Harnessing the Sun

(Pall Mall Gazete.)

Some one once asked Nikola Tesla what, in his opinion, was the most important discovery made during the last century. His reply was that he regarded no discovery as containing vaster potentialities than the small toy one sometimes sees in shop windows, in which a couple of tiny flags are made to revolve in a vacuum through the influence of the sun’s rays. Since that remark was made the process of harnessing the sun has gone much further; and the recent meeting of a city company which is actually engaged in utilizing sun power in Egypt and elsewhere has a very genuine significance. If the process is ever developed on a widespread scale, the tropics will come to their own at last, for sun power in its present form can only be adopted for irrigation and general commercial purposes within 20 degrees of the equator. The temperate zones must retaliate by harnessing the tides.