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"the [science fiction] writer should be able to convince the reader (and himself) that the wonders he is describing really can come true...and that gets tricky when you take a good, hard look at the world around you."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Planetary Telegraphing | ||
| A method for communicating with dwellers on other planets in the solar system. |
| Here, in Wisconsin, is the Penokee Range of mountains, chiefly remarkable for its belt of iron ore, forty-three miles in length, unbroken and very magnetic. This deposit, averaging 300 feet in width, extends to an unknown, unfathomed depth.
"It occurred to us that we might convert the whole Penokee iron deposit into a gigantic magnet by winding wire around it. The Society of Futurity wanted to talk with other planets; and to do this we must produce on earth magnetic disturbances of great and decided violence. We must produce them periodically, too, so that by their force and their definite order of recurrence they would send a shock through vast distances, and compel the attention of dwellers on another sphere. Then they might respond with similar movements, which we could record on our magnetometers; and so we could start a conversation." "See those telegraph poles?" "There are five hundred turns of that wire," his new guardian went on; "and each turn is eighty-six miles in length. They encircle this whole mouton mass of iron, which is their core, and make it a colossal magnet, with which we do our planetary telegraphing." |
| Technovelgy from In the Deep of Time,
by George Parsons Lathrop. Published by Not known in 1897 Additional resources -
|
This is a very ambitious method for interplanetary communication.
Compare to Communicate with Extraterrestrials from From the Earth to the Moon (1867) by Jules Verne, the ether-traffic from The Duel on the Asteroid (1932) by P. Schuyler Miller (w/D. McDermott), the Interplanetary Communications Center from QRM - Interplanetary (1942) by George O. Smith and the Quantum Communications Hub from Defeated (2004) by Sean McKee.
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