Daily tobacco leaf-chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1890-1895, 1892-09-14


500 minutes, little faster schedule than
the Royal Blue, but having less loss by
stops. The actual run is not SO speedy.
As rode down here by the Royal Blue
| noticed the vast sums of money that
had been spent to produce such perfect
track, motive power and rolling stock,
and said to myself that the electrical
locomotive would have hard task be-
fore it if it set out to eclipse this mag
ahcent speed, for fee;s. made mile after
mile in tifty-two seconds, or speed of
nearly seventy miles an hour.
"But know the powers Of electricity
when properly applied, and know
what the inventors are doing, and am
snre that the near future will give MS
an electric locomotive making double
the speed of these compound cylMder
steam flyers. In o very few years we
shall travel from New York to Chicago
In eight hours, or perhaps seven, where
as it now takes twenty-five by the lin
tied trains. 10 make this great speed
think there will be some changes in
track and rolling stock. The rails will
have device which will absolutely pre-
vent tie cars leaving the track, and the
cars will in all probability be mich
lighter than they now are. These are
the conditions which will produce the
great speed of the future-ipproved
tracks, less dead load in the cars, cleo
trical power"
"What do you think Of electricity as
power in other directionsg' asked.
"It is the power of the future in al
most everything. The steam engine as
a motor must go. For instance, you
will live to see the steam engine ben
ished from ocean steamships. Instead
of dead load Of from 600 to 1000 tons
Of coal carried in the hold, fed to huge
furnaces by small army Of stokers who
work in veritable hades--the average
life of the steamship stoker Is only seven
years--ships will put to sea with their
motive power stored away in electrical
reservoirs, to be used as wanted by
the turn of lever and without one
tenth part Of the weight or consuming
one-fftieth Of the space of the coal
supply now provided. What is true Of
the large ocean steamships is true of a
great variety of other craft, large and
small. Ultimately electricity will sup
plant steam in all of them, giving great
er economy of energy, Of space, OF la
Dor, of risk"
"What are the especially new things
In the electrical field"
"There are so many new things in the
electrical line that could not begin to
mention them. Electricity is coming
into everything industrial, domestic,
mechanical. Tho most important things
in the electrical world today are the de-
velopment of the storage battery motor
for city railway lines, the perfection of
the high speed locomotives for long dis
lance railways, and new and mysteri-
GUS and wonderful thing promised by
Thomas A. Edison. Just what this Is
do not know.
"Mr. Edison is a friend of mine, and
often meet him. But the day has
passed In which outsiders can find out
all that is going ON at Menlo Park. A
few years ago .Edison's latchstring was
always out. He liked to have electri-
clans and others visit his workshops.
He took delight In showing them what
he had accomplished, what he was try
ing to do. He had few secrets. Even
the things which he endeavored to guard
in his careless, good natured way, visit
Ing electricians were able to divine the
nature of, to smell out their purpose,
scope and general plan. though the de-
tails were concealed from their eyes.
Many an electrician has made a fortune
out of suggestions gathered during q
visit to Menlo Park.
"Ncw all this Is changed. Edison is
in the hands Of shrewd business men
who guard him and all his works as If
he were the great Kohinoor diamond.
They are perfectly right in doing so, for
Edison has little idea OF business; small
conception of his own commercial value.
To him money is desirable only because
it is something that can be spent In UNI
travelling more of natures mysteries, in
devising new blessings for mankind.
The business men who have surrounded
Edison say he has done enough FOR the
world, and 1t is time he were doing
something for Edison. They say, and
truly, that there does not live upon the
face of the globe today another man who
has done as much for his race as he.
"Unless / am greatly mistaken, Edi-
son Is now engaged upon an invention
which will commercially be the greatest
of all his works. / don't presume to
know much about it, because, as have
said, the inventor is now carefully gua~d-
ed and few hints of his operations reach
outside ears. But few facts have ac-
cidentally come to my knowledge which
convince me that Edison is constructing
has In fact constructed and is now
perfecting-a machine which will pro-
duce electrical power at one-half or dne-
quarter its present cost. If he shall sue
coed in doing that, imagine the COM
mercial revolution which will follow"
"Then he must have discovered just
what electricity is7''
II doubt that. doubt IL we shall
ever know any more accurately than
we know at this time what electricity is.
OF course we know all its properties,
principles and phenomena, but we can't
analyze the thing itself. I'll tell you
what Edison says about this-and If any
one in the world knows what electricity
is he does-Edison says the universe Is
full of terrestrial and solar magnetism,
and that dynamo is simply machine
which pumps out this magnetism 80
that it runs in stream along given
line, just as one may pump water out OF