WONDERS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 16, Issue 94, 5 December 1902, Page 2

WONDERS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.

AMAZING PROPHECIES.

by Jules Verne. +

It can be confidently asserted that this century will see things which the boldest minds cannot anticipate. It will revel in what Jules Verne, the most vivid imaginer of the age, das aptly termed “ scientific sorcery,” and those who are living in 1950 A.D. will possibly recall with contempt the primitive mechanical appliances in vogue to-day. Present-day experience suggests that this will be the case, for there are people who are living now who in their happy childhood days would nave scorned as impossibilities the telegraph, telephone, railway, gas and electric light, motor-cars, bicycles, airships, submarine boats, even steamships. Yet all these form jart and parcel of our common lift 10-day, and science has not reached the limit of its conquests. It makes the serious student impatient when he hears people rave over what we have achieved during >he last 50 or 60 years, because he cannot escape the fact that the world has really made but timid use nf all its discoveries. Indeed, It is throughout history that one is struck with the timidity of the Ini man race, its uncanny reluctance to break from its old ways, its mistrust of what does not yet exist. Think of this, for instance ! We have found those two admirable contrivances —the lift and the telephone. Y T et to-day the home telephone is available to but one person in 10,000 even in cities, and the domestic lift to replace the steep and winding staircase is still the exclusive appanage of the wealthy. Reasonably it is impossible to say why.

Fortunately the generations now maturing, who will soon have totally replaced the men now in charge of the affairs of life, are being educated out of their prejudices. They do not fear. The twentieth century will be bold, an era of vast conceptions and realizations.

The world’s inventors have not only caught up with Jules Verne’s imagination. The things which he fancied 25 years ago, and which were then considered the wildest of dreams,,have actually come to pass, and now the veteran author is once more getting ahead of fact by picturing the creations of this new century.

To appreciate the value of his seemingly extravagant utterances one must remember that it was he who foreshadowed the conquest of the air in " Five weeks in a balloon’ and “ The Cloud Clipper,” the advent of the motor-car in “The Steam House,” the submarine boat in “ Twenty thousand Leagues under the Sea J ’ and “The Mysterious Island,” the annihilation of distance by modern ships and railways in ” Around the World in Eighty Bays,” the astgunding development of metallurgy, trusts, and philanthropy in ” The Five Hundred Millions of La Begum.” THE FUTURE RAILWAYS. And what does Jules Verne predict tor the twentieth century ? ..Let another brief period elapse, he says, and the telegraph and the telephone will seem foolishly inadequate The railways to-day will be laughed at as dangerous, noisy, desperately slow conveyances—as pitiable beside the railways that are coming as are now in our eyes the first steamship and Stephenson’s locomotive. Ho does not think there is any fear of the motor-car supplanting railways. Both have very distinct fields of usefujness. On railways will the greatest speed demanded in the future ( that is from 200 to 300 miles per hour ) be possible. The railway will serve for the great arteries of traffic. The motor-car will be as the tiny bloodvessels of our bodies, and carry the most intense life of civilization into the most remote rural districts. Unusual activity may be expected in railway making. First there are the great lines to be built. Even when connection was established not so many years ago, between the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts nobody would admit the possibility of the Trans-Siberian, yet to-day the Trans-Siberian is finished Well, there are other of those great highways needed still. Within 20 years they may all be built. We may count the link from Cape Town to Cairo to be as good as finished, for the late Cecil Rhodes had set his mind on it, and so have others o[ even greater influence —the German Emperor for instance. Next ( or will it be first ? ) Alexandria will surely be connected along the northern coast of Africa with the shore of Algeria. IThis will soon extend on the one hand to Jerusalem, Beyrout, Smyrna, and Constantinople ; on the other hand to Morocco, where it will meet the tunnel which will be dug under Gibraltar, so that London and Paris will - be within a few hours’ ride from any point in Africa.

The Channel tunnel between Dover and Calais is not so remote a contingency as most people may think and if Jules Verne is again correct in his prophecy, within 20 years England will be connected by tunnel not only wi.th France but also with Belgium and Ireland. But we may see more wonderful things than those in the tunnelling business.

One man has actually offered

TO TUNNEL THE ATLANTIC

from New York to Brest. That man is not so insane as many will believe. He calculated that it could be done on HO years’ time if the necessary millions were there. Money is

never an obstacle when .something is needed and future engineers could easily reduce the 30 years by twothirds.

In Asia two most valuable railways are left to British or Russian enterprise—one from Bombay to Constantinople, running right through Beluchistan and Persia ; the other a mere link from Peshawur to Bokhara, via Cabul in Afghanistan.

In America, of course, there will be the great North and South railway, through Mexico and the Isthmus. It will go to Buenos Ayres first, with one branch through the rich garden, to Rio Janeiro, and another branch ihlo Venezuela. Alter that Peru, Ecuador, and the rest of those countries can be relied on to build their own local spurs to get to the main road. When this is done a period of un-heard-of industrial and commercial furore will open, especially for the United States, .several of whose enterprising financiers are already studying the ways and the moans of taking trains across the Behring Straits which presently will bo the only small gap between the Alaska railway extension and the TransSiberian line with its offshoots towards farthest Asia.

The Behring tunnel is certainly a possibility of the twentith century—a probability even—and Jules Verne is also bold enough to predict other tunnels —under the Mediterranean, between South Africa and India, and between Australia, the Straits and China.

