The Roanoke times. [volume] (Roanoke, Va.) 1890-1895, 1893-12-26

NSANSa AA eAAO COZ III 1LtCI tAe66 blOI0u QD.
accumulated masses OF material con-
tanning the SUMS potential energy. On
obtaining them, through indescribable
efforts and dangers and almost countless
sacrifices of human life, he has found it
necessary to carry them to the places in
which they were to be used, to use myri-
ads of wagons and rail cars for trans
porting them ON land and almost count
less sailing and steam vessels for carry
ing them across the waters. He has had
to construct no end of special furnaces
and boilers and stoves for utilizing these
stored rays of the sIn, and in doing so
has made himself grimy and dirty and
has filled his cities with SCOT and smoke
and gasas. In this clumsy, laborious,
energy wasting way has man delved for
and utilized the heat which the sun
stored away for him in the earth reser-
voir 80 many years ago.
The Common Source.
And all this time the very same sun,
with power SO little diminished that
the scientists have not been able to meas
ure the loss, was shining upon the very
world in which human animals were
delvlng and besooting themselves and
their surroundings. Many hours of two
thirds of all the days of the year the sun
was pouring down upon tho surface of
the earth SO much of his potential heat
that the total of it, when guessed at by
the smart men who make pretty close
guesses at such things, runs to o figure
absolutely appalling. donot remember
the exact figures which they used to give
US at school, and do not know that any
one knew whether those figures were in
a thousand miles of it or not, but they
used to say that the sun had power
enough if all its heat were concentrated
in one small region instantly to melt q
layer of ice 500 miles thick.
AT any rate, the sun throws heat
enough, during from six to ten hours per
day, two out Of three days year, upon
an acre of gTound-and it may DO waste.
barren ground at that-to furnish all the
power needed for the operation of fac
tory whose buildings should cover the
adjoining 10 acres. With all this heat
going to waste all about him, with bill
lions upon billions of times as much heat
as is needed by all the people of New
York city, for instance, being cast with.
o'S NSN Va pACiit hlOii ~ lew
acres of swamp land along the Harlem
or East rivers, why should man 90 on
digging i'll the earth and beginning him.
self in his efforts to tap the center of all
heat III our system for his necessary SUD.
ply of caloric? Why not take his re-
qulremcnts directly from tho common
source?
Wonders Claimed For 1t.
This is the problem the inventor
speak of has been working upon. That
he will succeed have little doubt. The
whole question of success is embodied in
the storage. With that reduced to a
practical basis all the rest is easy. This
inventor tells me he can set up one of his
machines-a somewhat larger one than
the one l saw in operation-and by
throwing all it's rays in focus at one
point instantly melt rock as big as a
freight car. Not only melt it, but con-
vert it into liquid which should run
down the hillside like lava. With a lit
tie larger rehector-and still small
enough to be easily used in practical
operations-he could melt the hill itself,
burning the forest which covered it as if
IT were shavings, converting the earth
into steam with little residue of mol
ten stuff, and transforming the very
rock into Il stream that would pass
away. If all this is true-and it is capa-
BILE of mathematical demonstration-the
man of the near future will not labori-
ously pierce hole i'll the mountain
when he wants tunnel He will not
blast and dig and carve when he wants
cutting for railway. He will instead
burn the mountain down, or scorch a
hole through it, and do it some fine after
noon, as soon as his surveyors have To-
Gated the spot and the people in the IA
vine below have been warned to get out
of the way of the molten flood.
For the Good of Man.
These are tremendous possibilities, and
let no one say they are impossibilties.
The Nicaragua canal may be bored out
with looking glass. Man may acquire
the art of using the illimitable power of
the mighty sun to change the face of
earth at his own sweet will. With pow
er which costs him nothing or almost
nothing but the setting up of IL mirror
and steam engine, or some more simple
device for converting heat into motion,
mans subJugation of nature and of all
substances and obstacles will be com
plete. If there will DO no further use of
labor in the coal mines and on the coal
carrying transportation lines, there will
be no need of even the poorest of earths
mortals suffering with the cold. If the
stokers of boilers and drivers of coal
carts lose their occupation, if surveyo,
and man with big looking glass in
his hand can go out and build railroad
without tho carvira of On or,n1, &c ,,,or1,