Kissing by telephone will be as easy as talking when, Jerome Meyer of Baltimore gets his new invention installed in every home.
But it wont be quite as satisfactory, for the thrill will be missing. Aside from that intangible, but highly important, feature, you’d never know the difference, for by Meyer’s invention, you hear the ecstatic sigh, see the love light in your lady’s eye and glimpse the blush that touches With crimson her creamy cheek.
Yes indeed, for it is Said that Meyer, at 26, has perfected a televisual apparatus that does for the eye all that the telephone does for the ear. It isn’t the first invention designed for “seeing by telephone,” but Meyer’s friends say it! is the closest approach to a practical utility yet announced.
The idea of such an invention fascinated Meyer for years. Then one day he read of Dr. Pfhund’s discovery that the rare metal, selenium was so sensitive to electrical changes that the rays of light made varying degrees of shadow upon it.
Each shade of the shadow the tiniest alteration or play of light upon a selenium mirror establishes electric currents.
In a word, if you make a wry face at one end of the system, it will be electrically conducted to the other end.
Meyer’s television-apparatus is so constructed that the sender stands inside a compartment and looks directly into a bizarre mirror of selenium which is connected to a large X-ray or Crookes tube.
There are two gigantic and fierce-looking magnets, one placed perpendicular to and the other horizontal with the Roentgen ray generators. The tube is connected with a direct current of 100,000,volts.
Away off somewhere the receiving machinery is practically the same as the sending. The 100,000 volts arrive through a bundle of fine wires which pass into another Crookes tube, situated like the ham in a sandwich, between two powerful electro-magnets.
Every movement of the eyes, lips, head, arms, legs and entire body, as well as the scenery round about are plainly visible at the distant point.
A central exchange just as with the telephone, switches the receiver into a connection with thesender, by, pressing the corresponding number.
Meyer admits that his television’ is to expensive in its present form to be ready for general adoption, but it-is–a successful and practical experiment which he expects to perfect.