“You fellows are as busy as a hive of bees most of the time,” observed Jimmy. “Don’t you get so tired sometimes that you’d like to chuck the job?”
“No, I’ve never got so tired as that,” replied Johnson. “The truth is, I’m such a fan on radio that I’d rather handle a set than eat.”
There was an exclamation from Jimmy at this.
“Jimmy thinks you’re losing your mind when you say that,” chuckled Joe.
“Perhaps I was putting it a little strongly,” said the operator, with a grin, while Jimmy looked reproachfully at Joe. “But, honestly, I think radio is the greatest thing in this whole universe. Every day something turns up that gives me a new angle on its limitless possibilities. What hasn’t it done? What can’t it do? What won’t it do?”
“You’re getting eloquent,” said Bob, with a smile.
“It’s enough to make a dumb man eloquent,” returned Johnson. “I tell you, radio is almost human. It seems to have an intelligence of its own. Why, already it’s doing things that formerly only men could do. It directs ships. It guides torpedoes. It flies planes.
“Only the other day,” he went on, warming to his theme, “an airplane in France rose and flew and landed just as skillfully and accurately as though it had been managed by a pilot on board. And it was all directed by wireless from the ground. The machine was a big bombing plane with a thirty-three horsepower engine. It flew easily, maneuvered freely, and landed and rose several times in succession, without a hitch of any kind. A stabilizer with four gyroscopes maintained the equilibrium automatically, while a speed device cut off the spark when the plane neared the ground, so that it landed so gently that it wouldn’t have broken a pane of glass.
“And mark my words, that’s only one step in the process of dispensing with human assistance altogether. I’ll bet that in my lifetime ships will be sailing across the ocean without a steersman, railroad trains will go speeding across the country at the rate of sixty miles an hour without a man at the throttle.”
“It’ll throw a lot of men out of their jobs,” remarked Joe.
“For a while,” admitted Johnson. “Just as the railroad threw bus drivers out of their jobs, just as the spinning jenny threw weavers out of their jobs, just as every advance in civilization has made readjustments necessary. But, after a while, it makes more and better jobs, and raises the general level of human happiness.”