THE WORLD AS IT WILL BE.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 18, Issue 42, 24 May 1907, Page 7

THE WORLD AS IT WILL BE.

A SCIENTIFIC FORECAST THAT RIVALS THE MOST FANCIFUL DREAMS OF THE STORYTELLERS.

By T. BARON RUSSELL

Mr. Russell, in Ins remarkable book A Hundred Years Hence,” has attempted do foresee (he probable trend of mechanical invention and scientific discovery during the present century, and to predict nothing that the tendencies of existing movements do Mot justify ns in expect ng. For instance, although ho has no doubt that ocean-going vessels will very shortly skim the surface of the sea, instead of laboriously ploughing their way through it. ho does not think that large airships will be greatly used for travel or for transportation. “Small one-man flying-machines,” on the other hand, he opines, “will no doubt bo common enough. We shall fly for pleasure ; and just as thousands of working men and women now take a Saturday afternoon spin on a bicycle, so they will go for a sky-trip, and visit interesting moun-tain-tops for (non-alcoholic) picnics.” Such flying-machines, wo are told, will not carry their own motors. These will be fixed on terra finna, the airship being merely fitted with A device for utilising the etheric Wi'Taff) which the source of power will vdrelessly transmit.

“WEEK-ENDS” AT THE POLES. But such short-distance aerial trips will to merely the commonplaces of “hcilidaying,” People of the now age will go further and further afield for their recreation. They will cross the Atlantic in a day by means of sur-face-riding ships, propelled by wavemanipulation from power-houses on s'hore. Instead of the stereotyped “week-end” at Margate or Blackpool, “it will be possible, wrapped in warm woollens and provided with portable heating appliances, to visit the Arctic and enjoy the matchless jpeclaclo of the Aurora Borealis amid the awe-compelling obscurities of Ihe Polar night: or, with even less inconvenience, to take a trip to the tropics, and witness there the unchangeable processes of Nature’s Inxu ranee.” Indoor amusements, too, will differ grandly in extent, though hardly at all in kind, from those in favour now, People, for instance, will still go to tfie theatre, But it will bo u theatre without living actors, indeed, the various scenes of the play will he presented in the form of high-ly-improved “living pictures,” the words being spoken by tailking-ma-chines of vastly better power, timbre and quality than those we now’ know. Similarly, the best efforts of the balding executant musicians—the Kubeliks and Paderewskis of the next generation—will be performed automatically.

THE NEWSPAPER OF THE FU- , TP RE. Newspapers will bo very little read for the simple reason that there will he very little reading matter in them The news of the day will be largely presented in the form of pictures, printed in colours by the aid of photography, and transmitted directly through the medium of the instrument by which sight will be wirelessly telegraphed. Chance items of news will, doubtless, Mr. Russel opines, be photographed from small one-man air-carriages by the successors to the “penny-a-liners” of our time, and will he served up pictorially with far more vividness than even the most feverish preseiit-iday journalism, since to tlie improved Rontgen ray and electric eye no interior will lie sacred, and it is even conceivable that the very thoughts of individuals will he able to be caught and recorded as 1 easily as are their spoken words to-day,

DISH WASHING BY ELECTRICITY

; The new ago wilil bo a clean age. 'l'he house of the future for example, will he kept absolutely free from dust rnd dirt by means of portable vac-uum-cleaners. The kitchen (ire will be an electric furnace, and lighting and heating will of course, be electric, and probably wireless. Cooking—the cause of much household dirt and smell at present—will be a far less disgusting process than it is to-day. The use of animal food will have been wholly abandoned, “and ns a consequence”—says our author—“the refuse of the kitchen will be much more manageable than at present, and the kitchen sink will cease to bo during a groat part of the day. a place of unapproachable loathsomeness.” There will! bo no “washing up" ns we understand the process to-day. Instead, plates dishes, and such-like culinary utensils, “will bo simply dropped one by one into an d\itomatic receptacle ; swilled clean by water delivered with force and charged with nascent oxygen ; dried by electric heat : and polished by electric being finally oxygen-bathed as n superfluous act of sanitary deanliness before being sent to the table again. And all that has come off the plates will drop through the scullery floor into the destructor beneath, to be oxygenated and made away with.” domestic elysium, to bo sure ! Hut will "Mary .lane” be any more contented than at present ? It is doubtful.

THE ADVENT OF THE ROLLING ROAD.

It will be an age, too, of vastly increased convenience. Lifts, for ex-

ample. will be everywhere in evidence, even in the poorest dwellings. To quote Mr. Russell : “The plan of attaining the upper part of a small house by climbing, on every occasion, a sort of wooden hill, covered with carpet of questionable cleanliness,, will, of course, have been abandoned ; Indeed it is doubtful whether stairvases will be bn i'll at all after the next two or throe decades." This is (pule believable if. as Mr. Russel predicts. the height of buildings in cities continue to increase, until dwellinghouses of a hundred storeys or more heroine quite common. .Such economisation of ground space will tend to concentration of population and of business, but this will not matter so much since the journey to the open country and hack again will be a matter of minutes only with trains travelling at two hundred miles an hour. In the cities themselves rolling roadways, not necessarily travelling at a hign rate of s[»eed. will hear the uAth t-h&m to wherever he

wished to go. When streets cross, owe such rolling roadway will rise in a curve over the other. There will bo no vehicular traffic at all in towns of any size. As for horses, they will have long since vanished from the land, except as instruments ofi the pleasure of a few old-fashioned folk who affect the manners of that effete period the year 1906.

THE CONQUEST OF THE OCEAN,

But the most important change will be the conquest of the oceans of the world. In their depths lie riches incalculable. Beneath their floors is vast store of mineral wealth, which wild bo tapped for the benefit of the new age. “But the chief gift of the sea for the life of the future,” says Mr. Russell, “will be the two gases of which water is composed—oxygen and hydrogen. Liquefied oxygen will bo our solo disinfectant, our only bleaching agent. Hydrogen the lightest of all gases, will probably be the only fuel employed, for its combustion furnishes the greatest heat terrestrially known, and its flame is smokeless and yields no poisonous by-product. By these, and other similar economies, we shall be able to stave off the time when our worldcapital begins to be exhausted. For that time must come. We are living upon the hoards which the womb of our mother the earth has borne to our father the sun. But our mother is, in respect at all events of mineral wealth, past the age of conception ; and every century brings us more, rapidly near to the time when we shall, like spendthrifts, have lived out our capital. Already the end of coal is in sight. When, at the end of a vista, however long we begin to be able to foresee the exhaustion of oilier minerals, wo shall face a problem appalling in its nature.