Williston graphic. (Williston, Williams County, N.D.) 1895-1919, 1903-08-27
A CITY ON THE SEA.
What the Advance Of Science May
Bring to Pass In the Course OF
Another Century.

for small tribute in the shape of fish
food and certain salts, the ocean is to-
day almost dead loss to the world,
and, what is worse, the greatest of all
obstacles to progress? It separates us
from our kin, wrecks our ships, claims
an ever-increasing toll of dead, and is
barren, fruitless, a mere receptacle for
garbage. A hundred years hence We
shall have awakened to these facts and
found means to make "the caverns vast
of ocean old" something better than a
subject for the dreamer and resting
place for the deadLawhom it murders.
There is nothing to taunt the engineer
Of hundred years hence in the project
of erecting on the sea vast floating
city, quite as salubrious and convenient
as the present cities of terra firma, and
substantial enough to resist storm and
every motion of the sea, except the tides
on which the city will rise and fall.
There are great advantages in city
thus founded, as compared with those
we at present inhabit. There will be no
particular reason at first for economy
of space or for insalubrious overcrowd-
ing (since the ocean has no landlord,
and breadth would make for stability,
as we'll as for convenience. Traffic
would employ an entirely new vehicle,
the skinner. 1t is thing beyond
doubt that the ships Of hundred years
hence will not float in the sea, but ride
on its surface, thus evading both the
instability and resistance at present so
troublesome to marine engineers. AS
soon as the necessity arises for provid-
ing street traffic in Ocean City-when
"the sea is in the broad, the narrow
streets, ebbing and flowing, and the salt
sea weeds clings to the marble of her
palaces" invention will meet the de-
mand Something in the nature. Of
breakwaters will provide against wave
play, and form an unequaled exterior
boulevard; and by means Of the anhy-
orator, an invention which will long
since have been called for by the re-
quirements of other localities, the air
of dwelling houses in Ocean City will
be wholesomely freed from damp.
In other ways, too, the sea will be
made use of. We shall get our salt from
it If we still eat salt, the process of sep
aration being, probably, electro-mag-
netic. But the chief gift of the sea
to the life of the future will be the two
gases of which water is composed
oxygen and hydrogen. Both will be sta
pie commodities a. hundred years hence.
Liquefied oxygen will be our sole dis
infectant, for it greatly excels all 9TH
ers. 1t will also replace the poisonous,
noisome and destructive bleaching
agents used to-day. Hydrogen, the
lightest of all gases, will be another sta
pie of commerce. 1t will probably be
the only fuel employed, for its combus-
ton furnishes the greatest heat ter
restrially known, and it's flame is smoke
less and yields no poisonous by-product
Moreover, the evaporation of liquid
hydrogen produces, by sort of curious
revenge, the greatest available cold. If
anything in the nature of balloons
should survive the century, hydrogen
will initiate them. There are, moreover,
vast riches as yet undreamed of below
the surface of the ocean and beneath its
floor. There can be no question that
the needs Of the world will have taught
us to tap them; and the sea, instead of
lying waste and wasteful as it does at
present, will be one of our greatest
sources Of wealth hundred hence.