ELECTRICITY

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 50, 27 August 1937, Page 4

ELECTRICITY

MAN'S POTENT ALLY

LIMITLESS POSSIBILITIES

RECIPROCAL DEBTS

Dean Inge, in one of his books, quotes Quiller Couch as follows:— "God said, 'Let there be light.' The owl and the bat said, 'Thank you, sir, then we're off.'" Man's debt to elec- | tricity, although it might be expressed ■in more detail,, could scarcely be expressed more crisply than in that quotation, remarked Mr, E. Hitchcock, general manager of the Christchurch municipal electricity department, in a paper read last evening to a meeting of members of the New Zealand^ Association of Refrigeration, the title"being "Debts—Man' to' Electricity, Electricity to Man." In any : popular handbook on electricity, lie said, one could turn to a page in which the.claim is made that a unit of electricity will perform any :prie of a number of tasks, from curling the* hatir or sweeping a room, tofrying an egg of cooling the butter. Man's debt to electricity, however, was probably more effectively expressed in some of those directions in which he is largely unaware of it, rather than in those which, are more commonly impressed upon his attention. Speaking first of all on what he termed major debits, Mr. Hitchcock said that Great Britain, electrically conservative Great Britain, had spent twenty-seven million pounds on the "grid." "Resultant distribution is now proceeding, and the ' non-users—they are many—are being taught the use ,of electricity. Neither the: Picts and Scots, the Danes, nor William the Conqueror wrought so mightily in that well-favoured isle. From its most sordid point of view, a debt to electricity expressed as twenty-seven millions is arresting,, but in its prospective result; in its ultimate intimate effect upon'homes and lives, what is hap-, pening in England is profoundly significant. • "In' U.S.A., the Colorado Kiver has been dammed. It long defied all control, but was divided and diverted, half to each side into 50ft tunnels, thus by-passing the site of the dam. The dam is 700 feet high and 1180 ftct long at the crest; the ultimate power' development, one and a third/million kilowatts. The cost was thirty-three million pounds. In- Canada, the St. Lawrence Kiver has been diverted, and at the Beauharnois power house near Montreal, a development of two million horse-power will ultimately be provided. "In Russia, the mysterious, by the end of 1933, the monthly output of a pdrtion of the. country was eleven hundred millions of units. New Zealand's yearly output is 700 millions. Mr. Alan Monkhouse, made famous by the Russian trial, recently presented a paper to the Institution of Electrical Engineers, London, on electrical development in the U.S.S.R. In the discussion one\ of the speakers remarked,' 'We seem to be content to visualise an allelectric house, but Russia looks forward to an all-electric country." The figures quoted indicate the extent to which this is being achieved. Britain, > America^ Russia. These are •no more than three large scale isolated pieces of evidence which indicate something of man's growing indebtedness to electricity." V." ~ ... : EFOC^H-MAKINGj DEVELOPMENTS. , There were continually appearing numbers of special developments, continued Mr. Hitchcock, any one or all of which might become epoch making. Amongst these were the stabiliser, electrically-driven gyroscopes intended to: minimise the rolling of ships; the' differential analyser, an elaborate and complicated apparatus for the solution of differential equations; the clavilux, an instrument for producing a symphony in light; radio, and electrical apparatus for medical purposes. What electricity was ultimately destined t» do in the way of conservation of human energy was difficult to forecast, but it was unquestionably an inspiring vision. From the dentist's drill to the giant rolling mill, no similar magic for "doing things" had ever been placed in the hands of men. In "other words, never before had the conservation of human energy been possible to the same degree. EtECTRICmr'g UNIVERSALITY. - "The extent to which electricity permeates all means of doing things is almost staggering. Apart from a few leivd fellows of the baser sort, such asj factories, sausage machines, trams, and irons, there is the fact that; every aeroplane and every motor-car is dependent upon electricity. Every radio broadcast, and all radio reception is dependent upon electricity. Every modern steamship, apart from the obvious service of lighting, is dependent upon electricity for much of its navigation equipment ashore and afloat, for all its communication, and often for its propulsion. It is the universality of electricity that brings home to one man's fast growing indebtedness—every cinema and the coming television,,every hospital ;X-ray, and every dental surgery depend upon; it. By it the interior of the body can be illuminated, and electricity peers'through and behind the eye. ' ' :. : , ffOur indebtedness to electricity reminds us how recent are many things we now consider commonplace. . Fifty years ago there were no incandescent lamps and.no motor-cars. Eighty years ago there were no electrical ' transformers. By all these,the status quo was indeed short-circuited. Electricity has called for enormous demands on our powers' of adaptation, and: the response to this; demand, 4nd our developed degree of adaptation, are part of our debt to electricity. It seems almost to sum up this aspect*'of the matter if one is just asked to remember that every' motor-car is started, kept running, and stopped by electrical control, and it is electricity that makes night driving possible. Literally, the vital spark in the whole process is an electrical one. To the status quo electricity has indeed been a thorn in the side, or more appropriately the status quo finds unceasingly that electricity persists in 'blowing the fuse of its complacency.' : THE DEBT TO MAN. "Electricity has showered her gifts upon us," concluded Mr. Hitchcock. "So lavish is her bounty; it seems almost presumptuous to speak of her debts to man, yet electricity's debt to man is real. "We have not only given her a field, but have enabled her to find it. For long she lay hidden in the womb of Nature. Man brought her into the world. At leastshe owes something to the doctor and the nurse. "How torturing to electricity's consciousness: of its potentialities must have been the .early tinkering of magicians, high priests, alchemists, and wise old abbots. Yet these were the first seekers, arid they left glimmerings to attract the attention of the first scientists who carried on until those days when giants came upon the earth. "If it be true that a faculty seeks expression, an energy seeks an outlet, and that which is sent seeks tljat whereto it was sent, then man deserves well of electricity. When it is considered how infinitesimal; Were the clues, how gigantic the mystery, and

how handicapped the searchers, man's accumulation of electrical knowledge and the rapid expansion of it, has been amazing. It cannot be questioned that from the. birth of electricity onwards man lias opened every' .door. Electricity has found herself, and for that she is indebted to mam • "This debt of electricity to man is very intriguing. We know not what she may be awaiting to pay. Of all the natural forces that man has released, electricity approaches most nearly to the mysterious and the spiritual. It might well be that somewhere in the electrical realm a bridge may be provided between the spiritual and the material. In discharging some of the yet unpaid debts to man, electricity may prove to be both a pathfinder and a path. The claim has often been made that one may consider the minutest fragment into which the physical can be subdivided, and still there will be an unbridgable gulf between that and the spiritual. Electricity, however, has been instrumental in at least one development which is very suggestive. The- emotions produce physical changes in the body, and these can be measured minutely by electricity. Electricity thus provides a measurement of human emotion. .. At least the ice appears to be getting thin, and high hopes are justified regarding the debt yet to b« paid by electricity to man.* __,