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“The new ‘telephotograph’ invention of Dr. Arthur Korn,” the anonymous reporter wrote, “assures us that ‘television,’ or seeing by telegraph, is merely a question of a year or two with certain improvements in apparatus.”

That telephotograph apparatus, I remembered, depended on the ability of the element selenium to vary the strength of an electric current passing through it in proportion to the brightness with which the selenium is illuminated.

Not even the news-gatherers could reach it; not even the all-seeing eye of the telephotograph emblazoned to the world its secrets.

Then suddenly, in the half-century between 1880 and 1930, it ousted the steam-engine and took over traction, it ousted every other form of household heating, abolished distance with the perfected wireless telephone and the telephotograph....