Frostburg mining journal. [volume] (Frostburg, Md.) 1871-1913, 1890-06-21
AN INVENTORS JOURNAL.

reaches down to the farms of the valley,
and how the sunlight floods it! 1t is a
pity that such surplus of light and heat
is wasted, and worse than wasted, on the
barren rocks. when it might save some
shivering child's life if it could be bottled
up and kept for winter. Even here, on
the mountain, fogs and winds chill the
northern slope. while the southern side
is like a piece of the torrid zone. If one
could only equalize it a little better!
"How can it be done?" l begin to ask.
A caloric engine set here could be made
to run batteries, and so transfer cleo
tricity to the northern slopes. But the
waste is so enormous; it is the climate
one wants to transfer bodily. Cumbrous,
indeed, are all the plans that use ma
chinery and depend upon roundabout
methods. Some day men will get clue
to some underlying fact that controls the
whole affair.
Let me see. What is it that | am
seeking to discover? | need not pretend
that l only want to play with the eli
mate of Monte Diablo, and scatter sea-
fog or temper San Joaquin zephyr. AS
l think of it, believe my ambition goes
considerably further.
Suppose that | could distribute heat
and light wherever l chose, at moments
notice: Strange, is it not, that it can
not be done on a large scale; that we still
burn wood and coal, still use oil, gas, and
electricity? Strange that science cannot
make perfect climate the heritage of
every country. How fine an achieve
ment to pour the surplus heat Of the
lower Amazon Valley into the snowy
Alpine valleys of the high Andes; the
dry air of the Sahara into London fog
or Scotch mist. One would not choose
to make a dead level of sameness in the
worlds varied climates, but surely it
would be worth while to have vast guam
titles of heat and light held ION tap, as
it We're, to be used wherever they were
needed. Why should not sunlight be
for sale some of these days, ust as gas is
now? 1t goes to waste in floods, over
the ocean, and in the untrodden wilder
ness, and though science carries the
slightest vibration of a mans voice
through miles of wire, it cannot yet
transfer the heat on the rocks or the
light of the desert monday.
For 20 years | have been at work on
the problem, and now | am on the Ari-
zonian desert trying to get some clue to
natures secrets. | suppose that there is
a fortune in my methods for storing heat
for my caloric engines, for | can run
them "A hours on what | gather up dur
ing a day, and the power obtained is
cheaper than coal at 81 ton. But | do
not want to destroy: | will not throw
down the great industrial centers and
shift trade from the Manchesters and
Philadelphias of the world to valleys of
the desert. | want to do something far
different.
Sometimes have had glimpse of the
simplicity of the real problem that must
solve. | must learn to switch light, heat,
and electricity on key-board-so much
heat to 90 wherever | send it; so much
light to flash into cottage or to shine all
night above city; 50 much force to con-
centrate into lightning stroke or plow
mile deep furrow through mountain
chain for some railroad builder. Trans
mutation, without loss of energy, and
yet with perfect control, must be ac-
quired. My caloric engine is the best
one ever built, but | am sure that some
day it will be as much "old iron" as any
crusaders helmet. Can not the shining
of the sunlight be made to run an cleo
trio battery, miles, or hundreds of miles
away? Can not that very battery be
made to pour out almost undiminished
light again? Can not Mt. Etna light and
heat Rome and Paris? By what alchemy
shall one learn to transmute the three
uncomfortable forces that rule the world?
Six years more have gone over my un-
remtting labors, and to-day-I can
hardly write it down, so strange thing
has happened in my laboratory to-day
| have learned something so simple that
q child might do it. | doubt not but
that men have stumbled on the secret
before now and perished in the act, for
there is danger therein. The law is that
the vibrations of heat, of light, and of
the electrical current are related to each
other in such a way that certain chords
of music. sounded at fixed intervals, will
transmute one force into another force,
or back again. The old myths had some
thing of truth in their hearts, Perhaps
Egyptian lore hid this among its mys-
ferries, and when Memnon's statue sang
at sunrise the chambers beneath the
pyramids were flooded with sunlight. 1
left the desert long ago, with some of
the deserts secrets: now can return and
conquer it forever. All the difficulties
Slat remain are merely mechanical ones
automatic cOntrivanCeS to transform
the heat current, the sunlight, or cleo
sricity; an insulating system which will
waste only an infnitesimal portion of
she precious fluid.
| was very foolish on my way to Ari-
Zona, as this extract from the Selma
Truthspeaker of January IA, 1886, will
show:
Train No. 0, for Los Angeles, arrived
half an hour late. This side of Merced
there was a sudden storm, and the whole
sky was as light as day. Soon after
every stove in the cars was found to be
stone cold, although they are said to
have been red hot few minutes before.
Tom Gooch, one of the brakemen, de-
clares that he saw an old man holding an
instrument like music box against first
one, then another of the stoves, and then
to his ears, and saw him extend wire
from one stove to the outside of the win
dow. He put his hand on the old fellow
and asked him sharply what deviltry he
was up to- Suddenly, Tom says, there
was peculiar note of music heard, and
swift as a flash he saw white fire running