EDISON THE PROPHET. FUTURE SOLUTIONS OF PRESENT PROBLEMS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 118, 21 May 1910, Page 10

EDISON THE PROPHET. FUTURE SOLUTIONS OF PRESENT PROBLEMS.

Thomas A. Edison has been talking to the Independent about some of thewonders and problems which make this old world such an interesting place in which to live. Radium, for instance, moves him to enthusiasm, the greater perhaps because even Mr. Edison himself hasn't got on confidential terms with the substance. He has some of it though. Oh, yes. Sayo ho: "I have a spinthariscope, which is a tiny bit of radium,' of the size that will go through the eye of a needle, mounted over a piece 'of willemite. It has been shooting off millions of sparks for the six years that I have had it, and I expect it will be shooting sparks the same way for thousands of years. "While- only small quantities of radium have been isolated, it exists everywhere, in water, rock and soil. The possibility of harnessing this force for our use is somewhat of a speculation. A radium clock has been made, and it : will go several hundred' years without ! winding. I"The problem of fuel is one of the big problems of the future. We may find out to-morrow how to get all the power from our fuel —we get only 15 or 20 per cent, now —and on the other hand it may take a long time. Water power is being rapidly developed. Maybe the utilisation of the tides will follow. More practical aTe windmills connected with storage batteries to lay \ip the energy of the winds in electrical form. "Sun engines are promising contrivances. In Arizona theTe is a 30 horsepowor sun engine run by focussing the i rays on water and using a steam turbine. In- steaming volcanoes there- is power which might be converted into ! electricity and distributed. ' "To get rid of friction in our maI chines is on© of our future problems. I The only machine without friction that we know in the world, and it moves in the resistless ether. "The monorail does not appeal to me. It wa3 a fundamental mistake that our railroads were built on a 4ft 9£in gauge instead of a 6ft guage, which we will probably have to come to yet. ''The aeroplane of the future will, I think, have to be on the helicopter principle. A successful air machine must be able to defy the winds. If Wright's aeroplane had one-twentieth part of its. surface thewind would not affect it. "The helicopter principle is the only way to rise above atmospheric conditions. By increasing the velocity of propeller revolutions the size of the machine can be diminished, and thereby we vanquish the hostility of the wind. A helicopter could ha-ve fooi^siae planes distributed on a 100 to 150 foot circle, and controlled from the centre by wires. "Chemical food has been worked out pretty well, but it won't be a commercial proposition. There- are lots of synthetic things being made, but you can't beat the farm as a laboratory in that line. "The clothes of the future will be so cheap that every young_ woman will be able to follow the fashions —and there will be plenty of fashions. Artificial silk that is superior to the natural article is now made of wood pulp. I •think that the silkworm barbarism will fo in ffft-y years, just as the indigo of ndia, went before tlie synthetic production of indigo in German laboratories. "In 200 years, by the cheapening of commodities, the ordinary labourer will live as well as a- man does now with £40,000' annual income. Automatic ma. chinery and scterttific agriculture will bring about that result. "Not individualism, but social labour, will dominate the future j you can't havo individual machines and every man working for himself. Industry will constantly become more social and inter, dependent. There will be no manual labour in the factories of the future. The men in them will be merely superintendents watching the machinery to See that it works right. "The work day, I believe, will be eight hours. Every man needs that much work to keep him out of mischief and to keep him happy. But it will be work with the brain, something that men will be interested in, and done in wholesome, pleasant surroundings. Less and less man will be used as an engine or as a horse, and his brains will be employed to benefit himself and his fellows,." j