Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1874-07-04
The Possibilities ofFuture Discovery.

A striking Illustration of the popu
| lar lack OF scientific reasoning is TO bs
found in an editorial which recently
appeared in the New York Herald al
follows:
The widest Imagination l. unable
to predict the discoveries. For all VIC
know, families in the next century may
pump fuel from the river and illum;-
nate their houses with ice and elec-
tricIty. vessels, properly magne-
tized, may sail through the air like
balloons, and trip to the Rocky
Mountains may be made In an hour.
Perhaps within fifty years American
grain will be shot into London, Liv-
erpool aud Calcutta through iron pipes
laid under the sea. BY means of con-
densed air and cold yapor engines, ex-
cursion parties may travel, along the
floor of the ocean, sailing past ancient
wrecks and mountains af coral. On
land the intelligent farmer may turn
the soil of a thousand acres in a day,
while his son cuts wood with a plati-
mum wire and shells corn BY electrici-
ty. The matter now contained in a
New work daily may may be produced
ten thousand times minute, on little
scraps ofpaper by improved photogra-
ply, and boys may sell the news Of the
world printed on visiting cards, which
their customers will read through ar
tifeial eyes. Five hundred years hence
a musician may play piano in New
York connected with instruments in
San Francisco, Chicago, Cincinnati,
New Orleans and other cities, which
will be listened to by half million of
people. A speech delivered in New
York will be heard instantly in those
cities; and when fashiona bic audiences
in San Francisco go to hear some re-
nowned singer, she will be performing
in New York OF Philadelphia.
In the year 1900 man may put on
his inflated overcoat, with a pair of
light steering wings fastened TO his
arms, and go to Newark and back In
an hour All the great battles will be
fought in the air. Patent thunderbolts
will be used instead ofcannou. A boy
in Hoboken will go to Canada in the
family air carriage to see his sweet
heart, and the next day his father will
chasten him with a magnetic rebuker
because he did not return before mid
night. The time is coming when the
Herald will send reporter to see
man reduce one of the Rocky Noun
tains to powder in half day. Skillful
miners will extract gold from quartz as
easily as cider is squeezed from apples.
A compound telescope will be invent
ed on entirely new principles, so that
one may see the plaGets as distinctly as
We now see staten Island Microscopes
will be made so powerful that parti-
Gle of dust on a gnat's back will appear
larger than Pixies Peak. And Mar
velous progress will be made in phsy-
Geological and mental sciences. Two |
men will set in baths filed with chem
ical liquids. One of them may be in |
Denver and the other in Montreal. a /
pipe filled with the same liquid will |
connect the two vessels, and the fluid !
will be so sensitive that each may know |
the others thoughts. In these coming
days, our present mode oftelegraphing
will be classed with the wooden ploughs
of Egypt, and people will look back to !
steamships aud locomotives as we look /
back to sailboats and stage coaches"