Hugo Gernsback: The man who predicted the Internet and radar in 1911

The year is 1911. The "Titanic" is not even built yet. Horses clop along the streets of New York, and electricity in homes is seen more as an amusing quirk for the rich than a basic necessity. And then, in the midst of this world smelling of coal and manure, a twenty-seven-year-old immigrant from Luxembourg sits down at a table. He begins to write text about video calls. About solar energy. About a global information network connecting continents. His name was Hugo Gernsback. And, frankly, he was a terrible writer.

But as a prophet? He hit the bullseye. Moreover, with such frightening accuracy that sometimes it seems - this guy really managed to call the future.

The Battery Seller Who Invented the Future

Gernsback came to America not to become a literary icon. He came to make money. He brought with him drawings of a powerful battery, tried to sell them, failed, but did not give up. Soon he opened a company selling radio parts. And then he encountered a problem: in order to sell parts, it was necessary to convince people that assembling radio receivers from them was cool.

This is how the magazine "Modern Electrics" appeared. At first, it was just a catalog with instructions for geeks of the early twentieth century. But dry diagrams sold poorly. Gernsback needed a hook. A dream. And he began to dilute technical articles with fictional stories.

In April 1911, his own story "Ralph 124C 41+" began to appear in the magazine. The title was read as a pun: "One to foresee for one." The plot was monstrously cardboard. The main character, a brilliant scientist, saves a girl from the clutches of a villain. The dialogues creaked on their teeth. The characters behaved like mannequins who forgot to prescribe emotions.

But the plot was just a package. Gernsback was interested in toys.

Radar, synthetics and video communication

Reading "Ralph" today, you experience a strange feeling. You wade through the crooked style and suddenly freeze.

Gernsback casually describes the "Telephot" - a device that allows you to see the interlocutor on the screen during a telephone conversation. He writes about the translation of text by machines in real time. About radar - a device that emits directed electromagnetic waves to detect objects in the dark. Decades later, the inventor of the real radar, Robert Watson-Watt, admits that he read this story.

And then even more. Velcro fasteners. Synthetic fabrics. Artificial lighting for growing plants. Tape recorders. The use of solar energy on an industrial scale. And, perhaps, most importantly - the concept of a device that allows people to remotely access a huge knowledge base. In fact, he sketched out the architecture of the Internet.

"The man of the future will not waste time on mechanical work. His brain is a tool, and machines are just an extension of his hands," - this idea ran like a scarlet thread through all his texts.

The Father of "Science Fiction" and the "Hugo-Rat"

In 1926, Gernsback made his main move. He released "Amazing Stories" - the world's first magazine entirely dedicated to what he called "scientifiction". The term turned out to be too cumbersome and soon transformed into the familiar "science fiction" - science fiction.

The magazine with its screaming yellow-red covers blew up the market. Gernsback gave a home to dreamers. Without him, perhaps, we would never have known Asimov, Clarke, or Bradbury. He created a sandbox in which the best minds of the era began to play.

However, Hugo was not a saint. He was frankly disliked in the writing community. Howard Phillips Lovecraft called him "Hugo the Rat". The reason is banal - Gernsback paid authors mere pennies. He delayed royalties for months. He used legal loopholes to keep the rights to the texts for himself. He remained a businessman. A pragmatic, tough businessman who sold tickets to the future, but preferred to sit at the box office himself.

Helmet from reality

Perhaps the strangest detail of Gernsback's biography is his invention called "The Isolator". It was a heavy wooden helmet lined with felt on the inside. In the front there were glass slots for the eyes. A cylinder with oxygen was connected to the helmet.

Why? So that nothing distracts from work. No street sounds. No smells. Complete isolation from the outside world for maximum concentration on the text.

Photos of Gernsback in this helmet look comical. As if a diver is stuck in the office. But there is a deep metaphor in this image for his whole life. He really isolated himself from the present. He was bored in the reality of the 1920s. He breathed air from a cylinder, because the air of the future suited him much better.

Legacy That Cannot Be Erased

Gernsback died in 1967. He managed to witness the first space flights. He saw televisions in every home. He lived to see the moment when his crazy fantasies became goods on supermarket shelves.

Today, the most prestigious award in the field of science fiction is called "Hugo". It is awarded for outstanding literary achievements. And there is an amazing irony in this. The name of the man who wrote cardboard dialogues and paid authors pennies has become a symbol of the highest writing skill.

But it's fair. Hugo Gernsback was not a great writer. He was a great architect. He drew a blueprint of the world in which you and I live today. And the fact that the drawing was drawn in a crooked handwriting - who cares now?