A Look Into the Future

If we could transport ourselves in imagination back to the early years of this century, to a period when the lives of people still living were beginning, what a different world we should find! Think of it. The steam engine then had but entered on its civilizing career; no good roads existed even for fast coaches; no Atlantic greyhounds sped through storms and fogs at twenty miles an hour; there were no telegraphs outstripping time, and making the sun a sluggard; no railway trains to rush along by night or day at 60 miles an hour; and no gas to light our streets or homes. And seeing so much has been gained in so short a time, we can hardly wonder that many thinking men should turn toward the ever-approaching and unknown future, and attempt to lift the veil which shrouds it from our gaze.

To some it appears that we have, in various directions, already nearly reached that boundary beyond which the human intellect cannot pass; while others see in the success which has followed past endeavor the promise and potency of still greater triumphs. Beside, how many discoveries nature reveals to us unexpectedly and unsought-for! while each one in succession assists in explaining mysteries yet unsolved. For science, like a benignant mother, has no favorites, and offers her rewards to all earnest seekers, the learned and unlearned alike. She has hidden away many of her most valuable secrets in the most unlikely and unexpected places, and they lie all around us awaiting recognition.

Especially is it so with chemistry, which has been aptly termed the “science of the world and the future.” By its transformations we have been enabled to convert some of the most worthless materials into important objects of everyday use. It is continually opening up to us new sources of wealth and convenience, of which former ages had no idea.

We look forward to a time when the chemist will make a harvest when wanted, instead of waiting a year for nature’s slower operations. Then from the common matter of the universe we shall be able to build up direct the waste that results from all action, motion, and even from life itself.

At present, this waste is restored to us by eating beef or mutton. But we shall have changed all that, and the task of obtaining the ingredients, the nitrogen and carbon direct from nature, and of combining them in their due proportions, will be simply every-day work for the chemist of the future. Then the destruction of our fleet in war time would not mean the awful miseries of famine that would at present be almost certain.

In the long catalogue of problems on which science is now earnestly engaged, one is the discovery of methods for neutralizing or finding antidote to the bacillus or seed-form of zymotic infectious diseases, such as cholera, consumption, small-pox, malarial diseases or fevers. But recently the exquisite experiments and researches of Pasteur, Tyndall, Koch, Loffler and others, have partly foreshadowed that long-sought-for prophylactic which is to make the entry of the too oft fatal germs to the human body difficult, or to neutralize them by a simple or easy remedy.

It is more than probable that our future consumption of fuel, instead of increasing, will diminish, through superior methods of using it, without considering the probability of our finding substitutes. For the time may come when we shall be able to concentrate and employ the immense currents of thermo-electricity which result from the action of the sun’s rays and the rotation of the earth. We seem to be on the verge of being able to produce electricity directly from the burning of coal; and, this once accomplished, there will immediately follow the universal adoption of the electric motor as a prime power.

In this direction we have many resources. For instance, our rivers, wind and tides can all be made to contribute to the production of heat and power. Also in many countries there are springs of hot water which have flowed for centuries unchanged in temperature. On the island of Ischia, in the Bay of Naples, on deepening the sources of these springs only a few feet, the water is found to boil; while, a little deeper, steam of very high pressure has been obtained. All these sources of power can be converted into stored electrical energy, capable of being conveyed to any place where wanted and employed to give heat, light, and great power in small space.

No; we need not be alarmed at the prospect of the exhaustion of our coal fields. Science will solve this question, and at the same time purify the atmosphere of our cities for us.

The promised applications of electricity are almost innumerable. Nicola de Tesla promises to give us sunshine by night or day; maintaining that terrestrial heat and light are due to electrical vibrations in the millions of miles of ether which separate our earth from the sun, and not derived from a ball of fire, as is generally believed. These vibrations have been produced on a small scale by means of an experimental alternating current dynamo giving 20,000 vibrations a second, followed by a luminous haze. This points to the possibility of manufacturing sunshine when wanted.

Sir W. Preece has made telegraphic communication between the Island of Flat Holme and the Welsh coast without wires, by means of the magnetic currents in earth and water. It is not long since only one message could be sent each way over the same wire simultaneously; now, 70 can be sent — 35 in each direction, on one wire.

Experiments have proved that electric currents give vigor to the growth of most vegetables and plants, and also paralyze the mischievous activity of parasites, animal and vegetable. Here is hope for the agriculturist, and wider opportunities for the electrical engineer. It is said that the total amount of heat poured by the sun on every acre of the earth’s surface annually is equal to 750,000 horse-power. From this, a heavy crop utilizes 3,200 horse-power only; the remainder, so far as vegetation is concerned, is dissipated into space. Here is energy sufficient to supply all the steam engines in existence. Who can show us how to apply it to useful purposes?

Another novelty of great value is the application of electricity to sanitary improvement; the treatment and purification of sewage by this method is only too costly for use. The sterilization of disease germs by electricity in the water supply of cities has been experimented on with excellent results; and the difficulty and expense of dealing with such vast volumes of water is a problem which must be attacked very soon.

The thunderstorm is usually followed by a fall of temperature and “broken weather,” which, lasting from a few days to a month, combined with the absence of sunshine, often thwarts effectually nature’s kind intentions in ripening fruit. So the electrician aims at controlling the weather. Shall we ever be able to make the clouds discharge their moisture during the night, and thus leave clear skies and sunshine for the day? Prof. Lodge has proved that the discharge of electricity into the air of a smoking-room at once clears it of smoke and dust. A flash of lightning — which is simply a huge electric spark — is projected through the moisture-laden clouds, and is followed by a deluge of rain. Thunder, we know, clears the air. A fog is electro-positive, and the electrician will not be allowed to rest until fogs are things of the past.

When a cheap supply of electricity can be obtained, the immense possibilities which will come within the range of practice will soon reveal themselves. Hon. Robert Boyle, who lived early in the 17th century, entitled one of his essays, “Of man’s great ignorance of the uses of natural things, or that there is no one thing in nature whereof the uses to human life are yet thoroughly understood.” The whole history of science, electricity especially, has been one long commentary on this curious text. After the publication of Franklin’s experiments, it was generally believed that there was nothing remaining to be discovered concerning electricity.

“It may be said,” wrote Priestly, not many years later, in reply to this hasty statement, “there is a ne plus ultra in everything, and therefore in electricity. There is no reason to think that we have arrived at it, for with every new discovery it becomes more apparent that the ultima Thule of electrical possibilities lies far beyond our horizon.”

Science is only at the beginning of its career. The prospects of the future invite to present humility. We are still like Newton, after all his discoveries, standing on the shore of a great ocean, from which we have picked up a few of its treasures thrown upon the beach, each one of which only serves to show its illimitable and, as yet, undiscovered wealth.