Wonders of Electricity at the Patent Office

The files of the patent office are filled with records of patents issued to Thomas Edison and other electricians. But now comes Mr. Nikola Tesla, who has anticipated the twentieth century by telegraphing without wires. He has transmitted electric signals through the earth a distance of twenty miles and received similar signals in return. He believes that the system that he has just perfected, will render it possible to communicate intelligence from any point on the globe to any other point without the intervention of wires or connecting lines of any kind. There are wonderful commercial opportunities in this discovery made by Nikola Tesla as to the transmission of electrical power from point to point without wires. It makes possible the erection of one central station, from which power may be sent wherever it is needed at a cost greatly below what is charged at present, for the copper feeding wires which are now used to transmit power from the central station are the heaviest item of expense. When the question of motive power for the underground road was under consideration by the New York Rapid Transit Commission and electricity was advocated, it was stated that the cost of the feeding wires alone for the underground line would be $7,000,000. Could the electrical product at Niagara Falls be distributed without wires, the cost would be so lessened that many more persons could avail themselves of the power, and the same condition might have its effect in the report of the commission which has just examined the Falls of the Nile, with a view to their adaptibility to the production of electrical energy. Factories and large work shops where electricity is employed, distributed among the various rooms by wire, would be operated at a greatly reduced expense; railroads would do away with their costly trolleys, and in every branch of trade where the electric fluid plays its part the outlay would be decreased. No idea as to how he will accomplish this wireless transmission could be gained from Inventor Nikola Tesla, but it may be guessed that his oscillators will be brought into play in the development of his plan.

In a recent interview on this subject Mr. Edison said: A few years ago we succeeded in telegraphing from a moving train of cars to a terminal station or to another train. We could throw a current over the train by a simple apparatus. The entire plant would cast only $150. We also showed that a current could be transmitted from one kite to another in the air. It might be possible, Mr. Edison said, with a smile, "to send a wave to England by the use of 5,000,000 or 6,000,000 horse-power, a wave that would transmit a letter, and it might be possible to transmit twenty words or a word a day. The power required would be enormous. No. I can see nothing in this scheme, described in such a vague and uncertain way."

Whether a citizen of the United States may maintain, operate or use any telephone without first having made arrangements with the American Bell Telephone company is the new phase of an old question that the telephone monopoly is about to bring before the courts. A quarter of a million of users of independent telephones are concerned in its solution as possible defendants in as many lawsuits. The fiercest of all the telephone wars will be precipitated by these suits, they will be brought against subscribers and not against the independent companies operating in opposition to the American Bell Telephone Company. That such suits have been contemplated is known to many of the independent companies, and since they threaten the existence of every one of them an extraordinary defensive movement has been begun. Conventions are being held, funds subscribed and plans laid to defeat the Bell company wherever these suits are brought before the courts.

In no department of the government a work has greater advance in efficiency and thoroughness been made, during the last four years, than in the federal Bureau of Statistics. The importance of this bureau has been steadily increasing during recent years, largely because of the commercial and economic problems which have risen, within that time, to a foremost place in political discussions. It is the duty of the Bureau of Statistics to compile and publish all the information bearing on such problems as may be obtained from current Treasury operations. All the returns, in general and in detail, of our foreign trade; the movement of market prices, of government finances — the collection of these statistics, their Nikola Tesla. tabulation in concise and convenient form, and the constant study to avoid inaccuracies, have grown into a work demanding the highest grade of specialized capacity. The present chief of the bureau, Mr. Worthington C. Ford, has won what may be called an international reputation by his achievements in this regard. With a closely limited appropriation, and with languid interest on the part of Congress, the publications of the bureau have been brought, under Mr. Ford's direction, to a statistical fulness and perfection which is not approached by the similar returns of any other government. Not many years ago, the monthly summary of foreign commerce was an eight-page tract containing the barest outline of the returns: nowadays it is a complete pamphlet resume, in general and in detail, of trade and Treasury statistics. The annual Statistical Abstract, formerly a perfunctory digest of the returns of other Treasury departments, is now an invaluable collation of figures bearing on the year's record in every branch of the country's trade and industry, and for fulness and accuracy is already far superior even to the similar publications of the British Board of Trade.