The Progress of the World - Some of Its Scientific and Historical Features Sketched

[SPECIALLY PREPARED FOR THE BULLETIN.]

The progress of scientific and industrial development in the closing years of this nineteenth century is becoming something truly wonderful. To the ranks of the chosen few whose labors are wholly devoted to the study of pure science for its own sake, are being daily added recruits to the host of workers in the field of applied science. Mechanical appliances of marvelous skill and wonderful efficiency, well nigh instinct with life and intelligence, add a thousand fold to the productive power of the civilized world.

In the rapidly increasing domain of electricity this progress is peculiarly marked. In the departments of power, traction, lighting and heating the advance is wonderfully rapid. From the water courses thousands of horse power which have run to waste in every part of the world for unnumbered centuries are now pulsing from their hitherto practically inaccessible fastnesses through our streets, workshops and factories, along slender cables, and transformed into work in the myriad processes of industrial development. This subtle agency now ingeniously delves in mines deep in the bowels of the earth, lighting up its dark recesses, preparing its rich treasures of metals and minerals, which it hoists to the surface and finally conveys to their destination in the busy hands of men.

It has already nearly displaced the horse from the street cars, and half a decade more promises to leave but a sorry remnant of the noble animal to perform the destructive drudgery but recently supposed to be indispensable for such locomotion. Fiery furnaces heated more than the “seven times” of that in which Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego walked “without the smell of fire upon their garments,” now smelt and weld metals. It almost transforms night into day in our cities and towns, and in London, the most populous of the world’s cities, gaslight is being rapidly displaced from the streets and dwellings, and its use for the bodies of their mangled purposes is rapidly extending; and as the processes for the economical production of the electric current are being daily more and more perfected the often prophesied disappearance of gas plants seems about to be realized. Railway and street cars are not only propelled by this mysterious “fluid,” but a gentle warmth is diffused through them by its means, instead of those unsightly and deadly abominations, the coal stoves, which in the frigid seasons of the East so often add to the horrors of the railway wreck “burnt offerings” of the bodies of their mangled victims. And where millions of acres of desolate and sterile (because waterless) lands are being reclaimed and made to teem with fruit and flowers and grain, electricity has stepped in and forced the imprisoned water to yield its store of force for industrial purposes, even to the plowing of the soil, thence to be conducted in gentle rivulets over the surface, reappearing in the myriad forms in which nature delights the eye and tempts the palate. And even the illimitable forces of the sea are promised to be drawn upon to aid in the gigantic task of subduing the earth to man’s purposes. The ebbing billows and the swelling and heaving tides have already been harnessed to man’s triumphal car by these slender electrical ligaments, and the progress thus far contains “the promise and potency of fulfillment” of Edison’s famous prophecy, that when the sea shall be made to yield up its power, “then will come the millennium of electricity.” When the swarthy, begrimed miner shall be compelled to cease from his arduous toil, and the swelling billows be robbed of their force to feed the electric conduits with the currents now produced by the combustion of the “black diamonds,” and old King Coal dispossessed of his crown, then and not till then, in the words of Nikola Tesla, who has apparently solved the greatest electrical problem of the age, the safe production of light by means of enormous voltages of electricity, without the uses of wires, carbons or incandescent filaments, or even heat — “electricity will take the place of fire and steam and will be the only agent employed to light and heat and move the entire world.” Thus three main scientific problems of transcendent interest to civilized nation now pressing for solution, are —

(1) The electrical production of light at a minimum cost, and absolutely divorced from heat, as is sunlight when passing through the interstellar spaces prior to reaching the earth’s atmosphere, where the friction of its instantaneous passage produces the heat which is popularly associated with sunlight. Science and experiment have demonstrated that the “absolute zero,” which has been nearly approximated by well known scientific processes upon the earth’s surface, can only exist in the realms of infinite space, where the almost unparticled ether is the agent of its transmission, and affording no obstruction to its passage.

