The Plymouth tribune. (Plymouth, Ind.) 1901-1911, 1905-12-14
WILL WAKE WORLD.
Wonderful Glimpse Glimpse In
to Electricity's Future by
Edison.

Thomas A. Edison declared
Sunday that before his death he
would see the worlds electricity
produced by direct process
without the Intervention of steam
and with that discovery the
solution of the problem of aerial
navigation and ocean vessels
crossing the Atlantic in three
days time
I'VE are groping on the verge
OF another great epoch in the
worlds history" he said. 1T
would not surprise me any morn
ing to wake up and learn that
some one or some group of the
100000 scientific men who are in
vestigating all over the earth has
seized the secret of electricity by
direct process and begun another
practical revolution of human af-
fairs. 1t can be done. 1t will be
done | expect to see it before l
die"
The first great change in pro-
duction of electricity will abolish
the carrying of coal for that pur-
pose," he said. Instead OF Dig
ging gross material out of the
earth, loading it on cars and car
rying it, say, 500 miles, there to
put 1t under a boiler, burn it and
SO get power, we shall set up
plants at the mouths of the mines
generate the power there and
transmit it wherever it is needed
by copper wires.
1T is preposterous to keep on
putting the coal mines on wheels.
1t is too clumsy. 1t is too costly.
There is no necessity for it.
1T is easier TO carry molecular
vibration-millions of waves a
second than freight cars full of
crude matter. We can ship a
10000 horse power over a wire
quicker and more economically
tlanwe can send the equivalent
in coal over a railroad track.
We must eliminate the rail-
road altogether from this prob
lem. What's the use of it? We
don't want the coal anyhow. 1t
does us no good to look at it.
What we want is the resultant,
the utmost energy that can be
produced. And there is no sense
in carrying around millions OF
tons of raw material like coal
when we can get its product de-
livered TO us by wire.
Everything points to the fact
that in the near future electricity
will be produced for general con-
sumption in the great power
houses at the mouth of the coal
pits. That IS the logical and COM
mon sense outcome OF present
events.
The present method of doing
things Is merely matter OF hab-
it. It's simply wonderful to OBJ
Serve how habit controls man and
how it sometimes delays great
reformations even in practical af-
fairs. This system of carrying
coal from the mines for the pur-
pose OF producing electricity
somewhere else is habit. Habit
is the greatest foe to progress
and invention.
The great majority of men
are controlled by habit. They
have always seen thing done
one way and that way seems to
them the only way. But there
are some of us who have a little
of the spirit of evolution and we
bother and trouble the others by
not letting them alone.
Now. the truth is that II will
cost third less to transport cleo
trieal power by wire than to car
ry it in the form of coal in rail-
road cars. Assume the price of
coal to be 81 at the mouth of the
mine and assume the freight to
be $190. Now, we can turn that
coal into electricity at the mine
and convey it by wire at less than
half the cost OF the freightage of
coal.
so, in years to come, the great
electric power plants will be set
up in the coal fields. Electric
power will largely do away with
the steam power Electric light
will become cheaper than gas