Ralph 124C 41+

A Romance of the Year 2660

Hugo Gernsback

• Publisher: Plutonium Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781087945101
• Edition: 1

Quoted by hundreds of authorities both great and small, in hundreds of publications-not only in the United States but also in many other countries. Whenever a history of science-fiction was written, Ralph nearly always was included routinely, much to my surprise.

"We are now at the beginning of a new and fantastic era-the electronic-atomic age-an age that makes the impossible come true overnight. If Ralph 124C 41+ can fire the present-day young minds with the same enthusiasm for scientific research and accomplishment as it did their fathers in the past, I shall feel amply repaid in having instigated this new, 1950 edition of Ralph." Hugo Gernsback

RALPH 124C 41+

illus A ROMANCE OF THE YEAR 2660

RALPH 124C 41+

by Hugo Gernsback

FOREWORDS BY DR. LEE DE FOREST AND FLETCHER PRATT

© 2021 PLUTONIUM PRESS

CONTENTS

	PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION	7
	PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION	11
	FOREWORD BY DR. LEE DE FOREST	15
	FOREWORD BY FLETCHER PRATT	19
1	The Avalanche	25
2	Two Faces	40
3	Dead or Alive?	52
4	Fernand	66
5	New York A.D. 2660	79
6	"Give Us Food"	97
7	The End of Money	110
8	The Menace of the Invisible Cloak	118
9	The Conquest of Gravitation	127
10	Two Letters	140
11	The Flight Into Space	147
12	Llysanorh' Strikes	164
13	Alice Objects	172
14	The Terror of the Comet	176
15	Llysanorh' Throws Off the Mask	188
16	The Supreme Victory	195

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PREFACE
TO THE SECOND EDITION

Since the first edition of Ralph 124C 41+ in 1925, an eventful quarter century has passed. Since I first wrote the story, 39 amazing years have been swallowed into the Einstein space-time-continuum—years pregnant with scientific progress.

Since 1925, the 5,000-edition volume has had a rather remarkable career. It has been quoted by hundreds of authorities both great and small, in hundreds of publications—not only in the United States but also in many other countries. Whenever a history of science-fiction was written, Ralph nearly always was included routinely, much to my surprise.

In the meanwhile the book became a sort of museum piece. Early in 1950 the quoted price in the second-hand book market was $50.00 for a single copy. Left with only two copies of the 1925 edition I myself endeavored to buy a copy for a friend in France, but no copies were forthcoming even at $50.00!

Authors avowedly never read their own books—I am no exception to that rule. So the other day when I was reading proofs for the 1950 edition, after a lapse of 25 years, I began to ask myself a lot of questions.

Why for instance was Ralph written, in the first place?

In 1911 I was a young publisher—not yet 27 years old. I had started publishing Modern Electrics in 1908, three years before. It was the world's first radio magazine. By 1911 it had attained a print order of around 100,000 copies and was for sale on all the principal newsstands in the U.S. and Canada, and sold by subscription all over the world.

Yet, today I must confess I do not recall just what prompted me to write Ralph. I do recall that I had no plan whatsoever for the whole of the story. I had no idea how it would end nor what the contents would be.

The story began in the April, 1911, issue of Modern Electrics and ended with the March, 1912, number. On the twelve covers of the magazine for that year there was a monthly illustration depicting some Ralph exploit as divulged in the current installment. Thus for instance the first (April, 1911) cover showed Ralph at the Telephot—not the broadcast television of today but person-to-person television by phone, which has as yet to be realized. (See illustration.)

Indeed the word television was practically unknown in 1911. (The first technical article in print, using the term, was written by me: "Television and the Telephot," Modern Electrics, December, 1909).

