The Clifton clarion., 1888-12-19
THE CoMuxC aorIvE POWER.
New Ways in Which Electric Power ES Being Applied to Machinery.

Correspondence of the Globe-Democrat.
 New York, December 6, 1S8S.- Steam power will soon be a thing of the past.
 Doubtless this bold statement will sound as absurd to many readers of the present generation as other scientific truths have sounded to previous generations. It will take years to convince slow thinkers of the truth, and the change will not come in day or year, but 1t is nevertheless a fact that the days of steam power as the motive mechanical impulse of the world are numbered.
 Time was when wind and water by direct acton upon wheels more or less ingenious in form and construction, supplied all the power that was needed for the rude mechanism of the age. The world took a stride forward in progress, and heat was harnessed. Steam was made to work mira cles.
 To-day greater, safer, cheaper power has been discovered, and the steam engine is destined to take its place alongside the wind mill and the water mill as one of the outworn inventions that served their purpose and have been su- perseded.
 To many readers this may sound like a passage from Jules Verne To speak disrespectfully of steam power will be, in their minds, much like blaspheming against the multiplication table. Yet it is a fact, already accomplished, that scores and hundreds of steam en- zines have already been discarded by manufacturers and mechanics because a better and cheaper form of machinery has been discovered with which the work can be done Their shops and factories are fur nished with the substitute, and the work goes on more quietly, more safely, more cheaply and more rapidly than before.
 What is the substitute for steam :? Why, electricity, to be sure.
 Will electricity, then, do all that steam power will? Most cer- tainly it will, and it is destined in time to take steam's place, as sure ly as steam has taken the place of water power. No doubt steam en- zines will always be used, as wind mills always have been, under cir cumstances that preclude the ad- vantageous use of the utmost re- sources of science.
 All this, however, the reader may say, is the dream of an Edi- son or some other over-sanguine electrician, who thinks that be- cause marvels have been perform ed with electricity, therefore all things may be and will be done with it.
 Softly. It is nothing of the kind. It is the revolution of science that has already begun, and that is progressing with a rapldity that very few persons re- alize. It is true that ultimate re- suits have not yet been achieved in the way of cheapening and sim plifying the methods by which this great power is applied, but it is true, also, that the power has been applied, and has in many places been put to do the every day work of manufacturing and trade.
 Ocean vessels and railroad trains are not yet driven by elec- tricity, excepting in such few in stances as may be called experi- ments, but they certainly will be in the near future if the success of the application to stationary en- zines be any indication. Hup- dreds of shops in New York and other cities are now supplied, from central plants, with electric power, and in the far West, where