Light, electricity and heat are interchangeable terms, simply modes of manifestation of one and the same force or energy, and conditioned by the number of vibrations of that energy. The violet light of the solar spectrum produces the highest number of vibrations, about seven hundred and seven trillions (707,000,000,000,000); white light, 500,000,000,000,000; red light, 433,000,000,000,000. What we know as heat is not a mode of electrical vibration below the range perceptible to the eye; while those of chemical action rise above it — to a thousand trillion! The light of the glow-worm and fire-fly is a mode of motion in which the most sensitive sentiments contrived by scientists fail to detect the slightest trace of heat! It is this latter form of light that Tesla, whose discoveries and inventions in the domain we have previously referred to, recently exhibited in London before the most distinguished gathering of scientific men ever assembled together at one time and place. By means of alternating currents of the very high frequency mentioned he enabled his spell bound auditors to read print in that otherwise unlighted room by electric light produced absolutely without wires, carbons or carbon filaments. Briefly described, his apparatus was a powerful dynamo connected by its positive and negative poles to large thin sheets of metal near either extremity of the large audience chamber. Taking in his hand a glass tube hermetically sealed after producing the most perfect obtainable vacuum, he placed himself in the middle of the room exactly between the positive and negative plates of metal, holding a vacuum tube in his outstretched hand. Immediately the current from the dynamo was turned on, the tube continued to glow with a fairly brilliant light sufficient to enable the spectators to read ordinary coarse print. And Tesla said “Let there be light, and there was light,” but no heat! To show that the 100,000 volts of electricity thus produced was innocuous he caused that enormous current to pass through his body — and he still lives! Not even a shock was experienced. How was this astounding feat accomplished? That is his secret. He asserts that he can and will eventually perform the same experiment with the tremendous frequencies and voltages which constitute sunlight — a thousand trillions per second!

(2) When this stupendous possibility is an accomplished fact, what next? Can it become a commercial success? Can even the rich afford the luxury of “manufactured sunlight” where the necessary powerful machinery to impel the dynamo has to be driven by heat engines dependent upon coal, oil, or wood for their fuel? Doubtful.

There are of course certain uses, industrial or scientific, where the question of expense of such an apparatus would prove no bar to its employment. But if it were more costly than oil, gas, or even the present method of lighting, it could not enter into the occupations of the mass of mankind.

This brings us to the consideration of the second great problem now stirring the ingenuity of many inventive geniuses in every part of the world — the utilization of the illimitable forces of the waves of the sea and oceans.

Edison declared that the spectacle of the enormous force of the billows running to waste as he witnessed them from an ocean grey-hound that took him to the late Paris exposition “nearly set him wild” and he solemnly vowed that the first leisure he could snatch from his multitudinous schemes upon his return, he would contrive to harness these waves in driving dynamos and motors, “and then would come the millennium of electricity.”

The hour is at hand — and the man — where is he? A number who are struggling with this gigantic problem have very recently achieved partial success. It is a more difficult task than it seems at first blush, but it will be found a very simple one when the goal is finally reached, as it will most assuredly be in the near future.

The writer is most sanguine in the belief, based upon long continued investigation, that the time is close at hand when electricity generated by machinery driven by wave power will perform every office now discharged by the combustion of coal. Even the very winds that imperil the safety of the mariner on one of the most rugged coasts of France, are converted into messengers of light to warn him of his danger, by driving the dynamos in one of the largest electric light installations in the world.

(3) The third and last, and most difficult problem, and hitherto and apparently insoluble one, concerns man’s dominion over the air traversed only by its winged denizens.

More inventive genius, scientific research and treasure have been expended upon this fascinating quest than upon almost any other will-o’-the-wisp from the earliest dawn of history. But even here man’s triumph seems almost within his grasp. Two men, one an American and the other an Australian, antipodean rivals, have been engaged for years in trying to master the intricate obstacles which lie in the path of success in aerial navigation.

Hiram S. Maxim, second, if he is not the equal, of Edison in the fecundity of his skill and genius has already devoted a large slice of a fortune derived from his famous machine gun, to research and experiment upon an extensive scale on the subject of aeroplanes driven by steam power, in machines of his own devising, in which he has constructed steam engines of 300 horse power, weighing 2,400 pounds with everything complete, boiler included, or 8 pounds per horse power.

