Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 October 1894 — ELECTRICITY. [ARTICLE]

ELECTRICITY.

Mure Marvelous Than steam in the Industrial World. Large results are produced by the employment of great forces. In early days, as in Egypt and in Rome, the only great force at command was a large number of men working as slaves. Our modern civilization may be said to be based upon steam, but is not steam soon to be displaced by the new force, elect! icity? While little more than a portent now, it will condition the progress of civilization during the new century so near at hand. It is more in the nature of a logical deduction than of a prophecy that we outling the possibilities and probabilities Of this mysterious force within the coming decade. The human family are soon to come into possession of conveniences of which they have scarcely dreamed. The present trolley system for operating street cars is certain to give way to some conduit plan or to improved storage batteries, thus removing unsightly poles and wires from streets. All telephone and telegraph wires within city limits, if wires are needed at all, will be laid under ground. Incandescent lamps now in use will be laid aside for greatly improved ones having no filaments, but which will glow by means of high frequency currents, or for devices placed in walls and ceilings, which will be made to diffuse plentiful light throughout our rooms. Small boats on lakes, in parks, and on rivers and canals, will be moved by electricity. Typewritten copy is now successfully transmitted to a distance by wire, and an entire page of a newspaper may soon be printed simultaneously in a hundred different cities, and slips so printed which describe the progress of a battle in Corea may lie delivered to us hourly. The electrical transmission of power will be rapidly extended, and for this purpose distant mountain streams and water falls will be utilized. Coal, too, will be burned at the coal mines, thus saving the cost of transporting that bulky fuel, and Its energy will appear In heat and power in homes hundredsof miles distant. By the year 1900 electric street and suburban railway traction will have taken the place of all other forms of traction. Telephoning around the world will soon be an easy matter. Already our long distance telephones have brought half of our country’s population within speaking distance. Any man in St. Paul can now bold a conversation with any man ip .Boston. The writer has talked over wire in which the resistance was such that to overcome it would be equivalent to talking by telephone with a friend In Constantinople, and the voices could be distinctly heard. Not only will such conversations be easy, but, in all probability, distant conditions will be accurately reproduced, and we shall be able to see our friends face to face while conversing with them. We will be able soon to inspect goods in New York, examine a farm in the State of Washington, read a book in Boston, listen to a sermon in New Orleans, seeing the clergyman and the congregation, hear an opera in Baltimore; and all this “while you wait,” and are comfortably seated in a room in Chicago. Electric heating, though costly now, will soon be so cheapened as to be brought into quite general use. The convenience of such heat for homes and for cars is at once apparent. From any desired point, as h s sleeping room, a man, by proper direction to his wife about buttonsand switches, can turn such,heat upon any portion of his house,, light a tiro in his kitchen range, or have all this attended to by clock-work. He can be awakened at any hour by a shock, and can have his house lighting so arranged that he can illumine any room in it from his bed, or, on coming home from the theater, he can light the lamps before entering the house. Electric motors will come Into general use, and in place of our present costly shafting, pulleys and belting, wires will connect our 1,040 machines with dynamos, and in order to use any machine the operative will simply have to turn a switch or press a button, thus using only -the power his work calls for. Should a method be devised of getting electricity directly from heat, a possibility, no doubt, a revolution in mechanical industry will be inaugurated whose benefits to the human race would be beyond calculation. We may also be able to transmit our thoughts and feelings to distant friends. We are only at the datfn of the age of electricity, and its marvels are to come.—Pullman Journal.