The Wonder of the Future.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XIX, Issue 5904, 28 March 1894, Page 4

The Wonder of the Future.

Mr Edison told an interviewer lately that he considered that electrical science is in its infancy. Those who are greatest in the march of mechanical progress confidently predict that future discoveries will be as incredible to us as the present science would be to our forbears of two centuries back. One single further secret won from nature will open a practically limitless field for electrical introduction, and will probably be more decided in its quantitative results, as the technicians say, than any invention the world has seen. It is the direct production of electricity from oxygen and coal (carbon). At present we burn coal to obtain steam, which is transmuted into mechanical energy, and thence into electricity. Before the energy of the coal reaches the dynamo six-sevenths of its power are lost, even under the very best condition, and afterwards one-tenth of the remainder. Find a way to dispense with the steam engine in this making of electricity and we have multiplied several times the available mechanical energy of the world. "When we shall have made this eternal saving in our fuel supply the Atlantic s eamships will need only a snug little coal bin for 250 tons of coal instead of one for 2000 tons. There will be no forced draughts and grimy, consumptive stokers, and the five days record will be an uninteresting reminiscence. The great English shipbuilder can already construct a vessel to go 40 knots an hour, if only she could burn 200 tons of coal a day; then she will only have to burn 20. Then it will take only one-twentieth of an ounce of coal to carry a ton one mile. It fc? now but a question of time when the mantle of the steam locomotive will fall on the electric car. The possible speed is be limited only by the problems of the cohesion of steel in the rails and engines. Asked what, in his opinion, was the practical speed limit on the horizon of electrical locomotion, Mr Edison answered, "Perhaps one hundred and fifty miles an hour." And we shall almost certainly be flying. The greatest difficulty at present in the way of that pleasing performance is the weight of the moto and fuel relative to the power necessary. But even this fairly seems oldfashioned beside some of the feats which our daring electricians are considering as possible. If we hear by electricitythrough the telephone—why, these undismayed men ask, " Can we not see at a distance by the same agency?" The vibrations of light are, to be sure, many times more rapid than those of sound ; but it is merely a question of obtaining a diaphragm which will respond to those vibrations. May we not look forward to seeing, from our armchair in London, the latest drama in New York? And since hearing is but a tickling of the brain by vibrations, may we not, if our apparatus for introducing these vibrations to the brain centres gets out of order—if, in short, we are deaf—lead the impulses to tlie brain through the bones of the head by electrical means? —Monthly Advertiser.