Tom Swift and His Photo Telephone or the Picture That Saved a Fortune
1914
Tom Swift and His Photo Telephone or the Picture That Saved a Fortune
1914
The year is 1914. The future feels electric, and nineteen-year-old inventor Tom Swift is determined to drag it closer. His audacious plan: a photo telephone that transmits live images over ordinary telephone wires. His father calls it impossible. The scientific establishment calls it madness. But Tom has never let doubt slow him down. When a reckless "birdman" crashes his aircraft into Tom's wireless apparatus, the adventure kicks off immediately. Rival inventors circle like sharks, and Tom is chloroformed in his own workshop, his revolutionary plans potentially compromised. Someone wants what he's building badly enough to commit assault. The question becomes not just whether Tom can perfect his device, but whether he can protect his work long enough to see it succeed. This is early science fiction at its most exuberant: a boy-genius in a world just beginning to believe in tomorrow, building impossible machines and stumbling into danger with equal enthusiasm. The Tom Swift series helped define American juvenile adventure fiction and influenced generations of young readers who dreamed of invention.
