XI COMING ELECTRICITY

ELECTRICITY in some form will, no doubt, be the Motive Power of the future for a long time to come unless some better Force is discovered.

At present we have eight great Electric Inventions: The Dynamo, Automobile, Motor, Light, Range, Heater, Storage Battery and the Telephone. Some of these eight will undoubtedly become useless in the future and the remaining ones will be vastly improved, and many important new ones will also undoubtedly come in from time to time.

If we succeed (which I think we undoubtedly will do) in inventing the suggested Chemico-Electric Generator which automatically applies the concentrated Solar Energy to machinery the same as the Dynamo and Electric Motor now apply the electric current to machinery, then we will no longer have use for the Dynamo, Electric Motor and Storage Battery Cell. Perhaps a small Chemico-Electric Generator will then always be automatically charged with Electricity by the impinging Solar Energy to the maximum limit to run an automobile, tractor, factory, heating plant or airplane indefinitely, so that an airplane can fly straight up and down and stay up for a day, a week or a month without landing and with a speed of 45likely more than 500 miles an hour. When the blizzard is coming, two or three hours’ flight toward the Equator will then bring us among the flowers again. Eat breakfast in Chicago at twenty degrees below at 9 a. m., and lunch at noon in Los Angeles, Cal., or St. Augustine, Fla.

We will then fly around the Earth in any direction in less than 50 hours, and various colored lights and signals will serve as guides, but when day leisure and amusements are so plentiful, there will be little night work in Modern Paradise. A ship on mid-ocean will continue to receive its Motive Power from the Solar Energy as fast as it uses it without ever landing for fuel. But when the airplane is thus perfected, few if any ships will then remain, and seasickness will be unknown.

The Automobile in its various forms and styles for riding, freighting and tractor farming will, no doubt, develop into one of the greatest, if not the greatest of all mechanical inventions. In 1896 there were only four automobiles in the United States. Now (1923) there are over 12,000,000, and in a few years there will likely be more than twice that number, and electricity in some form will undoubtedly be its future Motive Power. Some genius will also, no doubt, soon invent a cheap, 46durable, reliable tire. Then with all the paved highways, the perfected Tire and the self-charging Chemico-Electric Generator, the Automobile will be approximately perfect.

All other inventions will also undoubtedly be vastly improved from time to time, and numerous new and better ones will continue to come in as the years pass. But mechanical Progress is not all gain. It also brings with it enormous waste, as the old is being superseded by the new as in the case of Motive Power. We have come from the dog kennel to the ox pen, from the ox pen to the livery stable, from the livery stable to the roundhouse, from the roundhouse to the power plant, from the power plant largely to the filling station, and from the filling station, we may at any time in the near future swing to the direct Solar Energy automatically generated perhaps by some Chemico-Electric Generator as I have suggested.