Note the amazing completeness of this great Frenchman’s scheme ! A man from London will bo able to reach Pekin, Bombay, Constantinople, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Paris, New York, Cairo, or Cape Town go and spend the winter on the shores of Lake Victoria Nyanza, or travel to buy a lot of horses and cattle in Buenos Ayres—all without a change of carriage—travelling throughout in the dainty comfort of palace train by the side of which our present cramped and unpurified carriages will seem like cattle trucks. ■ And thus, for the first time since creation, we poor human beings will begin to see what this planet is like. Has it ever struck you how little we know of this tiny globe on which our lot is cast ? To how many of us is it given to look at what this earth really does contain and to enjoy its variety ? How many of us can hope to see the fjords of Norway, the harbour of Sydney, the Bay of Nnjfles, or te listen to the chattering monkeys in a moonlit orchid-decorated forest of Brazil ? Narrow as our cell is we cannot even have the satisfaction of touching the four walls of it. How miserably restricted our existences have been !

The railways will soon abolish curves and capricious gradings. Linos—at least trunk lines—will be straight and level, conducing to great speed, which will be further enhanced by superior motive power. Two hundred miles an hour will become a feasible speed, and to travel by rail round the world in a week will become a possibility. Swift-travelling cigar-shaped trains ( electric ) will wind their way round mountains at a tremendous speed. The improved transportation and more intelligent social organization will soon make the product of Central Africa just as available in London as if they grew in Britain.

CHEAPER THAN COAL

Now for another point. Engineers

have for a long time been engrossed with the possibility of replacing coal as a power-creating factor by other sources of force.

In America Niagara is half harnessed. In France within five years more than 400 large manufactories have been erected in valleys and gorges now accessible by rail, where waterfalls already dcvelope 1,500, 000 horse-power.

In Germany, during the last fiye years more than a million horsepower has thus been utilized. At Geneva the Rhone turbines supply such cheap electricity that every house and shop has it. The known waterfalls of the world are capable of six times the universal motive power in use to-day. This leaves a margin for a considerable increase, and the cost would be about one-twelfth of what it is now coal is used.

Nothing will do more to redeem the rural districts from their backwardness than the motor-car. However much one may love pure country air and life, it is impossible to enjoy them without the penalty of living in sluggish slovenliness of mind and in deprivation of the conveniences which our forefathers’ struggles have evolved. The railway cannot go into every hamlet, establish a station on every estate. The motor-car, swiftly, economically, at all hours, will put one point in intimate contact with all the others—-complete and enlarge the role played by the bicycle. Jn a few years the motor will have become an article of current manufacture, and there will be a great fall of prices. As soon as a man will be able to buy a reliable motor turn-out for say, £4O, the horse will be doomed, and our large cities will soon bo greatly relieved of their awful congestion.

The animals will go and make room for people. Our streets will be gradually loss noisy because of the universal rubber tire. What is now stable room and hay loft will make way for gardens and the larger living space which even the most completely subdued workers are going to demand.

Signs of this are even now to be seen in the rapidly-increasing number of motor-cars about the streets and country. Many large firms have already substituted engines for horses in their delivery vans, and find that the change works economically and to their advantage in other respects.

in London and other large cities motor-propelled dust and water carts are to be seen about the streets, and it cannot be denied that the present prohibititive cost is the only thing that prevents a more widespread adoption of mechanical motor power.

In his book “The Steam House,” Jules Verne imagined a motor-car, so large that it contained kitchen, parlours, bedrooms, &c. Now he believes that the idea is going to be realized. As a matter of fact we have only to substitute the motor for the horse that draws the gipsy’s caravan and then the idea would be

in a way realized. We have house-boats on the rivers Why not a house-boat on wheels ?

With regard to the balloon, though it can now be considered a practical sport, it is unlikely that it will supplant other surface conveyances. In certain applications, say for Australian passengers who will wish to join the terminus station of the Singapore, Bombay, and Europe Railway it will certainly be most useful. But for long voyages the balloon will, for a long time yet, remain too unreliable, too uncomfortable and too expensive.

THE DAYS OF THE FLYING MACHINE AND SUBMARiNE.

Flying machines, however —that is the “ heavier-than-air ” contrivance, will certainly be less cumbrous and cheaper, and Jules Verne is sure the time will come when every man will have his pair of wings as he has his bicycle. The practical airship of the future wiH be propelled by dynamite engines. As regards submarine affairs it is conceivable, too, that the time will also come when the Nautilus of “ Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea ” will be a real creation. Then at once mankind will enter into possession of a realm a thousand times more vast than all the continents put together. Can any prophet foresee the full extent of the revolution this would be ? New animals, new plants, new products, new sports, new problems, new industr es, new commerce, new science.

The yachtsmen of 50 or perhaps 30 years hence, will not be content to cruise along the surface of the ocean from Southampton or Cowes to the Mediterranean. He will voyage and live under water. Explorers will study the ocean bed as they have the forests and swamps of Africa, and South America and Australia. Their explorations will be attended with pleasure, as great, excitement as thrilling, adversities as keen, sufferings as poignant and tragedies as awful as any experienced on the surface of the globe.

Subterranean and submarine exploration is barely in its infancy yet and as it develops it will provide fresh causes for international discord and the scramble among the nations will be as much for what is in and under the sea as it is now for what is on land. The Powers of the earth will annex slices of the oceans with as great avidity as they now fight for the land continents. The untold wealth at present hidden under the Atlantic and Pacific will be revealed and utilized in the creation of new industries, which .will form a new commerce. The big sportsmen of the future will not confine their energies to the forests and jungles of the East or to the mountains of America.

It was reported some time ago how a party of Russian naval divers who had gone down to investigate some damage to a warship were attacked by a swarm of sharks. It is conceivable, says Jules Verne that shark hunting will become an actual sport of the future, and that men will fight this demon of the deep with the same daring that they now track the lion and tiger to their jungle home. All this is a thrilling picture of the imagination, focussed in the eye of the most far-seeing man of the age.

The thought of such a revolution in the life of the world makes the mind reel, but who, with the past and present to guide him, will dare to say that it can never come to pass.