EDISON AND MODERN MARVELS

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 300, 19 December 1922, Page 3

EDISON AND MODERN MARVELS

I In the first visit for twenty-five years to the great laboratories of the General Electric Company at Schenectady. Xew | York State, Mr. T. A. Edison, the in- | vcntdr, saw recently the new marvels which science is developing largely from | his inventions and those of Benjamin Franklin. America's greatest pioneer in electrical experiment, and at the conclusion remarked: "All things seem possible." Bearing in mind that there has been more real progress in mechanical inventions in the last 120 years than in all previous history, recorded or unrecorded, since the world began, Mr. Edison says that the future of mankind looks bright indeed, provided always that we continue to make as much progress in thing s spiritual as in things material. Amongst the marvels attracting America's greatest inventor was the mercury boiler, which, when perfected, will mean a saving of one-third of the coal used to produce steam power. He saw also a machine for registering the voice by light on a moving picture film, possessing unlimited possibilities of development—including the talking cinema and saw vacuum tubes possessing the germ of greater things in electrical science than the world has yet known. Liahtning bolts, artificially created, splintered wood, dissipated metal, and flashed fire until Edison's eyes sparkled. An incandescent lamp of 100,000 candle-power was shown, which made Edison's own first bulb seem like the glow of a fireflv. Edison said that the vacuum tube opened up a tremendous field, and was one of the things which fascinated him most.