Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 November 1883 — Mechanical Speculations. [ARTICLE]

Mechanical Speculations.

A correspondent inclosed a published slip from a newspaper in which he has suggested the storage of wind power by means of winding up gigantic springs like watch-springs when the wind is high and free, the power thus obtained to be given out as needed. He suggests the heating of our dwellings by the compressing of air, and the cooling of them by expanding the air. He considers electric light and the mechanical power for any necessary handy purposes as being also produots of this harnessed wind force. But he goes still further and suggests the millenium of laziness. He says: “Our food and clothing are now produced by very tedious, inconvenient, laborious, circumlocuted and expensive means. The raw materials, from which they are produced, are dirt, water and air. The in ter-chemic il action of these materials, aided by heat and light, managed by a vast amount of mechanical force,'is the modus operandi of production. But heat and light being interchangeable with mechanical force, why is it not possible to produce food and clothing, in finished form, directly out of dirt, water and air by mechanical force?” This unanswerable question appears to cut off debate and close the subject. —Scientific American.