Omaha daily bee., 1895-12-15

drawing, nor can you appreciate its size
That spot which | have there drawn was
so big that the earth could have been dropped
into it without touching the sides. Each OF
those bright gossamer-like threads is about
5000 miles long. and that spot cov;red NOR:
than LOCO, O0O, DOC square miles of the suns
face. 1t had an area five times that OF
the whole surface of the earth. A little edge
OF it broke up and dissolved while l looked at
il, which vas bigger than the whole United
States. 1t was all in motion, and its seth
ing particles were flying about at the rate
of fifty miiss a second along the surface,
under which l could see probably some
thousands of miles into the darkness below,
up from which came volumes of intensily
heated, whirling vapor."
How could you look at the sun so long
Mr.. Langley, without hurting your eyes?"
Il could not have done it," was the reply,
had | used nothing but my eyes. | had first
to invent an instrument to take the place of
the incomplete means used by Sir William
Herschel in order to see the sun by reflection.
The rays come to the focus of the telescope
in binding brightness, producing a heat suffi-
cient to melt iron, but these rays have sides
to them, and by mirrors placed at different
angles thsy can be 50 reflected that there is
no more heat and light than l choose to have.
/ have gazed at the sun for five hours at a
stretch with this instrument, and have felt
no more fatigue than / would have felt from
reading a book"
SUNS ENORMOUS HEAT FORCE.
How about the heat of the sun. Mr.. Lang
ley? Can you give me some idea Of it,"
Putting 1t briefly, it is enormous beyond
conception, for there is enough to warm
1000, 600, 900 worlds like ours, and every min
ute. there is enough of the suns heat falling
on the earth to raise to boiling 81 900 ,O0O, 900
tons of water. But this heat which fails on
the earth is not a thousandth part of l per cent
Ct what the sun sends elsewhere, and all the
.A,t ia. I. h, re y1 ,rn nin Ia Instance thnlUh
they can supply the country for hundreds of
years, would not keep up this heat during the
one-thousandth part of a second. Now, when
you. think that these enormous figures are not
exsggelations, but within the truth, you have
to give up the idea OF gFasp!ng the amount
Of the suns heat as nconceivable.'
"Will we ever be able TO use this heat
mechanically"
.TEat remains to be seen. The force Is
there. The method of preserving and APP
plying 1t economically has yet to be in
vented. My experiments on Mount Whitney,
in the Sierra Neyadas, showed that II we
could save II all and use 1t for our steam
engines il would give about a horse power
for every square yard of ground. we near
a great deal about thel Immense power from
the recent utilization oil Niagara, out the
sun power which Is, so to speak, wasted
daily on this little District OF Columbia Is
hundreds and hundreds Of times as great.
The heat on the surface OF the Island OF
Manhattan or that occupied by LONDON could
at noontide drive all the steam engines of
the world. So far there have been no prac-
teal inventions for utilization of this enor-
nous power. At the Paris exposition OF
1878 there was a reflector which drove a
steam engine which worked a printing press,
Ericsson made a solarh engine which II was
thought might be used in the pumping up
of the waters on desert lands. The proba-
bility is that the day will come when we
will use all this force. When It does the
deserts of the world, with their enormous
sun power, may become the great cehters
of manufacture and nf civilization"
AERIAL NAVIGATION.
| next asked Mr.. Langley some questions
as TO aerial navigation. He was disinclinei
TO talk about the subject, and he gave me
10 understand that the statements made by
he press concerning him in this connic-
ticn had been made without his authority.
1t Is well known, however, that in his pub
lished scientific writings on aerodynamlcs Mr..
Langley has described his discovery of facts
which greatly alter our former supposed
knowledge on this subject, and that though he
has not there undertaken to describe any
hying machine, as he is popularity supposed
to have done. he has made experiments which
show that mechanical flight Is far from i'm
possible. Thus, by a proper application and
direction Of tha force and the speed, h hss
sustained solid brass plates upon the air wi h
an incredibly small display OF energy. He
did this many years ago, and at Pittaburg
he made thousands OF experiments which
show that there are certain shapes in which
matter can be disposed % that the more