To Do Away with Dynamos

Constant and rapid improvement is being made in electrical machinery and the cost of electric force is being correspondingly reduced. Just at this time when the city of Oswego is considering the question of putting in an electric light plant all inventions concerning the subject will be regarded with peculiar interest by our people. We find in the Chicago Tribune an interesting description of an invention calculated to dispense with dynamos. The idea is from the brain of that industrious inventor, Nikola Tesla, and the new machine is called an “oscillator.” It is described as using the highest steam pressures and converting their energy directly into electricity. In the steam engine, which is of simple and cheap construction, “the piston action directly excites the magnets, which in turn control the very rapid vibrations of the piston, and electric current is produced in quantity varying with the power of the machine, without any of the losses by friction and radiation incidental to the existing methods of combining the steam engine and the electric dynamo.” The current thus obtained is available for conversion into heat, light or motion, like that obtained from the ordinary dynamo, which would appear to be entirely dispensed with in the new machine.

If there be no mistake about this another peaceful revolution is in order for the near future. Not only would this machine do away with Surveyor Harris’s fear (?) of boiler explosions in case the city puts in a plant, but a general substitution of electricity for gas may be looked for in the home. While the ratio of use now is ten of gas to one of electricity, the former may be dispensed with if the cost of the latter be reduced fifty per cent., and even coal will be driven out from the household, indeed from all but the larger factories. The electric force will be accumulated in vast quantities at central points, and from them supplied by wire to residences for cooking, heating the building, also lighting it and the street, and supplying power to innumerable small machines for minor manufacturing processes which then can be conducted at home. Offices and factories will be served in the same way, the cheapness of the method commending it to universal adoption. Of course this will eliminate coal and ashes from the buildings and thoroughfares, render the former far more comfortable than now is possible because of the facilities for equalizing the temperature, and totally abolish the nuisances of smoke and soot which at present make life a burden to many in the big cities. The lungs and eyes of the citizen, as well as his walls, pictures, and furniture, will cease to be polluted by an atmosphere laden with filth from imperfect consumption of soft coal in grate, stove, and furnace.

The invention is also likely to be utilized in the matter of transportation as the cost of service will be cheaper than any other method now in use. The Chicago Tribune points to the fact in this connection that already in France steam is being converted into electricity for the moving of railroad trains and the process is crude and expensive as compared with that proposed by Tesla. If on the present French plan it be worth while to effect the conversion surely the arguments will be overwhelmingly in favor of the new plan being adopted on every line of railroad in the world, and if on land the substitution on water must be universal. Steamers not only will be furnished with a much cheaper motive power, but the dead load they have to carry will be enormously reduced for a given tonnage, leaving more room for freight and passengers, and presenting the additional great advantage of a reduced risk of breaking down in midocean, while the danger of fire must be vastly decreased by having all the lighting and cooking on board performed by the aid of the electric current.

It now is more than twenty years, says the Tribune, since the idea was first advanced that ultimately science may find a way in which electricity can be obtained directly from coal, using the fuel as an element in the battery. That idea has not been actualized yet; perhaps never will be. But if it should be found possible some day in the future to effect this, the additional step will not be so great a one as that achieved by Tesla in dispensing with the dynamo, always provided his invention be all that is claimed for it. Probably the chief drawback will be found in the important fact that a considerable part of the force now needed to turn the dynamo will have to be expended at the piston to overcome the retarding stress due to the operation of evolving the electric force in the manner stated. Just how much of saving will be effected in spite of this relative loss is for the practical electricians to determine.