THE ELECTRICAL MILLENNIUM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16916, 31 January 1917, Page 6

THE ELECTRICAL MILLENNIUM

By Aiah SnxxxvAN, in Collier's Weekly. When the mysterious thing which we call electricity not only directs the artillery of the war of the world, but also energises the magnet with which the surgeon extracts the ragged fragments of shrapnel from living tissues, that themselves have been bared to his eye by the sinograph ; when a cow on the" shores of l«aKe Huron is milked through the agency of Niagara Palls; and a moving picture is jjhrown on the screen in Seattle by virtue of the power of melting glaciers in the far-flung peaks of the Rockies, one is prone to ask just in what way all this reacts on the mind of people at large. It is not so long ago that the Germans were bombarding Dunkirk at a 16-mile range with a 16in gun. From' the Belgian trenches, half a mile from the gun, a wire was laid to Dunkirk, where a mau, stationed in a bell tower, stood readv to stake the alarm. As the great concussion boomed out, the observer instantly telephoned, with the result that the Dunkirk folk had some 50 seconds in which to seek shelter before- the huge projectile arrived. By pushing a button I call to my aid millions of capital, an immensity of science and skill, and hundreds of thousands of horse-power. But what sort of a creature am I, to whom such things are possible? I am held up for a moment in a long-distance talk from Philadelphia to Denver, and I lose my temper. Why do I lose it? • J

In answering all this, one uncovers the very springs of modern existence. Fundamentally speaking, nothing evolves itself, and the larger the problem the simpler, often, the solution. So it is with that of the 'making of the modern man. He is impatient, keen, restless, sometimes ruthless, demanding, the core of the thing and demanding it at once; but, for all of this, still at heart a primal creature, and with the primal instincts of the herd. He loathes solitude, and to the herd, thus increasing year by year, certain things become automatically necessary. He had, for instance, to secure' the means bv -which he might daily leave the herd and resort to his own particular resting place; he had to be in communication, instant, and accurate, not only with his own but with other herds scattered over great distances. Food must be brought to him with a thousand other things that made herd life possible, and as the drone of his labour grew deeper, he became conscious of countless additional retpjJspnents. Now, of this herd a very small percentage, having an inventive and observant spirit, made all the sharper by the constant friction of mind rubbing against mmd, pitched on the instant need of things and supplied it. They were aided by a very interesting change in the mental attitude of the people at large.

— Emancipating Women.— The word "cost" was being slowly replaced by the word "value." l«'o!ks began to stop asking -what a thing cost and demanded instead what it could do for them. It became apparent that if a housewife wielded a broom for two hours a day it was actual expenditure, though she drew no wages, and this entirely apart from the doubt .as to whether the broom did good work*"or not. A day over the wash tub was likely t,o res.ult in an overdraft on the domestic balance; that, too, was a new phase of the matter. A sadiron cost only one-sixth of its electrical rival in money, but did it not perhaps waste that which was more precious than money?- In other words, for the first time in domestic history there was taken an ultimate inventory, and when the appraisal sheets were added up it was perfectly clear that humanity had been squandering its most precious and irreplaceable assets under the delusion that it was keeping the bugaboo of cost at a minimum. To-day the central station rocks the cradle, and the hand that so long performed this dutiful task has not "ceased to swav the world.

Elbert Hubbard' once remarked that when Remington built his first typewriter he discovered woman; but since that date electricity has be«n the greatest factor in her enfranchisement.

In 1886 the largest generator in New York was ICO horse-power. Orders are this year being placed for individual machines of 60,000 horse-power. Since 1896 the cost of anthracite coal, clothing, food, rent, and taxes has increased on the average 48 per cent. During the same period the cost of lighting current has decreased 70 per cent. Carbon lamps to the number of 25,000 were made atMenlo Park in 1880. In 1907 production had increased to 49,000,000 for the whole country. In 1914 it was down to 4,500,003. In* the meantime, starting with 50.000 tungsten lamps in 1907, the production of this tvpe had increased to 52,000,000 in 1914. " The cost of hydro-electric stations is, per horse-power,. about double that of steam-driven stations.

The privately-owned central stations of the United States earned last year about 360,0G0,000d0l gross. ' — Triumph after Triumph.— In electrical-utility properties in this country there was invested in 1912 the stun of 8,000,000,000d01, of which onefourth was.-in privately-owned light and power plants, one-eighth in telephones and 4,500.000.030d0l in electric railroads. The total gold and silver coin and bullion in the country is approximately one-third of this amount. If steam railroads in the Chicago district were electrified there -would be effected a coal saving of about 6,000,000 tons per year. On Minnesota farms the washing, ironing, pumping, separating, feed grinding, and lighting of barn, granary, and house costs from 4dol to 6.50d0l per month for a frtrm of 20D acres.

To operate electrically the piano-players now iir use would mean an additional load of 200,000 horse-power to the central stations.

