A prehistory of wireless telegraphy

It was much more difficult to stay in touch 300 years ago.  A literary magazine from that era has a suggestion for a surprisingly modern way to do it.

Our chief consultant writes:

Our writer recently brought to our attention a certain issue of The Spectator, a sort of newspaper-magazine published in London in the early eighteenth century.  The series is much concerned with manners and morals and gives a wonderful insight into English society of the time.  It is not really a place one would go in search of science or technological innovation.  However, no. 241 describes a (fictional) way two separated lovers can stay in touch: each has a magnetized needle, which moves in response to the other one.  By fixing each in a dial-plate marked with letters, or words, one person can send a message to the other.

It would be easy to dismiss this as simple fictional magic.  In an era when letters took weeks or months even to get to a nearby country, the desire for instant communication must have been strong.  But I think there’s more to this idea than simple wish-fulfillment.

It was a known bit of science that magnetized needles could affect each other across a distance, with nothing in between.  So one could properly class this tale as science fiction, building on a known fact.  And there is even a consideration of how to turn the movement of a needle into letters or words, with pauses in the proper places.  (The device bears more than a family resemblence to the synchro, an analog method of transmitting angles or other information once used on Navy ships.)

Of course the needle-pairs would not actually work.  It would take a century of research into electricity and magnetism before a practical way of transmitting information over distances was invented, in the form of the telegraph; and even longer before one could do away with the wires.  The inspiration described in The Spectator no. 241 appeared long before the conditions existed to turn it into reality.

This prompts other questions.  Given that an invention requires an inspiration as well as the conditions for fulfillment, and that they do not necessarily appear just at the same time, there must have been many frustrating situations in which a would-be inventor knows what he or she wants to do, but cannot do it.  I suppose the best action then is to write a science-fiction story so the idea survives until it can be implemented.

The converse situation is more subtle.  What new devices are now possible with the means at hand, only awaiting the necessary inspiration?