The Electrical Millennium

The wonders of electricity have often been discussed with lively interest. This has been called the electrical age, because of the extraordinary developments in applying the subtle current to practical and beneficent purposes. But evidently we are only in the initial stages of electrical progress. That at least is the opinion expressed by those who have devoted their lives to studying and experimenting in the electrical world. No one has attained greater prominence in this line of activity than Nikola Tesla. Hence what he says, even if clothed in what seems to the average reader the language of extravagance, is certain to command attention.

Mr. Tesla contributes a remarkable article to The Manufacturers’ Record of Baltimore, in which he makes an extraordinary forecast of electricity’s amazing possibilities. He includes a history of electricity from the time of its discovery to the present time and hints that Moses might have been a skilled electrician and that many in ancient times, including the Romans who kept the vestal fires burning, may have had some knowledge of the subject. However, this generation is more concerned with the present and the future, and Mr. Tesla dismisses the idea that the telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, the incandescent lamp, the induction motor, the oscillatory transformer, the Roentgen ray, radium, wireless telegraphy and other developments represent all we are to know of electrical power and how to use it. He says all that has been attained thus far is as nothing compared with what is coming, and that hundreds of millions of dollars may be saved annually by a comprehensive electrical plan for the mining, handling, transportation, storage and sale of coal, and this applies also to natural gas and mineral oil. In other words, ways of extracting and transmitting power directly from coal, gas and oil will be found, and the enormous waste now unavoidable will be eliminated.

The great reliance in generating electricity will be water power, and Mr. Tesla believes 6,000,000 horse-power could be created annually from waste gases of blast furnaces alone, through cheap and efficient generators. So far 7,000,000 horse-power has been developed in this country, and that is equal to the mechanical performances of 150,000,000 men. Think of the potential increase in energy if all the available power were utilized! In the good time coming Mr. Tesla sees electricity producing fertilizers, for which there is an unceasing demand. He believes that the precipitation of moisture can be brought under electrical control, so that a supply can be obtained at any time and thus power can be provided for developing any desired amount of energy, completely transforming the globe by irrigation and intensive farming. Wireless transmission of power is now an accomplished fact, and bewildering opportunities are to be seen in that direction. Electrical lighting is but in its infancy, and an electrical refrigerating machine, providing coolness for every household, is within the line of achievement. Propulsion of ships by electricity is as yet an untouched field, although there is no doubt that the system can be worked with entire success. There are to be electrical instruments for preventing collisions, and fog, that dread of all navigators, will be dispersed by electricity. Revolutions will be wrought by the adoption of agricultural electrical devices; forests will be safeguarded against fire; it will be possible to flash any image formed in thought on a screen and to render it visible at any place desired; in telegraphy and telephony new inventions will simplify methods and enormously reduce cost, while wireless service will extend indefinitely; there will be type-writers electrically actuated by the human voice, doing away with operators and saving time and cost; there will be many municipal improvements, including smoke annihilators, dust consumers, ozonizers, sterilizers of water, air, food and clothing, and accident preventers on the streets and in elevated and underground railroads. We are told: “It will become next to impossible to contract disease germs or get hurt in the city, and country folk will go to town to rest and get well.”

As to war appliances, there seems to be no limit. A new electric gun will be brought out, with the effectiveness of which nothing now known can compare. Dirigibles and aeroplanes will send deadly currents to the ground. Battleships and submarines will have such delicate “feelers” that the approach of any object can be instantly detected and guarded against, and torpedoes and floating mines will move automatically and with undeviating accuracy. Telautomatics, or wireless control of automatic machines, will play a great part in the next war, and there will be no end of contrivances of greater range and destructiveness than any in use at present. It might well be imagined that such unleashing of matchless power might tend to abolish war, because no nation could afford to face such devastation. Perhaps this world is advancing to universal peace along a road lighted with electric light. Anyway, according to Mr. Tesla, with a perfect system of wireless transmission of energy man will be able to solve all the problems of material existence. Distance will be completely annihilated in thought, word and action. Humanity will be united, wars will be made impossible, and peace will reign supreme.