Electricity from Sun Rays

According to the latest story, Nikola Tesla, who is always on the brink of doing some wonderful thing, has considered Edison’s idea of getting electricity direct from coal and gone one better. Tesla, so the story goes, has found a way to utilize directly the light and heat of the sun for producing steam and thence electricity and power.

He proposes to erect on Long Island a plant for this purpose. In the center of a glass roofed room a huge cylinder will be fixed. A system of mirrors surrounding the cylinder will refract upon it the sun rays in sufficient intensity to heat a quantity of water within the cylinder, which is hollow. The water is chemically treated, so that it will boil and make steam very quickly. The steam will run a dynamo, which will send a current of electricity anywhere and everywhere it is wanted at a cost so trifling that fuel and light bills will henceforth be a mere bagatelle. At least that is what one infers from a Tesla interview in the New York World.

Tesla is reported as saying that it would not be surprising if in a very few years all the large cities were to be heated and lighted by electricity obtained from the sun, while machinery everywhere would be driven in the same way. Sufficient electricity is to be stored in power houses to last during hours when the sun does not shine. If there is anything in this invention, it will be able to change Alaska and the whole Klondike region into a tropical garden and melt down in less than no time the frozen earth that now holds the gold there fast in its clutches.