As the story developed from month to month there was the age-old scramble to beat the deadline—but somehow or other I always made it—usually under duress, finishing the installment at 3 or 4 A.M. on the last day. That the literary quality suffered painfully under such continuous tours de force every month, there can be no question, but somehow the scientific and technical content came through unscathed most of the time.

illus

After 39 years I could point out a number of minor[Pg 9]
[Pg 10] technical flaws in some of my early predictions, but on the whole I probably could not do much better today. To be sure, I would not think of a gyroscopic propelled space flyer now, but then in 1911 no one was thinking of rocket-propelled or atomic-powered space flyers. In 1911 too, scientists still thought of a universal ether permeating all space. Today we seem to get along very well without it.

While quite a number of the scientific predictions made in Ralph have come to pass, many more are still unrealized. I have, however, little concern that all—or most of them—will come about in the not too distant future. I am certain that all of them will be commonplace by 2660, the time in which the action of this novel moves.

Perhaps I can do no better than reprint the foreword of the original 1911 "Ralph":

This story which plays in the year 2660, will run serially during the coming year in Modern Electrics. It is intended to give the reader as accurate a prophecy of the future as is consistent with the present marvelous growth of science. The author wishes to call especial attention to the fact that while there may be extremely strange and improbable devices and scenes in this narrative, they are not impossible, or outside of the reach of science.

We are now at the beginning of a new and fantastic era—the electronic-atomic age—an age that makes the impossible come true overnight. If Ralph 124C 41+ can fire the present-day young minds with the same enthusiasm for scientific research and accomplishment as it did their fathers in the past, I shall feel amply repaid in having instigated this new, 1950 edition of Ralph.

Hugo Gernsback

New York, May 1950

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PREFACE
TO THE FIRST EDITION

Ralph 124C 41+ first appeared as a serial in the author's first magazine, "Modern Electrics," in 1911. This magazine was first devoted exclusively to radio activities. At the time the story was written the word "radio" had not yet come into use. We were at that time still using the term "wireless."

It has been necessary, in view of scientific progress since the time the story was first written, and in order to present the book to a much wider reading public, to rewrite much of the story and to make many changes. Yet, the ideas and conceptions embodied in the original manuscript have been little altered.

The author appreciates that many of the predictions and statements appear to verge upon the fantastic. So was Jules Verne's submarine "Nautilus" in his famous story "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea." Verne's conception of the submarine was declared utterly ridiculous. Nevertheless, the prophecy was fulfilled. In fact, Verne's imagination hit far below the mark in what was actually accomplished by science since the book was written.

Lest you think that the author has gone too far into the realms of pure imagination, place yourself in the position of your great-great-grandfather being told about locomotives, steamships, X-rays, telegraphs, telephones, phonographs, electric lights, radio broadcasting, and the hundred other commonplaces of our lives today. Would he not have condemned such predictions as the height of folly and absurdity?

So with you. You are in the same position with respect to the prophecies in this work as your remote ancestor. Your descendants, picking up this book 750 years hence,—or at the time in which this story is laid,—will ridicule the author for his lack of imagination in conceiving the obvious developments in the first half of the next century.

It may be of passing interest to note that several of the predictions made by the author when this story was written have already become verities. Notable among these is what the author termed the Hypnobioscope, the purpose of which is to acquire knowledge while asleep. The author was greatly astonished to read the results obtained by J.A. Phinney, Chief Radioman, U.S. Navy, who, having tried the system himself, in 1923, introduced it at the Pensacola, Florida, Naval Training School. Here one may see naval students stretched out on long benches asleep with casket-like coverings over their heads. The caskets contain two telephone receivers through which radio code is sent to the sleeper. It has been demonstrated that the sleeping student can be taught code faster than by any other means, for the sub-conscious self never sleeps. Students who have failed in their studies have passed examinations after being taught by this method.

The scientific conception or vision of the world of 750 years hence, represents the author's projection of the scientific knowledge of today. Scientific progress is moving at an accelerating pace, and if that pace is maintained, it seems fair to assume that the conception herein described will, 750 years hence, be found to have fallen far short of the actual progress made in the interim.

Hugo Gernsback

September 3, 1925

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[Pg 14]
[Pg 15]

FOREWORD
BY LEE DE FOREST, Ph.D., D.Sc., D.Eng.

