Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1896-01-10
THE WIZARD ON WAR
HOW THE ONLY EDISON WOULD
 TREAT A FOREIGN INVADER.

Electricity as an Engine of Destruction,
 Cables Laden With Torpedoes-ordinary
 Water Could Be Charged With Death
 Dealing Currents.
 Thomas A. Edison. wizard and work man, has ideas for waging war with electricity.
 The only sort of war believe in and the only sort that I look forward to is commercial war. That sort of war Is warhke enough for anybody, as you know if you have ever tried it.
 However, 1 have been thinking lit tie about plans for convincing Britannia that she does not rule the wave as thor oughly as she seems to think she does
 Mind you, by the way, I am quite certain that great deal has been done III the way of coast defense by the navy that the public knows nothing about. I am sure that much has been perfected in the way of electrical coast defense. Some of the best electricians of the country are turned out at Annapolis. They arc hardworking and intelligent fellows. 1 am willing to bet that they have thought of something that would surprise the English if they should hear of it.
 At the same time no man can think of everything, and perhaps this idea of mine that shall tell you about would be of use. The navy has men who could easily carry out the idea if it were given to them. It is simple D
 Mr Edison got big sheet of paper and soon made the outline of the picture to illustrate his idea Then he explained the plan which is to make battleships cheap and New York city as safe from bombardment as Colorado Spr ings.
 The trouble seems to be that the English have ships that could sit out at sea and shoot at us from distance of ten miles. That would annoy us. no doubt, but l think my plan would an- noy them. 1 should run out cables to in- l tercept the passage of the vessels on their cheerful bombarding errand. IfeeI sure that the cables could go out at least 15 miles. They would run on wheels placed at the bottom of the water. To these cables would be attached torpedoes at short intervals, torpedoes of great de- 1 structiye power. The cables could be moved back and forth from q subterra- mean workshop on land, shifting the po- sitions of the torpedoes beneath the waves as they moved. The topography 1 of Now York coast makes it easy to plan for @ series of these submarine ca- bles 50 arranged that every English ship would be compelled to cross one or more of our submarine torpedo neck laces. With range finder it would be simple to ascertain the exact spot at which the ship would cross the hidden l loaded cable. The cable would be moved along so as to place one or more torpe- does just under the ship as she passed l The torpedo, held to the cable, would be | released by a magnet and would shoot to the surface Being provided with a pressure diaphragm-that is to say. with an apparatus causing it to be cleo trieally exploded as soon as the pressure of the deep water should be removed-it would burst as it got beneath the ship, and that would be one warship that would never lombard New York.
 'aI should think that great number | of these cables could be laid for small l fraction of the cost of even small navy The cost of one English battleship would supply cables and torpedoes enough to blow whole navy into the air A protecting belt of these cables, covered with torpedoes and crawling like snakes along the bottom of the ocean, waiting for invading ships, ought to make us feel pretty safe. Engineering skill should be able to send them out to any distance Their exact location would be kept secret.
 l We should then have in our hands 1 practically series of great dynamite 1 guns able to shoot l 5 miles or as long as the longest cable, and with the advan- tage of going off point blank. Such ca bles stretching out from Staten Island, l from Sandy Hook, from Long Branch or wherever they might be wanted, would make this port uninviting to strange l ships in time of war.
 'sI have lot of other schemes in my head, but I haye not tho time to think seriously of what may never be serious l ly needed We need cheap electric light and cheap electric power and cheap cleo tric transportation i'll this country more than we need electric guns. But 1t is interesting to think of gore and slaugh- ter for a change,
 .I rather like my idea of flying tor pedoes, and I think that they might prove eventually to be great pacifiers. They would move by electricity and once being launched they would fall, quite unlike the gentle dew, from heaven and blow everything to pieces. The trouble is that they would be more use ful to the invading English than to our selves The English would learn to make the fly ing torpedoes, bring over ships loaded with them and send them up to drop down on us. It would be hard or impossible for us to drop them with sufficient precision on the enemy $ ships.
 ''If we had them first, however, we l -a..l 4I.a,,, 0,o,, r., E,,Ola,,d o1, fa aot