Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1919-10-17

| 4 "A
| w can be harneSSed and put to work!
Civilization can be made forever
| independent of coal mines, oil wells and The
other sources of fuel, which are SO rapidly be
ing exhausted, and which require so much
human labor to convert them into heat and
| power.
Methods for hitching the sun to the ma
chirery of civilization, for making it run our
! factories and our street cars, light and heat
| our homes, have been WO. ked out in the rough.
They have even, to limited extent, been ap-
plid with practical success, and patents have
/ been taken out on them.
Nothing stands in the way of this great and
necessary development save the immense in
ertia of habit, and the lack of human faith
| in human ability.
This is the substance of an interview with
several scientists who have specialized on prob
| lens of heat and power They are ConServa-
tive scientists, occupying positions of high
| responsibility.
'You cannot quote me-" said one of them
because if you did some kind folks would
call me second Jules Verne and some who
are not so kind would call me liar My rep
| utation for conservatism would be seriously
! injured.
"But you can say that it is possible to
harness the sun, and be we'll within the truth
No scientist who has studied the problem will
dispute the statement. l will go good deal
further. | am willing to say that if COM
petent physicist specializing in heat and power
were gwen HllnOn QOIidrS, q UrSt-ClaSS laDO-
ratOry and corps of competent assistants, he
could within year perfect a practical appa-
ratuS for converting heat directly into
either steam or electricity.
"But it's no use telling the public this The
public won't believe it until it sees the thing
done, and maybe it won't believe it then The
attitude of the average man toward the new,
and therefore incredible, is illustrated by a
story Orville Wright told me- For months he
flew back and forth between two trolley lines
without even getting a notice in the local
newspaper. Finally reporter was sent to the
field He saw Wright fly, and wlcte piece
about it, which he turned in to the city editor.
The editor read it over and tossed it aside
"Gt may be true," he said, but there's no
use in printing it, Nobody would believe it.
We would lose our reputation for conSer-
vatiSm'
wright had to go down to North Carolina
and give exhibition before he could even
get himself noticed, and he had to go to
Europe to get any support.
at will very likely be the same with this
matter of converting sun heat directly into
power. Patents on apparatus for the purpose
already exist in Germany. The method will
pl ohably be in use over there while we are
still wasting man power in this country, goug-
ing the remnant of our coal supply out Of he
bowels of the earth.
eve have an ever-increaSng need for
new source of poWers Coal and oil are be-
coming Scarcer and harder to get every year
Everything we wear and use, most of the
things we eat are manufactured. The in
cfeaSing cost of the power that is used in
manufacturing is one of the many causes of
our high living cost AS long as we laborious-
ly dig coal in the middle west and haul it
thousand miles or 50 10 factories in New
England, we wasting man rower and we
have got to pay for that waste.
"Of course our great water power remains
undeveloped We are slowly getting round
to that. 1t will solve the problem for some
sections, but that is all. The direct applica.
ion of sun heat VII then follow, when we
ali at last realize that our coal and oil sup
plies are about gone.
Glow can the thing be done? Well, one
method is to convert the sun heat directly
into electricity. The method was applied by
DR.. W. w. Coblentz, of the Unite States
bureau OF standards, not long ago, when he
made an apparatus for measuring the heat of
stars. He made tiny "thermo-couple' by
connecting two flakes of metal of different
kinds When he focused the star light on one
OF these, raising its temperature, an electric
current was generated between the two diff