Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1893-10-16
CLOSING OF A CENTURY
WONDERFUL SCIENTIFIC AND INDUSTRIAL
PROGRESS.
The Evolution Of Great Problems Under the
Searchlights of Great and Eager Minds
Although Amazing Ii is Only The Dawn of
Grandsr Achievements.

SAN Francisco, CAL, October IA
The progress of scientific and indus
trial development in the closing years
pears Of the nineteenth century is be-
coming trnly wonderful. To the ranks
OF the chosen few whose labors are
wholly devoted 20 the study OF pure
SCIENCE for its own sake, are being
daily added recruits to the hosts OF
workers in the field of APPLIED science.
Mechanical appliances Of marvellous
skill and wonderful efficiency, well-nigh
instinct with life and intelligence, add
a thousand fold to the productive
power of the civilized world. In the
rapidly increasing domain Of electricity
this progress is peculiarly marked. In
the departments of power, traction,
lighting and heating the advance is
wonderfully rapid. From the water
courses thousands Of horsepower which
have run TO waste in every part OF the
world for unnumbered centuries are
now pulsing from their hitherto prac-
tically inaccessible businesses through
our streets, uworkshops and factories,
along slender cables, and transformed
into work in the myriad processes OF
industrial development.
THIS SUBTLE AGENCY
now ingeniously delves In mines deep in
the bowels of the earth, lighting up It's
dark recesses, preparing It's rich treas
ures of metals and minerals, which it
HOSTS to the surface and finally conveys
to their destination liz the busy haunts
Of men.
1t has already nearly displaced the
horse from the street cars, and half a
decade more promises to leave but a
sorry remnant Of the noble animal TO
perform the destructive drudgery but
recently supposed to be indispensable
for such locomation. Fiery furnaces
heated more than the "seven times" OF
that in which Shadrach, Meshech and
Abednego walked walked without the
smell of fire upon their garments" now
smelt and weld metals. 1t almost trans
forms
NIGHT INTO DAY
In our cities and towns, and in London,
the most populous Of the worlds cities,
gaslight is being rapidly displaced from
the streets and dwellings, and its use
for heating and even for cooking pur-
poses is rapidly extending; and as the
processes for the economical production
OF the electrical current are being daily
more and more perfected the often
prophesied disappearance Of gas plants
seems about TO be realized. Railway
and street cars are not only propelled
by this mysterious fluid" but gentle
warmth is difused through them by its
means, instead of those unsightly and
deadly denominations, the coal stoves,
which in the frigid seasons Of the East
so ofton add to the horrors Of the rail-
way wreck burnt offerings" of the
bodies Of their mangled victims. And
where.
MILLIONS OF ACRES
Of desolate and sterile because water
less) land are being reclaimed and made
TO TEEN with fruit and flowers and
grain, electricity has stepped in and
forced the imprisoned water to yield It's
store of force for Industrial purposes,
ever to the blowing OF the soil, thence
to be conducted in gentle rivulets over
its surface, reappearlng in the myriad
forms in which nature delights the eye
and tempts the palate. And even the
illimitable forces Of the sea are prom
Used TO be drawn upon to aid In the gi-
gantic task of s~ubduing the earth TO
mans purposes. The heavlng pillows
and the swelling and ebbing tides have
already been harnessed 20 mans tri-
umphal car by these slender electrical
ligaments, and the progress thus far
contains ''the promise and potency" OF
fulfllment OF EdisOn's famous prophecy,
that when the sea shall be made to
yield up it power, "then will come
THE MILLENNIUM OF ELECTRICITY.
When the swarthy, begrlmed miner
shall be compelled to cease from his
arduous toll, and the swelling pillows
be robbed Of their force to feed the
electric conduits with the currents now
produced by the combustion Of the
''black diamonds" and old King Coal
dispossessed Of his crown, then and not
till then, in the words Of Nlkola Tesla,
who has apparently solved the greatest
electrical problem Of the age, the safe
production Of light by means OF enor-
nous ~oltages OF electricity, without
the use of wires, carbons or incandes-
cent flaments, or even heat!-"elec-
tricity will take the place Of fire and
steam, and will be the only agent
EMPLOYED to light and heat and move
the entire world" Thus three mechani-
cal scientific problems OF transcendant
interest to civilization o pressing for
solution are-G) The electrical %produc-
ton Of light at a minimum cost, and
absolutely divorced from heat, as Is
sunlight when passing through the In
terstellar spaces prior TO reaching the
earth's atmosphere, where the friction
ofslts instantaneous passage produces
the heat which is popularity associated
with sunlight. Science and experience
have demonstrated that the
ABSOLUTE ZERO"
which has been nearly Appropriated by
we'll known scientific processes upon
the earth's surface, car only exist In
the realms Of infinite space, where the
almost unparalleled ether is the agent OF
its transmission, and affording no OBJ
struction to It's passage.
Light, electricity and heat are inter
c~hangeable terms, simply modes OF
manifestation of one and the same force
Of energy, and conditioned by the mum
Der of vibrations OF that energy. The
violent light of the solar spectrum pro-
duces the highest number OF vibrations,
about seven hundred aud seven tril-
lions, (7O7, 600, 600, 900, OOO;) white light,
500, 600, 600, 600, 600; red light, ASP, O00,.
600, OOO, 900. What we know as heat is
another mode of electrical vibration
below the rate perceivsble 10 the eye;
while those Of chemical action rise
above ito a thousand trillions! The
light Of the glow-worm and freely is q
ID ~ r,otfoo In which the most sem