Morning journal and courier., 1881-04-18
The Future of Electric Invention.
Ima gination Pieturing Forth the Mar vicious Things Electricity is to do for Us i'm Ages to Come.

Imagination Pieturing Forth the Mar
 vicious Things Electricity is to do for Us
 in Ages to Come.
 From the London Standard.l
 Prof. Perry, at the Society of Arts last night, painted most alluring picture of the future of electricity Telegraphs, telephones. photophones phonographs, microphones. and electric pens are the mere beginnings of the science. and will. by the time too old to use them, be regarded with much the same respectful interest that Stephenson's ''Rocket'' is viewed by modern engineer, or Coster's ''Spiegel onzer Bedhoudenis' by a member of the Typographical Union. By and-by, we shall not only correspond, talk, send our portraits, and "Rlanifold'' by cleo tricity, but have our houses lighted and heat ed, railway trains and tram cars propelled and our machinery driven by the same om- nipotent agent. If needs be, every weaver's shuttle, every village blacksmith's bellows, every milliner's sewing machine, and every advanced babys cradle will be driven, blown, or rocked by that :'Vrilr' power, of whose future development by the coming race MT. Perry has almost as sanguine hope as had Lord Lytton after less scientific fashion. Coal gas, at which Sir Walter Scott jeered, and for a belief in which Dr. Chalmers was considered by his shrewd coun- trymen to be not altogether 'soond, is, we are told, doomed a lighting agent. In a few years 1t will subserve the humble office of generator of electricity by setting steam engines ill motion or by being consumed in a voltaic cell. But as power can be transmit
 ted by electricity, there is, as Sir William Thomson once suggested, nothing to prevent us from importing our force from America, just as at present we import beef, wheat, ''canned'' peaches, and wooden nutmegs. In the falls of Niagara there is energy enough to generate sufficient electricity to light and heat all London, drive all the machinery in md a of Flying Scotchmen with easy swiftness from one end of the kingdom to the other: Transmitted energy'' will be consig gned to us from the Amazon and the Amoor, from the smoke enveloped floss" of the Hjommel Sayka, or the tumbling water of the Troliha- ta In the future we are to drink, build our houses blow our fields and manure them, sail
 our yachts, propel our steamers and trains, print our books, and perhaps write them, by the aid of electricity Men will then have subdued the forces of nature, and the lord
 of creation will relapse into mutual idleness, or dream away life in one long afternoon,
 until he dies of overdose of electricity, and is buried in electric-dug grave, or
 ,remated by touch of his bereayed familys private ''Perry -Ayrton" machine.
 That this and great deal more will come to pass is evident to all who can read within the lines of Professor Perrys discourse.
 Sydney Smith. who, like Southey, had a lim- ited appreciation of science, considered that
 s.from electricity and M P.'s we expected
 too much" In the Siemens' electric railway the propelling force alone is sent with the
 cars but not the machine for generating that force A generator of electricity is driven by large stationary engine somewhere in the vicinity of the railway. A motor on carriage receives electric energy by the con- ducting rails and converts this into mechan- ical work to drive the carriage. The intro duction of electric railways is merely mat ter of capital and the sacrifice of much exist ing plant But as soon as this is resolved on there will be economy effected, for, as no heavy locomotives will be required, there will be saving on the weight of steel rails, in the cost of bridges and in the wear and tear of permanent way. And each carriage will have it's own driving and breaking ma- chinery, the energy at present wasted in stop ping train twill be simply given back to the generator" The problem of lighting and heating houses by electricity is prac- tically solved When people generally avail themselves of that solution, smoke and soot and dirt will desert our murky atmosphere, while the same engine that warns the mer- chants office will light his warehouse, enable him to correspond with his agent by word or letter. order dinner, synchronise his clocks, receive the portrait of suspicious visitor to
 his country house, call the police, and blow the fog-horn which is to warn off the rock 1 the crew of his homeward- bound ship. Nor need it's use stop there. In time the advan- l tages of electricity will penetrate even the darkness of the vestries. The citizen who l tumbles into his electrically warmed bed with the snow foot deep on the ground will l wake up in the morning to toast his toes