Wireless to Light Oceans and Make War Impossible

Nikola Tesla, Inventor, Predicts Amazing Future for Electricity — Will Be the World's Industrial Power, Even to Driving Big Ships, and Will Operate Typewriter by Means of Voice Alone.

Baltimore, Md., September 11 — A typewriter electrically operated by the human voice, thus doing away with the operator and saving much time and labor in offices, is to be one of the wonders of the near future, says Nikola Tesla, the Inventor, in the Manufacturers Record, reviewing the progress of electricity and forecasting its future. The amazing possibilities of electricity also include wonderful achievements in telautomatics, Tesla says.

In the way of devices and implements of warfare, a new electric gun will soon be brought out. Dirigibles and aeroplanes will be equipped with small electric generators of high tension, from which the deadly currents will be conveyed through tin wires to the ground. Battleships and submarines will have electric and magnetic feelers so delicate that the approach of any body under water, or in darkness, will be detected.

There will be torpedoes and floating mines that will direct themselves automatically, and without fail get in fatal contact with the object to be destroyed. The art of telautomatics, or wireless control of automatic machines at a distance, will play a very important part in future wars and, possibly, in the present one.

Such contrivances may take the shape of aeroplanes, balloons, automobiles, surface or under-water boats, and will be of greater range and destructiveness than the implements now employed.

"I believe that the telautomatic aerial torpedo will make the large siege gun on which so much dependence is placed at present, obsolete," Tesla says.

Wars Will Be Made Impossible, Says Tesla.

In discussing the power of the future, tides, waves and winds are dismissed as uncertain and inefficient; fuel as now used is branded as a barbarous and wantonly-wasteful method, and the utilization of the sun's heat beyond the pale of the practical. The inevitable conclusion, therefore, is that water power is by far our most valuable resource. On this humanity must build its hopes for the future.

With its full development and a perfect system of wireless transmission of the energy to any distance, man will be able to solve all the problems of material existence. Distance, which is the chief impediment to human progress, will be annihilated in thought, word and action. Humanity will be united, wars will be made impossible, and peace will reign supreme.

Moses, so Tesla says, was undoubtedly a practical and skilled electrician, and he thinks it may be assumed that the Vestal fires of the Romans were electrical, and yet there was no progress made in the practical uses of electricity from early times until recent years.

The telegraph, telephone, phonograph and incandescent lamp, induction motor, oscillatory transformer, Roentgen ray, radium, wireless and numerous other revolutionary advances that have been made within the last century may suggest the thought that nothing is left to be done in electricity. Tesla says all this is as nothing as compared with what the future has in store, and which, in brief, may be outlined from his forecast, as follows:

Hundreds of millions of dollars may be saved annually by a comprehensive electrical plan for the mining, handling, transportation, storage and use of coal, and this applies also to natural gas and mineral oil.

Passing by the possibilities of electrical improvements in the processes of manufacturing steel, it is pointed out that not less than 4,000,000 horsepower could be developed annually in electrical generators, with new, efficient, extremely cheap and simple thermo-dynamic transformers, by utilizing the heat of the gases evolved in the manufacture of coke for blast furnaces, which gases are now wasted or only in part and inefficiently employed.

Electrical energy could be used advantageously in the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen and production of fertilizers, for which there is an unlimited demand. The harnessing of waterfalls is the most economical method known for developing power. So far, about 7,000,000 horsepower have been developed in this country. This is equal to the mechanical performance of 150,000,000 men.

Although there are limitations to water power development at present, the time is very near when the precipitation of the moisture of the atmosphere will be under control, and then it will be possible to draw unlimited quantities of water from the oceans, develop any desired amount of energy, and completely transform the globe by irrigation and intensive farming.

The wireless transmission of power is now an accomplished fact.

In the departments of electric light and power an electrical ice machine, economical and efficient, to provide refrigeration for every household, is an important new appliance, ready to be introduced.

A vast and absolutely untouched field is the use of electricity for the propulsion of ships. An electrical company has just equipped a large vessel with high-speed turbines and electric motors, and has achieved a signal success.

Wireless to Illuminate the Ocean.

There will be electrical instruments for preventing collisions, and fogs will be dispersed by electric force and powerful and penetrative rays. Within the next few years wireless plants probably will be installed for the purpose of illuminating the oceans.

The beneficial effects of electricity of high tension have been established unmistakably, and a revolution will be brought about through the extensive adoption of agricultural electrical apparatus. The safeguarding of forests against fires, the destruction of microbes, insects and rodents, in due course, will be accomplished by electrical means.

By the development of electrical instruments, it will be possible to flash any image formed in thought on a screen and render it visible at any place desired.

In telegraphy and telephony, new inventions will dispense with expensive constructions, and will extend enormously the wireless transmission of intelligence in all its departments. A number of improvements of much promise have been made in the art of telegraphing or telephoning pictures, and it is expected that complete success will be achieved soon.

Another valuable novelty will be a typewriter electrically operated by the human voice, thus doing away with the operator and saving much time and labor in offices.

Many municipal improvements based on the use of electricity are about to be introduced. We are to have everywhere smoke annihilators, dust absorbers, ozonizers, sterilizers of water, air, food and clothing, and accident preventers on streets, elevated roads and in subways. 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.