The Australian, Laurence Hargrave, no less thorough and untiring, though probably of less means, has constructed no less than eight different working models, each of which was an improvement upon its predecessor, and every one of which has been able to take shorter or longer self sustaining flights — the latest one of several hundred yards. With a motive power as light as Maxim’s no doubt a large air ship can be produced capable of carrying a score or more of passengers for hundreds of miles in safety, at a speed ranging from 40 to 80 miles per hour — perhaps more. Mr. Maxim is about to make an aerial test of his large ship at his country seat just outside of London, and it may be that some day the writer hereof may greet him after a successful trip across the Atlantic, and renew the acquaintance and friendship formed in the centennial year at New York and Philadelphia, where the subject of “flying machines” then formed a congenial subject for speculation and discussion.

There recently assembled at the World’s fair in Chicago a congress of noted scientific men who are now interesting themselves in the art of successful aviation. Something like two score essays were prepared for submission to the congress by their authors, who were present from all quarters of the globe.

It is the general consensus of opinion of the investigators that, given a motor of sufficient power conjoined to the greatest possible levity, the whole question of navigation of the air at almost any required speed resolves itself into a simple matter of detail, wholly within the province of skilled mechanics to successfully compass. Ignoring entirely the balloon while wholly dependent upon the use of hydrogen gas for its sustaining power, or even that which combines the use of both gas and motive power, it is now certain that the practical commercial airship of the near future will employ either the aero-plane, the air-propeller, or wings. Either of these methods has been successfully tried by small models. The Australian experimenter has tried them all, and inclines to the use of the latter. Which of these will prove to be the most efficient time and experiment can alone decide.

It needs no especial brilliantly imagination to forecast the result of man’s dominion over the aerial ocean by such methods of locomotion.

The search for the North pole, which has cost so much life and treasure during the last three centuries of heroic endeavor and cruel privation and exposure, would speedily be crowned with success by means of air ships; though the practical object of the quest, to the ordinary mind, seems utterly disproportioned to the expenditure of labor.

The thirst for knowledge with some classes of minds seems to be rendered more intense, as the difficulty, danger and apparent lack of practical utility is evident. If Lieut. Peary, who is now arduously groping his way among the ice floes within the Arctic circle, should fail to reach it in his present attempt; on his return, if he shall be so fortunate, Maxim and his co-laborers in aeronautics may be able to furnish him with means of speedy success in a subsequent attempt. One of these machines constructed by the Australian, and be inclined to give the preference to that form, imitates the flight of birds; and it may be that the fervent aspiration of the Psalmist, “O, that I had wings like a dove!” may become a practical achievement after the lapse of nearly thirty centuries.

Indubitably, the light of the early dawn of that age predicted by the inspired author, “when men shall run to and fro upon the earth and knowledge be increased,” is beginning to stream in upon us in these closing years of the century. Not only are scientific and mechanical problems of commanding interest being successfully attacked as never before, but sociological and psychological mysteries of even greater possibility are slowly evolving under the intense search lights of thousands of eager and devoted students in every race and clime. Undismayed even by that startling dictum of the ancient philosopher of Biblical fame, “Canst thou by searching find out God?” the “Unknowable” is boldly subjected to their telescopic and microscopic scrutiny.

Theories of the seen and unseen universe are being promulgated by reverent minds, and the relations of mind and matter, of spirit and substance, of being and non-being, are pouring forth through pens and types in such numbers as to confound the will and bother the understanding. And while the serried hosts in the east and west are being marshalled by potentates and principalities for impending gigantic conflicts of “that which make for peace” are no less surely swelling in volume, ready to begin anew the work of laying the foundation of a better social and political order, on which to rear a grand superstructure whereon law and order and justice shall more fully obtain; to the end that a sanctified and glorified humanity may possess the earth and the fulness thereof!

In the eye of scientific truth possessed by the student who is properly equipped with the intellectual means of research, that age is no dream of the transcendentalist; for such as he discerns clearly that the laws of evolution govern the universe of mind and spirit as inexorably as they do the world material. The bow of promise broods over the awful cataract, and if the race, as predicted by the greatest of pessimists, Carlyle, must “shoot Niagara” may it not be that that bow illumined by the dawn of a better day shall still shed its mild effulgence as a light on a man’s without path way toward the promised land? For the answer to these riddles of this modern sphinx we can only “learn to labor and to wait.”