THE GREAT ELECTRIC DIAPHRAGM – This short story was written by neglected American science fiction pioneer Robert Duncan Milne. It was published in the May 24th, 1879 edition of The Argonaut in San Francisco.
The tale features Milne himself, a reporter and fiction writer, as the narrator. He accompanies his friend – called only “C” in the story – to the San Francisco hilltop mansion of a visiting Prussian scientist referred to as “Baron O.”
Milne and C are greeted by one of the baron’s servants and ushered into a dining room where they are treated to a multi-course meal. Baron O. regales the pair with his advances in the study of weather prediction and at meal’s end offers to show them his latest project involving wireless communication across the entire globe.
The crucial piece of equipment is a geo-stationary hot air ballon thousands of feet in the air. That balloon contains other devices of Baron O.’s invention and is connected via silk-based wiring to a giant mechanical “spool” in the baron’s mansion.
The Prussian inventor can speak into a telephone-type device that transmits his words up the silk wiring to the balloon, which then electronically “beams” the message to receiving equipment in his Berlin estate.
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The communication is instantaneous and Baron O. is in touch with his servant Franz in Berlin on a daily basis. By a very convenient coincidence, the conversation that Milne and C are permitted to listen in on involves Franz informing the baron that an attempt to assassinate Kaiser Wilhelm the First just occurred.
Our three main characters are abuzz with shock over the attempt, but simultaneously in awe of the way that Baron O.’s “Electric Diaphragm” permits immediate communication of vital news events thousands of miles away.
Milne, C and the baron discuss the implications and presciently discuss everything that we know can be accomplished via radio technology. Attention is even paid to the possibility of certain parties covertly eavesdropping on such communications.
Hilariously, Baron O. dismisses such activities, saying that nobody would do it because their own electrical communications would be vulnerable to similar interception and exposure. Uh. Yeah.
Overall, The Great Electric Diaphragm is a quick, fun read and serves as a great gateway to Robert Duncan Milne’s lengthier works. Those works involve additional inventions reasonably grounded in science as well as more fantastic elements like “scientific alchemy”, futuristic civilizations from Earth’s ancient past and even time travel before H.G. Wells.
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