Now, all this can give only a faint impression of the way in which* electrical energy, distributed like nerves through the human herd, animates feeds, sustains, protects, and comforts that great and complex aggregation. We are probablv as predicted by Insull, of the Chicago Commonwealth Company, on the eve of a universal electrical supply, by which, for instance New York will link up with Boston, Philadelphia with New York, and Pittsburg with Philadelphia. " This unification, he goes on to say, "is steadily proceeding, and as a factor in reducing costs is putting us in a better position to compete in the markets of the world " It is interesting to note that Insull's company turns out more energy than the central stations in Wyoming, South Dakota, New Mexico, Louisiana, Arkansas Virginia, Mississippi, Florida-, Delaware Maryland, Arizona, Wisconsin, Vermont New Hampshire, Nevada, and Oklahoma all combined. It has 3000 stockholders, of whom 40 per cent, are women. It is ako home owned. There is in the mind of the manager of everj; central station, ■sshat.js- .called

the "diversity factor " —Le., the degree to ■vrhich the calls upon his generators may be so distributed and balanced that at no individual period will he be unnaturally overloaded, and that the day's burden be as comfortably spread out as possible. In writing on electrical matters one is conscious of the amazing diversity factors of the subject. Suggestions twitch at one's elbow Ly the thousand and demand recognition.

An_ electric track delivered 195 packages in six and a-half hours for the Denver Post Office at a cost of 4 cents per package. Oae New York brewing company uses 145 electrics, the New York Edison 136, and Marshall Field 230. One company in California irrigates 400,000 acres by electric power. There are 6,300,00(5 farms in the United States. Most of these can be profitably electrified.

Bank notes are made and deshnsvest by electrical energy. In Toledo the Overland Company enamels its cars in electric ovens: l'/5 tons of metal are thus handled per day. One electric furnace turns out 10,000 tons of metal per year. There are 73 in.' the United States with an annual production of over 2,000,000 tons. New York spends 1.000.000d0l per year m lighting her public buildings. In the Opera House at Waterville, Me., carbon lamps gave 13 years' continuous service.

A 200,000 horse-power steam-driven central station is under construction within 10 miles of Niagara Falls. In the new Detroit Edison plant the neat by turbines,, and steam pipes is returned again to' the boilers In the New Regent Palace Hotel in London there are 1028 rooms each heated by electric radiators.

The electrical business is 40 years old. It is not to be assumed that this business, v/hioh to-day through abnormal circumstances has reached an amazing point, will continue to expand in the same ratio. Elihu Thomson has said that he anticipates a refinement and perfecting rather than anything 6f a revolutionary character. Edison looks to the chemical laboratory, and Sprague to the electrifying of a section, but only a section, of our steam railroads. So far as concerns the intimate affairs of the man on the street, he waits with a certain demure*assurance till electricity shall have solved the conundrtm of housekeeping, which it is rapidly doing. Leacock ventures the opinion that the vacuum-cleaner will never Teplace the mother; but the odds are that the vacuum made by the disappearance of the oldfashioned mother will be overcome by the cleaner.

The trend 'is, in other words, to relieve humanity of mechanical and physical duties and give it more time for mental and temperamental pursuits. And here, again, we get back to the essential difference between cost and value. . —One of the Secrets.—

Not the least interesting phase of the electrical industry is that s it has produced a breed that is almost new. Mr Frank A. vandeiiip gives it as his belief that "its quality of management is better, more / scientific, clear-sighted, and cooperative than that of any other industry." As some one else said: "There's a reason, \ and this is the intimate nature, of the business." So far as the central station is concerned, no citizen, can lose himself. If he is not using energy as he might and should use it, he is a marked man, and the betting is that to the sales agents of the central station he is often more of a personage than he is at home. The New York Edison Company trains its' representatives almost from the nursery. They are weighed in youthful balances of heredity and environment; appraised, educated, credited, or debited with plus or minus marks as time passes; given an insight into the life of Chesterfield and the proper manner of approach and address; shown how to soothe the cranky, mollify' the disgruntled, .and appease the infuriated, and finally with t&s benediction of Henderschott and Williams . —which benediction is nothing but a solution of logic and psychology— turned forth; dapper, polite, and armed at every point with a knowledge of your business that would be insulting if it were not so infernally helpful. Do yon catch a "man trained for the East Side trying to do business on Riverside drive? Not inuch.

But what, one asks, will it all lead to? Relieve the modern man and woman of physical effort and exhaustion, give them mental emancipation, make glaciers their slaves and'cataracts their handmaidens, and is there not evolved a queer, pulpy person, half-colloid, half-Martian, a formidable intelligence, drunk with achievement and callous with power? What secrets will the universe hold for him? What wjstful wonder will visit his wisdom-hardened eyes? Or, the alternative, is there being gradually produced an ultimate product of civilisation, a people so secure, so fundamentally established that with them lies not only the balance of power, but the arbitrament of factors which have racked this weary world for centtrriss? John Stuart Mill reckoned that the wealth of a nation lay in its cattle, but it is now demonstrated that the most wealthy nation is that which sets itself parallel with great economic truths and marches harmoniously with the cycle of Nature. :

—Where Will It Stop?— The managers of mountain power-plants in the Rockies find that the midday sun sends them an added flow from melting glaciers, which, reaches their turbines atr about the hour when the cities of the coast flash their peremptory demands for current to carry their evening peak load. Thus on an infintely larger scale may humanity keep step with elemental things. Here, it seems, is the amazing opportunity of the American people. prodigious destiny is electricity, the servant and liberator of man, guiding this gigantic nursling of history?