The Kimball graphic. (Kimball, Brule County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1905, 1885-05-08
THE R AGE.
Wonders Of Electricity to Be Realized Before
Many Years.

many 16afDs
The possible applications of the
principle of the electrical transmits
sion of power are almost numberless.
We shall, I believe, at no distant date,
have great central stations, possibly
situated at the bottom of coal-pits,
where enormous steam engines will
drive many electric machines. We
shall have wires laid along every
street, the electricity tapped into ev-
cry house, and the quantity of cleo
tricity used in each house registered
the same as gas is at present The
storage battery will fill a place CORE
spending to the gasometer in the gas
system, making the current steady,
rendering the consumer independent
of the irregular action or stoppages
of the dynamos of the central station,
and enabling the use of dynamos of
the highest tension i. e., those which
produce the currents of the greatest
intensity. The electricity will DO
passed through little electric machines
to drive machinery, to produce venti-
lation to replace stoves, and to work
all sorts of apparatus, as well as to
give everybody an electric light. So
lar heat will be used to run the dy-
M liz the cloudless regions. Ev-
erywhere the powers of the tides and
such waterfalls us Niagara are to be
utilized. Is not a millennium to be
anticipated when the water power of
a country shall be available at every
door,
Steam, which in the last century
has conferred so many benefits on the
world, will give way before electric.
ity. The dynamo will replace the
steam engine. This prediction seems
wild and visionary, yet when steam
was first thought of as an available
force its advocates were considered.
just as the advocates of dynamical
electricity to-day are considered, mere
enthusiasts. But public opinion
err stops the march of intellect. After
it had proved the powers of steam to
be enormous, genius halted. but
straightway went on anticipating still
more wonderful discoveries in the
realms of electricity.
The prophetic ken of science was
happily exhibited by DR.. Lardner in
his treatise on the steam engine.
PHILOSOPHY" s2id he, half a century
ago, s.already directs her fingers at
sources of inexhaustible power in the
phenomena of electricity and magnet
ism, and many causes combine to JUS
tify the expectation that we are on the
eve of mechanical discoveries still
greater than any which have yet APP
peared; and that the steam engine it.
self, with the gigantic powers con-
ferred upon it by the immortal Watt,
will dwindle into insigniiicance in
comparison with The hidden powers of
nature still to be revealed, and that
the day will come when that machine
which is now extending the blessings
of civilization to the most remote
skirts of the globe will cease to have
existence except in the page of his
tory"
To-day we are beginning to appre-
ciate the truth of this prophecy. To-
day we see dynamical electricity in the
forefront of the physical sciences. The
principle of the transmission of power
by electricity fast approaches its reali>
cation. We are, in truth, just enter
ing upon Il wonderful age.-Robert
Luce, IN Van Nostrand's Magastne.