Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1881-06-11
ELECTRIC INVENTION.
TEE WONDERS FUTURE GENERATIONS
MAY WITNESS.
Imagination pictufing Forth the Eiarvel-
Gus Things Electricity is to Do
for Us In Ages to Come.
London standard.l

Professor Perry, at the Society of Arts,
IN recent discourse painted a most allur-
ing picture of the future of electricity.
Telegraphs, telephones, photophones,
monographs, microphones and electric
pena are the mere beginning of the science,
and will, by the time we are too old to use
them, be regarded with much the same re.
speetful interest that Stephenson's
. Rocket is viewed by modern engi-
neer, or Coster's "Spiegel onzer Bedhou.
denis by member of the Typographical
Union. By-and-by we shall not only cor
respond. talk, send our portraits and
manifold " by electricity, but have our
houses lighted and heated, our railway
trains and tram cars propelled, and our
machinery driven by the same ornnipotent
agent. Ii needs be every weaver's shuttle,
every village blacksmiths bellows, every
milliner's sewing and every ad.
vanced babys cradle will be driven, blown,
or rocked by that
"vRILL" POWER,
OF whose future development by the com.
ing race MIR. Perry has almost as sanguine
hope as had Lord Lytton after less sci
entiic fashion. Coal gas, at which Sir
Walter Scott jeered, and for belief in
which DIR. Chalmers was considered by his
shrewd countrymen to be not altogether
Sound" is, we are told, doomed as
lighting agent. In a few years it viii sub
serve the humble Office of generator Of
electricity by setting steam engines in mo-
ton, or by being consumed in voltaic
cell. But as power can be transmitted by
electricity, there is, as Sir William Thorn
sen 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 Birmingham or Manchester,
and send score of Flying Scotchmen
with easy swiftness from one end of the
kingdom to the other.
TRANSMITTED ENERGY"
VIII be consigned to US from the Amazon
and the Amoor, from TIE smoke -enveloped
floss of the Hjommel Sayka, or the
tumbling water of the Trollhata. In the
future we are to drink, build our houses,
pillow 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
90 lord of creation" will relapse into manual
idleness, or dream away life in one long
afternoon, until he dies OF an overdose of
electricity and is buried in an electric.dug
grave, or cremated by touch of his be-
reaved family's private "Perry -Ayrton "
machine. That this and great deal mere
will come to pass is evident to all who can
read within the lines of Professor Perry's
discourse. Sydney Smith, who, like
Scuthey, had limited appreciation of
science, considered that from electricity
and NJ. ?. 3 we expected too much" In
the Siemens electric railway the propelling
force is alone 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.
\ MOTOR ON A CARRIAGE
Receives electric energy by the conducting
rails and converts this into mechanical
work to drive the carrisge The introduc.
ton of electric railways is merely ques.
ton of capital, and the sacrifice of much
existing plant. But as soon as this is re-
solved on there will be economy effected,
for, as no heavy locomotives will be re-
quired, there will be saving in the weight
Of steel rails, in the cost of bridges, and in
the wear and tear of permanent way. And
as each carriage will have its own driving
and breaking machinery, the energy at
present wasted in stopping train 'will be
simply given back to the generator. The
problem of lighting and heating houses by
electricity is practically solved. When
people generally avail themselves of that
solution, smoke and SCOT and dirt will
desert our murky atmosphere, while the
same engine that warns the merchants
Office viii light his warehouses, 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
rocks the crew Of his homeward bound
ship. Nor need its use stop there. In
time
THE ADVANTAGES OF ELECTRICITY
Will penetrate even the darkness of the
vestries. The citizen who tumbles into
his electrically warmed bed with the snow
foot deep on the ground, will wake up in
the morning to toast his toes at the cleo
trio stove and see dry streets and the
beadle trundling home the parish Gramme.
Already Mr.. Edward Bright in ten min
utes de.electrifes in vacuum his hirsute
bobbins of yarn, instead OF, as formerly,
allowing nature to do SO in half year
during which his capital must lie fallow in
the factory. Mr.. Shelford Bidwell pro.
duces pictures of distant stationary objects
in shaded lines on paper by electro chemi-
cal decomposition and Mr.. Perry, by
taking a hint from Mr.. Punch, is by no
means certain that very soon an aged
couple at home may not be able to see on
their drawing-room wall an image of their
grand children playing Bennington in In
dia, and of learning from the telephone
how they are enjoying the game. All this,
of course, must seem to be in the far dis.
lance. Still, we must remember that
science is moving rapidly that every year
sees fresh students and
BUSY BRAINS