After he had spoken of this idea for some time, Professor Bell stopped
suddenly, and, with an amused twinkle in his eyes, exclaimed: "But
while we are talking of all this, what is to prevent some one from
discovering a way of thinking at a distance by electricity?"
Having said this, the genial professor threw himself back and laughed
heartily at the amazement his words awakened. Was he joking?
Apparently not, for he proceeded seriously to discuss one of the most
astounding conceptions that ever entered an inventor's mind. Thinking
by electricity! Imagine two persons, one thousand or ten thousand
miles apart, placed in communication electrically, in such a way that,
without any spoken word, without sounding-board, key, or any bodily
movement, the one receives instantly the thoughts of the other, and
instantly sends back his own thoughts. The wife in New York knows what
is passing in the brain of her husband in Paris. The husband has the
same knowledge. What boundless possibilities, to be sure, this
arrangement offers for business men, lovers, humorous writers, and the
police authorities!
Preposterous as such an idea appears in its first conception, it
certainly assumes an increasing plausibility when one listens to
Professor Bell's reasoning.
"After all," he says, "what would there be in such a system more
mysterious than in the processes of the mind reader? You substitute a
wire and batteries for a strange-eyed man in a dress suit, that is
all."
The logical basis of Professor Bell's scheme is clear, and its details
quite beautiful in their simplicity, when you admit his major premise.
That premise is that the human brain is merely a kind of electrical
reservoir, and that thinking is nothing more than an electrical
disturbance, like the aurora borealis or the sparks from a Holtz
machine. The nerves are the wires leading from the central battery in
the head. The reasonableness of this assumption is increased when one
remembers that electricity may be made to act upon the nerves, even in
a lifeless body, so as to produce the same muscular contractions which
are produced by the brain force, whatever that may be. We talk of
animal magnetism. What if it were the same as any other kind of
magnetism? If these two forces are identical in one respect, why may
they not be so in all respects? So Professor Bell reasons, and
granting that the human brain is merely a store-house of electricity
for our bodily needs, of electricity not essentially different from
that which we know elsewhere, it must be possible to apply the same
electrical laws to the brain as to any other electric apparatus and to
get similar results.
"Do you begin to see my idea?" said Professor Bell, growing more and
more enthusiastic as he proceeded. Then he gave a rapid outline of
what might be a system of thinking by electricity.
Everyone knows, who knows anything about the subject, that an electric
current passing inside of a coil of wire induces an electric current
in that wire. Now, if the human brain be taken as a battery, then
currents are constantly passing from it to various parts of the body,
and the head may be considered in a state of constant electrical
excitement, the intensity varying with the character of the thought
processes. Now, suppose a coil of wire properly prepared in the shape
of a helmet, and fitted about the head of one person, with wires
attached and connected with a helmet similarly fitted upon the head of
another person at any convenient distance. Every electric current in
the one human battery must induce a current in the coil around the
head, which current must be transmitted to the other coil. This other
coil must then, by the reversed process, induce a current in the brain
within helmet No. 2, and that person must receive some cerebral
sensation. This cerebral sensation might be a thought, and probably
would be, if it turns out to be true that brain force is identical
with electricity. In that case, the thought of the one person would
have produced a thought in the other person, and there is, if we go as
far as this, every reason to believe that it would be the same
thought. Thus the problem of thinking at a distance by electricity
would be solved.
So much for a curious theory of what might be, if so and so were true;
but Professor Bell has not stopped with theories, but has actually
begun to put them to the test. Not that he is over-sanguine as to the
result, but he believes the experiment worth the making, and that
seriously. He has actually had two helmets, such as those described,
constructed, and has begun a series of experiments in his laboratory.
Thus far, the results have been for the most part negative, but not so
much so as to prevent him hoping that more perfect appliances may lead
to something more conclusive. It is true that the thought in one brain
has produced a sensation in the other, through the two helmets, but
what the relation was between the thought and the sensation could not
be determined.