"Jules Verne - In the Year 2889" - читать интересную книгу автора (Verne Jules)

complimented a moment ago. Let yourself be hypnotized. What's that? You have
tried it already? Not sufficiently, then, not sufficiently!"
Mr. Smith continues his round and enters the reporters' hall. Here 1500
reporters, in their respective places, facing an equal number of telephones,
are
communicating to the subscribers the news of the world as gathered during the
night. The organization of this matchless service has often been described.
Besides his telephone, each reporter, as the reader is aware, has in front of
him a set of commutators, which enable him to communicate with any desired
telephotic line. Thus the subscribers not only hear the news but see the
occurrences. When an incident is described that is already past, photographs
of
its main features are transmitted with the narrative. And there is no
confusion
withal. The reporters' items, just like the different stories and all the
other
component parts of the journal, are classified automatically according to an
ingenious system, and reach the hearer in due succession. Furthermore, the
hearers are free to listen only to what interests them. They may at pleasure
pay
attention to one editor and ignore another.
Mr. Smith next addresses one of the ten reporters in the astronomical
department--a department still in the embryonic stage, but which will yet
play
an important part in journalism.
"Well, Cash, what's the news?"
"We have phototelegrams from Mercury, Venus, and Mars."
"Are those from Mars of any interest?"
"Yes, indeed. There is a revolution in the Central Empire."


"And what of Jupiter?" asks Mr. Smith.
"Nothing as yet. We cannot quite understand their signals. Perhaps ours do
not
reach them."
"That's bad," exclaims Mr. Smith, as he hurries away, not in the best of
humor,
toward the hall of scientific editors. Heads bent over their electric
computers,
30 scientific men are absorbed in transcendental calculations. Mr. Smith's
arrival is like the falling of a bomb among them.
"Well, gentlemen, what is this I hear? No answer from Jupiter? Is it always
to
be thus? Come, Cooley, you have worked now 10 years on this problem, and
yet--"
"True enough," replies the man addressed. "Our science of optics is still
defective, and though our mile-and-three-quarter telescopes--"
"Listen to that, Peer," breaks in Mr. Smith, turning to a second scientist.
"Optical science defective! Optical science is your specialty. But," he
continues, again addressing William Cooley, "failing with Jupiter, are we