The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-10-30

with chilling, dimming, depressing logs if
they don't want to be. The dismal vapors
that roll IN past the Golden Gate before
many a sunset, enfolding the town, filing
the streets, creeping with a chill through
open windows, bestowing a clammy damp
ness on pedestrians and setting people to
wheeling, hacking and snufiing, can be
scattered in a second ii anybody will pay
for 1t. All it needs is enough money to
free san Francisco of logs forever.
What is more, the air could be made as
free from smoke, dust and laze as a clear
June day just after a thunder-shower, and
kept so to everybody's delight and health.
That sounds big and interesting, but it
is a scientific, if not practical possibility,
and is highly interesting as such. Being a
scientific possibility, who knows what the
future may 30 with such a fanciful scheme?
1t would mean an artificial climate for San
Francisco, vastly increased delight of liv-
ing and an immense decrease in disease
and suffering. 1t may sound at first
thought like an imagining by Jules Verne,
but it is not.
Alexander McAide says that this is about
what could be done. Mr.. McAide is the
widely known Government meteorologist,
who has been sent here from Washington
as assistant to Forecast Official W. H
Harmon. He is a young man, of high
scientific attainments in the line of
meteorology, developed during three wears
OF postgraduate study at Harvard and
thirteen years of scientific work for the
Government His speciality has for some
time been the study OF thunderstorms, and
his photographs OF lightning flashes and
his papers on the subject published as
Government bulletins and in leading
periodicals have attracted wide attention.
During the next few month, he will do
some important and interesting work in
studying the unknown upper air with in
struments attached to kites and balloons.
and will probably do some interesting
work IN studying the electrical phenomena
and lack of them on this coast.
1t was while modestly discussing yester-
day the effect of thunderstorms and recent
investigations of the effect of electrical
disturbances in the atmosphere that Mr.
McAide advanced the rather startling
proposition that artificial lightning could
be made TO do for the atmosphere about
this City what thunderstorms do for the
atmosphere III which they occur.
ThunderstOrms dissipate vapors and
clear the air quickly of smoke and all
other floating impurities. A glass jar
hlled with smoke Is made clear as bell in
second by discharge of electricity from
one metallic point to another within the
jar. Professor Lodge similarly cleared a
OCAaA u SUNNI ny usIIlg Il stronger cur
rent and a longer discharge With the
effect of natural lightning known and the
effect of artificial lightning within small
areas demonstrated the idea of cleaning I'D
the air of city is seen to be simply the
same thing on a larger scale, and it ap-
pears less chimerical.
It's undoubtedly simply a matter of
expense and experiment as to the best
practical way of ooing it, according to Mr..
McAide. Imagine the City at an hour
when a brooding afternoon fog has settled
over it, with the air full of the days dust
and smoke, and with buildings three blocks
away invisible, and then imagine the
touch of an electric button, and presto, in
two seconds the sun beams from a soft
Italian sky through balmy air as fresh
and pure as that of May morn.
But that's easy enough. Just have
dynamos enough grinding out electricity
at one or two stations and wires running
to big pairs of metal points set here and
there about the City. With these points
set several feet apart the current would
leap across the intervening space in power
full discharges and brilliant flashes when
turned on, and the effect on the air all