Father of Radio

No book in two generations, no book since Jules Verne, has undertaken to do what Hugo Gernsback in the first decade of our century has here so outstandingly achieved.

He is gifted with a mind eternally alert, trained from childhood to observe and think. His unbridled imagination has ever fed on the facts of science and technology which his habit of omniverous reading has been continually storing within his brain. As result of this unusual combination his tireless energies have been directed, since childhood in Luxembourg, to writing popular science in a fashion peculiarly attractive to young men and boys who, like himself, possess a keen interest in all realms of physical Nature.

His first essay in this field was his monthly magazine, Modern Electrics, the first to attempt to outline in language understandable by American youth the newly developing science of wireless communication. He made of this first venture into the publishing business a medium wherein, amid serious newsy articles regarding current electrical developments, his eager imagination could find full play. The most outstanding, most extraordinary prophecies which this young clairvoyant had at that time conceived—all based on his keen observations and appreciation of their real significance and trend—he chose to record in the guise of a fanciful romance bearing the strange, cabalistic title of this book.

The author, even at that early date (1911) had a clear conception of future television, then quite unheard of, almost undreamed of. He dubs it "Telephot" and outlines its revolutionary utilities. His hero, Ralph, explains to his enamorata how man has mastered weather-control. Only today has a professor shown New York City how to end its water famine by man-made torrential rains. Years in advance of their advent he describes libraries of microfilm projected on large screens; and news printed electrolytically, without printer's ink. Today we begin to read of this as being partially commercialized. His "Menograph," or thought recorder, is today crudely realized in our lie-detector. By means of his "Hypnobioscope" most of scholastic studying is done while the pupil sleeps. Who is bold enough to scoff at the possibility of such a delightful method? For one, not I.

"Most of the studying was done while one slept," explains Ralph—a statement truly applicable to many a somnolent student's performance today!

Ralph explains, as of the year 2660, the resuscitation of animal (human) life years after the body has been drained of blood. Yet only yesterday a Russian doctor claims to have accomplished this "miracle." His 750-year future has already begun to be realized. Many Utopias are here foretold, such as absolutely permanent non-wearing, metallic highways, where trolley-cars and gas-driven autos are only ancient memories, long obsolete.

"Only electrobiles were to be seen." Here the author badly misjudged the future trend of auto-travel, away from the electric.

He foresaw far better night-illuminated streets than we have yet attained. Let us hope that we must not wait 750 years until cities are "as bright by night as by day"; nor New York's climate, man-controlled, to be "the finest on Earth," with temperatures perennially at 72, sunshine all day, rain for one hour only, every night! In that future we shall have reliable transfer of sun energy into electric by means of photo-electric elements responsive to ultra-violet radiation.

In Musak we already have the wide distribution of music which Mr. Gernsback foresaw in 1911; also our night baseball games, then first foretold. His airplanes launching from roof-tops we partly realize already in our helicopter mail service. But instead of his agglomeration of colored light-beams for direction of aviation we have the far reaching radio beacons, coupled with Loran.

Even today's mysterious "flying saucers" he foretold with nice detail!

Foreseeing the vast increase in global population (the world's gravest menace) Ralph has so deftly applied science to plant growth that we shall reap four crops of wheat per year in sun-heated glass houses of county-sized acreage, to feed the new billions. He fears not an overcrowded, 200 million metropolitan New York!

Only today I read of a recent system for using heat from deep earth for house-warming, now being commercialized. "Ralph" described the same arrangement forty years ago!

Here is liquid fertilizer sprayed as a crop accelerator; and plant-root stimulation by means of high-frequency currents, wholesale diathermy applied to farming; and many other improvements in farm procedure which make this book profitable reading for today's science-minded farmers.

The author foresaw a much-to-be-desired manufacture of news-print from the resultant excessive growth of grain stocks, thereby terminating today's wanton destruction of our forests for comic supplements and sexy pulps.

Last year in the Bell Laboratories I witnessed the recording on paper of the complexities of my voice, very much as Ralph described it in 1911 to his A.D. 2660 friends.

As to the plausibility of Ralp...