put a gasoline engine in a glider and flew. Since then bombing airplanes have been built that will carry a ton or more.
“The moral is that if you must predict it is better to do so in favor of rather than against a proposition unless you’re betting on a horse. My opinion is that signaling to Mars will not be done by long electric waves set up by electric sparks. Some years ago Tesla, the electrician, was reported to have received signals from Mars by long electric waves, that is wireless waves, while Pickering the astronomer got up a plan to reflect signals to the red planet by short electric, that is light waves. All he needed to do it with was ten million dollars’ worth of mirrors and by forming these into a gigantic reflector he opined he could concentrate the light of the sun into a beam and throw it on the surface of Mars.
“And this puts me in mind of Tesla’s scheme to transmit power wirelessly. To transmit power to run machinery and to control power at a distance by wireless are two entirely different things. Since wireless waves tend to radiate in all directions parallel with the surface of the earth from an aerial, it is a very diffi-