Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1872-09-27

FRIDAY. SEPT. ca, 1873.
T,c TrnyeI 81 ,bc Futurc.

The Travel of the FIXTURE.
1t is an interesting question whether the next
fifty years will produce as great improvements
in the means of travel and transportation as
have been effected in the last half century
Most people will be inclined to say "No," Just
as most people, including the larger part of the
best informed practical men of business and
science, did not hesitate TO pronounce the first
promoters of railroads and steamboats, to be
mere theorists and visionaries. The reasonings
Of the unbelievers based upon familiar facts
seemed conclusive TO most men of their time.
They were comprehensive, and undertook to
show the absurdities of expecting that any
means of locomotion greatly exceeding in speed
those in use would ever be made practically
available. But they turned out to be in err
ror. and we are amused now, not so
much at their holding such opinions
as at their over confidence and their
arrogance toward the few who had faith
in mans ingenuity and the resources of nature
ready TO be developed at the demand of scien-
titic knowledge and mechanical skill. The in
PRODUCTION of steam as a motive power led to the
improvements in locomoton, as in all kinds of
there had been no such revolution in the means
of travel and transport since the introduction of
wheeled vehicles, which was so early that the
memory of their invention has not survived to
our time. Improvements were doubtless made
from time to time in the vehicles themselves and
the roads they moved upon, but in all essential
respects the means of transporting passengers
and freight were the same one hundred years
ago as in the earliest times OF which we have
any authentic record.
Reasons, more or less satisfactory, could
doubtless be assigned why this great advance
was reserved for our time, but we have not to do
with them now. The same progress in science
and mechanics which made railroads practica-
bic has affected every department of industry,
and made the conditions of life for all Of us in
the nineteenth century very different from those
in the eighteenth, or any previous. Is it more
reasonable TO suppose that, having made these
advances, the world will remain for long time
to come about at its present level, so far as the
material conditions of life are concerned, max
ing minor improvements here and there,
but without any such great changes as
the steam engine, the railroad, the steam
DOdL anu lHG tGlGgidpH ndNS GuCSAOus
or that the study of science and its applications,
which has been stimulated to such an extraor-
binary degree of late years, will continue to have
results as unexpected and as practically benef-
cal as those which the men of the present and
the previous generation found it difficult to
credit, until actual use had made them familiar
and therefore no longer wonderful The latter
alternative seems to us more probable. Ingenu-
ity and enterprise are directed toward these sub
iects; there is no lack of capital to be devoted
to promising experiments or to utilize valuable
discoveries. Men are less sceptieal in regard to
such matters than they were when inventions
were rarer, and a Fulton, Stephenson, or a
Morse, would not now have to struggle so des-
perately against stubborn incredulity as those
inventors did before the world would accept the
benefits which they offered it.
Bat, to return to the question with which we
started, is there likelihood Improvements in
locomotiOn as great as those effected by the
railroad and steamboat? Before railroads ten
miles an hour was about the rate of speed at
tanned in land travel under the favorable condi-
tions of well equipped stage line on good
road This was sometimes exceeded, but not
often, and the transportation of heavy freights
of course, was done much more slowly AT
present, under favorable conditions, we travel
three times as fast, or about thirty miles an
hour. Some railways in England drive their
fast trains at considerably greater speed, but
there are few roads here on which express trains
make regularly more than thirty miles an hour.
An advance as great as that from the stage coach
10 the railroad would give us conveyanceS
moving at the rate of ninety miles or more an
hour. AT this rate one could travel from Bos-
ton 10 Chicago in less than twelve hours, and
from Boston to San Francisco in less than two
days. Is it unreasonable 10 expect this? Per-
haps 50; but we do not think it absurd. OF
course there must be limit to improvements in
the speed of travel, but we see no reason to sup
pose the limit has been reached, or that it will
be found before the rate just mentioned is at
tanned. 1t does not seem that it could ever be
practicable TO travel at that rate on our present
railroads, even with any improvements that
could be made in them or in the engines and
carriages. But we would not affirm that too
confidently, and it is possible, moreover, that
railroads may be superseded wholly or in part
by some new mode Of travel.
The improvements possible might be in the
motive power, the mode of applying it to the
carriages, the model of the latter or the nature
Of the road on which they move. We do not,
of course, presume to suggest definite changes
in any of these, but such changes are not in
conceivable. As to the first, the capacities of
steam are plainly not exhausted in driving a
train at the greatest speed now used; if the other
conditions could be improved, steam could sill
do the work for us. 1t is possible, however,
that some new motive power, more economical,
manageable and efficient may be discovered
and such power might make enai nayiga-
iion practicable. The greatest obstacle
in the way of contriving vessel which would
sustain itself and direct its course through the
air, is the unavoidable weight of the machinery
and material necessary to apply the power of
steam to the work. If it were not for the neces-
sity Of a ponderous engine and boiler, and
supply Of fuel, it would not be difficult for an
ingenious mechanic to design machinery that
would propel a vessel through the air as swiftly
and surely as bird flies. 1t does not seem I'M
reasonable to hope that this may some day be
accomplished.
A correspondent Of the New York Nation,
who does not like Grant and "cannot abear''
Greeley, thinks he sees a way TO avoid the
danger and disgrace which, in his opinion,
would attend the election of either He points
out that the electors who are chosen by the