City in the Sahara by Jules Verne

Author:Jules Verne [Verne, Jules]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-12-11T16:02:12+00:00

"Now these oscillations are not limited to the points which produce them. On the other hand they set up a disturbance in their surroundings, the air, or, more precisely, in the imponderable fluid which at once fills interstellar space and the intermolecular interstices of material bodies, and which is called the ether.

"To each oscillation there thus corresponds an etheric vibration which by degrees is transmitted ever further away. These vibrations are rightly called the Hertzian Waves. Have I made myself clear?"

"Admirably," replied Barsac, who, as a politician, was perhaps of all Camaret's hearers the least prepared for scientific questions.

"Except for myself," the scientist continued, "these waves were only a laboratory curiosity. They were used to electrify, without any material contact, metallic bodies at varying distances from their point of emission. They had the overwhelming defect of spreading in all directions round that point, exactly like the concentric circles formed in a pool when a stone is dropped into it. The result is that their initial energy is diluted, weakened, dissipated, so to speak, in spreading over an ever-increasing space. So that, at only a few yards from their source, nothing more than insignificant reactions can be obtained. Do you still understand? I am quite clear?"

"Luminously," declared Amedee Florence.

"Again except for myself, though it had been noticed that these waves can be reflected like light, nobody had ever drawn any conclusion from this. But, thanks to a metal of superconductivity which I have discovered, the very same with which I have garnished the crest of our wall. I have been able to construct reflectors which enable the whole strength of the waves to be concentrated in any direction I wish.

"Their original strength can thus be completely transmitted in any direction through space, because it has not been expended in any sort of work. Methods of varying the frequency of these oscillations being well known. I was able to think up receivers for the waves which would respond solely to an assigned frequency. This is what physicists call 'syntonization'l

"A receiver can thus be constructed only to react to all the waves having the frequencies for which it was designed. The number of possible frequencies being infinite, I can construct an infinite number of motors among which there will not be two sensitive to identical waves. Do you still understand me?"

It's harder," Barsac conceded, "but we can follow you all the same."

"I've finished, anyhow," said Camaret. "It is by their aid that we actuate numerous agricultural machines which draw their energy, some distance away, from one or other of the projections bristling from that tower. Similarly, that's the way we control the wasps. Each has four screws and contains four small-sized motors differing in syntonization, and we can actuate one or more of them as we wish. Finally, that is how I could destroy the whole town, if ever I should want to."

"You could destroy the town from here!" cried Barsac.

"Quite easily. Harry Killer asked me to make it impregnable and I made it impregnable.

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