [see Reporters], in Germany
(Chronik, 75), and in the United States, where the New York Times
publishes telephotographic coverage of the September 23 boxing match
between Dempsey and Tunney on the morning following the fight. [see
Boxing] A wireless telephone service that operates fifteen hours a day is
established between Long Island (U.S.) and Rugby (U.K.) in February, at
a minimum cost of seventy-five dollars for three minutes of conversation
(Chronik, 39).
All these rapidly spreading innovations in communications technology
and the new forms of experience that they provide generate an atmosphere
of fascination and almost boundless optimism. Appealing to such
attitudes, the title of a rather dry essay on the elementary physics of
wireless communication published by the Buenos Aires magazine Caras
y Caretas on October 2 deliberately ignores all the problems of practical
realization that engineers confront. It offers the ultimate utopia: "Wireless
telephony connects the stars to the earth." The text itself gives a
much more prosaic view of this exciting promise. Instead of describing
phenomena of intergalactic communication, as some readers must have
expected, it explains the new scientific practice of identifying the physical
properties of celestial bodies through the analysis of the light waves they
emit. As if the author felt an obligation to apologize for misleading the
imagination of the public, he then switches to contrasting this highly
specialized research agenda with more popular versions of utopian
thinking: "It is true that the man in the moon will not use the telephone,
because the sun does not speak and the telephone is not absolutely
necessary for radio transmissions. Spectroscopy now permits us to affirm