Will the Sun Work?

A Fascinating Hope Held Out by the Electricians.

LIVING BY STORAGE BATTERY

What the Bell People Spend for Experiments — The Telegraph to Typewrite Automatically.

“The starting of the great electrical plant at Niagara may be said to open a new epoch in human progress,” said Emile Berliner, the famous electrician recently. “Power is to be furnished from the falls eventually at any desired point within a radius of 100 miles. It will light the city of Buffalo, and I should not be at all surprised if at a future day New York city were illuminated by its means. Water power will certainly be employed before long on an immense scale for the production of electricity. Take Switzerland, for example, which has unlimited water power. Twenty years hence all of the electricity utilized in that country will be obtained without burning any fuel.

“The greatest problem before electricians to-day is the transformation of heat into electricity direct. As things are now, fuel must be burned to make steam, the steam works an engine, the engine operates the dynamo, and the dynamo generates the current. This elaborate process involves an enormous loss of energy. When the problem I speak of has been solved life will be easier. Biddy will get up in the morning and start a fire, the heat of which will fill a series of storage batteries. These batteries, without intervention by human hands, will do most of the work of the household during the day. They will light the dwelling, keep the machine fans revolving, run the sewing machine and control the family elevator and dumb waiter.

“When we know how to transform heat into electricity direct we shall be able to use the sun’s rays for manufacturing the strange and potent fluid. Think what that will signify. Power will then be as cheap as sunlight, and nobody will be obliged to do mechanical or bodily labor. Such an epoch will surely realize the long hoped for millennium. The time is already near when steam engines will be done away with, revolutionizing the economy of mankind. Even now there is a tendency to replace belting in factories with separate small motors for each lathe or other machine, a dynamo in the engine room supplying the current. Thus an important saving of power is accomplished.

“We do not need to look to the future for electrical wonders. The present is giving birth to marvel after marvel. The long distance telephone overland has ceased to be regarded as extraordinary. People talk from Chicago to Boston without thinking of the marvel of it. Before very long New York and other eastern cities will be connected with San Francisco by telephone. There is no difficulty about that, save that the establishment of such a transcontinental line would require a good deal of capital, mainly because the copper wire employed would have to be very heavy, and copper is costly. The greater the distance the heavier the wire must be. The next step in the development of the telephone will enable a number of persons to talk over the same wire simultaneously, and by this means the cost of long distance telephoning will be much reduced. Experts are working on this problem now.

“The Bell company spends $100,000 a year for experiments. In its Boston laboratory 30 experts are constantly engaged in working on telephone problems. An invention that is even now approaching perfection is the theatrophone. This contrivance will make it possible for people to step into a public office and listen to grand opera or the comic opera or the songs and funny dialogues of a variety show, choosing among such attractions as pleases their fancy. Of course, such a device may be turned to account as a household convenience, so that the well-to-do citizen will be able to listen to a play or an opera without leaving his dwelling.

“Prof. Trouvelot, the astronomer, has observed sounds in the telephone corresponding to explosions of hydrogen in the sun. Such explosions are frequently to be seen through the telescope — catastrophes on a gigantic and appalling scale, the smallest of which would suffice to wholly destroy a planet the size of the earth. Simultaneously with such a solar explosion, as reported by Prof. Trouvelot, a peculiar crackling sound is heard in the telephone. Electricity, you know, has the same velocity as light. In fact, the two are supposed to be closely related. This idea is confirmed by experiments of Tesla, who produces in an open room what looks like a gas jet, though it is nothing but a discharge of electricity from a metal point generated by a current at a high rate of alternation.

“Tesla, as you know, has done some very wonderful things. He fills a room with electricity so that when he holds a glass tube exhausted of air anywhere in the room a light appears in the tube. No wires are used. That some day we may be able to illuminate our houses by electricity without employing wires seems entirely possible. You have heard, doubtless, of the manner in which Tesla passes 1,000,000 volts of electricity through his own body without suffering injury. That is easily explained. Energy can accomplish nothing unless opposed by resistance. A current of 1,000,000 volts is so strong that the body cannot oppose any resistance to it, and so it passes through without doing harm. Up to a certain point a high voltage is destructive, but beyond that point it is less dangerous. When the voltage reaches the hundreds of thousands there is no effect except that of warming. Tesla has devised a bath in which electricity takes the place of water. It is for medical purposes.

“One of the most remarkable of Tesla’s inventions is his so-called ‘oscillator,’ which is a contrivance consisting of a steam piston vibrating at a tremendous rate of speed against electro magnets. The oscillation, though so rapid, is through so small a space that the piston seems merely to tremble as it vibrates. By means of this device very powerful currents are generated, and energy is utilized more economically. In other words, less energy goes to waste. Tesla employs his oscillator for lights and for running machinery. Another of his feats is to charge himself with electricity in such quantities that his body is luminous in a dark room. Thus charged, he takes an electric light bulb in one hand and ignites it by placing a finger of his other hand upon a generator.

“Before very long the telegraph will itself produce automatically typewritten matter in full pages. This will be a great improvement on the narrow paper ribbon. It is the next important step to be accomplished in telegraphy. A fact you may not be aware of has to do with the remarkably small amount of electricity required for transmitting the human voice over a telephone wire. The current needed may be only the one-millionth part of what a small electric battery would furnish. By the way, when one speaks through a telephone, he does not talk over the line of wire. He talks merely into a little coil in the instrument. It is a second coil near it that transmits the spoken words. In the United States there are more telephone subscribers than in all the countries of Europe put together. One of the valuable new uses of electricity is to separate copper from the ore. The latter is dissolved in acids, and the metal is deposited by the action of a powerful dynamo upon metal plates.

“The kitchen of the future will be run by electricity. Such a kitchen was exhibited in operation at the Chicago fair. It was absolutely free from dust and dirt. Heat for cooking was produced at an instant’s notice by turning a switch. Electric heating for practical purposes is a problem not yet satisfactorily solved, merely because it is not cheap enough.” — Philadelphia Times.