Birmingham age-herald., 1894-10-28

The d1seoVery ol way p1 cQnsSEE ing coal directly into electricity will be the turning point of all our meth ods of propulsion. Naturally steam will be entirely superseded by the cur rent. There will be no boilers nor any of the necessary externals which go with steam engines. We are rapidly approaching the time of the steam en- gine's end. The large Atlantic liners are slowly reducing their time on their trips, but that must soon stop. Then we shall have to wait until coal is turned directly into electricity. I be- lieve it will come, and then we will cross the Atlantic in four days or less. We can get ninety per cent. of the eff ffciency of a dynamo against six to ten per cent. of an engine. The differ ence will be as great or greater in re- suits under the looked for regime. We get ffteen-thousahd-horse power, or whereabouts, from the liners engine now. When we get eighty-thousand- horse power, as we will, perhaps, we will be nearer what I look for.
 "1t was the one thing to solve. Let some follow follow out this line of re- search and get the right reaction and we shall have a wonderful revolution in many things. It will lead to treating metals by electrical reduction, and an enormous number of accomplishments We now go to the melting point of nickel, for instance, but under the new. regime we will get all reactions now obtainable and go to the melting point of anything on earth"
 nif over flying machines? Do you think we are about to accomplish the long desired feat?"
 ''I think that eventually we will fly. But don't think it will be by the aid of electricity in the present state of the science. It is all a question of power, whether from electricity or some other force. We want great horse power and small weight, of course. I tried experi- ments with combustion engine in which strips of gun cotton cloth held between copper rollers were exploded by small electrical spark.
 "It was very powerful but it did not work. When seek to accomplish any thing I always try to determine which is the best method. Then try toov come the obstacles. Ih order to con- struct flying machine I thought we needed to get the greatest rising pow CT per horse power. In order to find what this was, if possible, attached 8 revolving fan to the top of motor and placed it on a large scales. Loose wires from dynamo ran to the motor which was started. The fan whirled around and the tendency was to lift up. It did SO and raised and lowered accord ingly as the fan ran fast or slow. Of course could then weigh the lifting power exactly. Then found that diff ferent fans had greater or lesser power. Two fukes were different from three, fukes and three from four and so on, I made all sorts of experiments and then concluded that electricity was not the right thing.
 "Asto the various methods that have been tried, am very glad they were tried, for while they are failures every failure is step forward. It is the things that I know won't work that are the most valuable to me. Some of these methods have aimed to initiate the birds of the air. But the birds are especially adapted to fly. Their bones are hollow, for instance, and in other ways they arc suited to the air. The birds utilize the wind, too. The wind really does the flying for them, and they manipulate the body so as to best take advantage of it. In short, they soar With insects it is different. Take the bee. It is purely flyer. It's wings are small in proportion, but it makes up for that by their very rapid vibration"
 At this juncture Mir. Edison took oc- casion to add something more concern ing the value of failures. He said somewhat ambiguously that he was eighty-two years old. Now as all the world knows he is but forty-seyen, it sounded odd to say the least. Then he explained:
 "Judging by the standard of the ordi- nary mans working day." he said, T am much older than look. The av: craze working day is eight hours long. For twenty-one years have averaged nineteen hours Dor day. It makes ms eighty-two years old. Most of that tima has been taken up in trying things that would not work. You see my hair is gray. I will soon be a hundred years old" ~
 MT. Edison does not think that any new fuel will be made to take the place of coal, Neither does he think we will be able to telephone across the ocean. Regarding the first he says:
 'sCoal and wood, tho latter to include growing things, of course, arc the only unoxidized substancas on earth. Every thing else has been burnt. They cap not be burnt again. We might dtiliSs the sun, wind and the air, but not in 2 very radical manner. There is sun engine. Mouchet built one and so did