THE FUTURE OF ELECTRIC INVENTION

Southland Times, Issue 4156, 25 October 1881, Page 4

THE FUTURE OF ELECTRIC INVENTION

Professor Perry, at the Society of Arts recently, painted a most alluring picture of the future of electricity. Telegraphs, telephones, photophones, photographs, microphones, and electric pens are the mere beginnings of the Bcience; and will, by the time we are too old. to nse them, be regarded with much the same respectful interest that Stephenson's" Rocket" is viewed by a modern engineer, or Coster's " Spiegel onzer Bedhoudenis " by a member of the typographical union. By-and-by we 6hall not only correspond, talk, send our portraits, and " manifold " by electricity, but have our houses lighted and heated, our railway trains and tram-cars propelled, and our machinery driven by the same omnipotent agent. If needs be, every weaver's shuttle, cj'ery village blacksmith's bellows, every iniDiner's sewing-machine, and every advanced baby's crade will be driven, blown, or rocked by that "Vrill" power, of whose futuie development by the coming race Mr Perry has almost as sanguine a hope as had Lord Lytton after a less scientific fashion. Coal gas, at which Sir Walter Srott jeered, and for a belief in which Dr Chalmers was conBtdered by his shrewd countrymen to be not altogether " soond,"' is, we are told, doomed as a lighting agent. la a few years it will subserve the humble office of a generator of electricity byfletting steam-engines in motion, or by being consumed in a voltaic cell. But a-* power can be transmitted by electricity, thtre is, as Sir William Thomson once suggested, nothing to prevent us from importing our force from America, just as at present we import beef, wheat, " canned " peaches, and wooden nutmegs. In the falls of Niagara there is energy enough to generate sufficient electricity to light and heat all London, drive all the machinery in Birmingham or Manchester, and send a score of flyine; Scotchmen ■with' easy swifttiess from one cod of the kingdom to, the other. "Transmitted energy" •will be consigned to Us from the Amazon and Ihe Anaoor, from the smoke-cnvelorjed "foss" of the Hjonimel Sayka, or the tumbling water of the Trollhata. In the future we are to drink, build onr houses, plough our fields-and. manure them, sail onr yachts, propel our tteamers and trains, print our books, and perhaps write them, by the aid of electricity. Men will tben have subdued, the forces of nature* and the lord of creation will relapse) into manual -idleness, or dream away life in one long afternoon, until he dies of an overdose of electricity, and is buried inanelec-tric-duj? grave, or cremated by a toncb of his bejeaved family's private " Perry- Ayrton" machine. That this and a great deal more will come to pass is evident to all who can iead within the lines of Professoi Perry's discourse. Sydriey Smith, who, like Southey, had a limited appreciation of science, conBidered that " from electricity and M.P.'s we expected too much." In the Siemens electric railway the propelling force is alone sent with the cars, but not the machine for generating that force. A generator of electricity is driven by a large stationary engine somewhere in the vicinity of the railway. A motor on a carriage receives electric energy by the conducting rails, and converts this into mechanical work to drive the carriage.

Tbe introduction of electric railwaysis merely a question of capital, and the use of much existing plant. But as soon as this is resolved on there will be economy effected, for as £& hthvj locomotives will be required there will be saving in the wc'gbt of steel rails, in the cost of bridges, and in the wear ;and tear "f permanent way. And as each carriage will; hare its own driving and breaking machinery, the energy at present wasted in stopjing a train " will be simply given back' to the generator." The probl em of Jighti lg aqd healing houses by electricity is prac- ' tically solved. When people generally avail themselves of that solution, smoke and soot and dirt will desert our murky atmosphere, while the same engine that warms the merchant's office will light his warehouse, enable ! him to correspond with his agent by word or : letter, order dinner, synchronise his clocks, receive jthe portrait of a suspicious visitor to his cohntry house, call the police, and blow the fog-horn which is to warn off the rocks ,the>crew.pf his homeward-bound ship. Nor need, its use stop there. In time the advancement of electricity will penetrate even the , .darkness of the vestries. The citizen who tumbles into his electrically warmed bed with, the snow a foot deep on the ground will wake up in the morning to toast his toes at the electric stove and see dry streets and the beadle trundling home the parish Gramme. Already Edward Bright in ten minutes de(lectrifies*in a vacuum bis hirsute bobbins of yarn, instead of, as formerly, allowing nature to do so in haif a year — during which his capital must lie fallow in the factory. She.lford Bidwell produces pictures of distant stationary objects in shaded lines on paper, by electro-chemical decomposition ; and Mr Terry, by taking a hint from Mr Punch, is by, no means pertain that very soon ah aged 1

couple at home may not be able to see on their drawing-roam" wall an image of their . .grandchildren playing Badminton in India,, and of learning from the telephone how they are enjoying the game. All this, of course, must seem to be in the far distance. Still,;

we must remember that science is moving rapidly, that every year sees fresh students , and busy brains intent on improving the .handiwork of their predecessors. It seems

like yesterday since Oersted was vainly en- .- deavoring to explain to the Danish Queeu \ Dowager, who died last week, the first glimmering of the electric telegraph. Yet the telephone already promises to su^creeile the - telegraph. Men still living can remember 'Sir John Barrow warning his friend George. "Utepnenson not, to hurt a good cause by talking foolishly about being nble to run a locomotive more than five miles an hour, or of carrying-over "a few hundred" passengers . in the course of a year. Bat already coaldriven engines are likely, within another fifty years, to be entirely eclipsed by. electrical ones. The chances are that telegraphs will by that time be as obsolete as are semaphores, beacon fires, and smoke signals, and •■- that the" heliograph will be only examined at . museums as an interesting step in the development of the photopbone. Bacon, ; Newton,. Boyle, Watt Oersted, Joule, and Thomson pointed the way to Stephenson, Cooke, Wbeatstone, Gramme, Edison, Graham, < Belly, and Hughes. The wonders of to-day may be only the curiosities of the future. . Photography is, for instance, 60 familiar to us that when the actual discoverer of that *■ wonderful art passed away, four .years ago, his death was barely noticed, simply because few could imagine that .a discovery, seemingly fo old, bad been the work of men of our generation. Posterity, which has done nothing for us^ is to receive a mighty legacy, which it' will be expected to transmit without decrease to the generations yet unborn. Theirs will be a happy lot, and one might well wish to live long enough to witness the wonderful century of which some of us may see the dawn, but the end of which none of us can survive. Yet the men of those days may, after •*"• felVbfe a thought-racked, careworn race. They may be saved much manual toil, though -■ before they can regulate all their mechanical .<•• Appliances they will be a people of short - lives • and weary brains. But perhaps by -- .that time in electricity will be found the -j alchemist's elixir of life, or of those fountains of perpetual youth for which Ponce de Leon tonght in vain. — London "Standard. .