Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 December 1896 — The Earth’s Momentum. [ARTICLE]

The Earth’s Momentum.

The opinion is expressed by a writer in Cassler’s Magazine that no true engineer will believe that, with so many sources of natural energy around us, the progress of mankind and the work of the engineer will cease with the exhaustion of the coal fields. The very earth we live on 1s whirling around like a huge flywheel, and, if only some way could be found for utilizing its vast momentum, we could draw upon it for ages tor all the power needed, without appreciably affecting the speed of its revolution or the length of our day. Hie flow of the time is accompanied by a vast expenditure of power iu overcoming frictional resistance, in the grinding of shingle into sand, and in the transport of sandbanks from place to place; evjen the flow of water through the sluices of locks involves a loss of energy, as does the working of a tide mill, which latter is a way of using, as the others are of destroying, the earth’s momentum. In 1895 only 179,611 bushels of Amenlean corn were sold to Mexico.