Evening star., 1936-11-21
STARS, MEN AND ATOMS
Notebook of Science Progress in Field,
Laboratory and Study.
BY THOMAS r. HENRY.

different directions and travel by night
as well as by day. And the passengers
will sleep in these stages as comfortably
as they do now in steam stage boats.
Twenty miles per hour is about 80
feet per second. The resistance of the
air will then be about one pound to the
square foot, but the bodies of the car
riages will be shaped like swift swimming
fish to pass easily through the air.
"A steam engine that will consume
quarter to half cord of wood will drive
a carriage 180 miles in IL hours with 20
or 80 passengers and not consume six
gallons of water. These engines will drive
boats 10 or IL miles per hour and there
will be many hundred steamboats, run
ming On the Mississippi and other West
ern waters, as prophecied 80 years ago
by one who could predict then better
than the poet can now. But the velocity
Of boats through water never can be
made equal to the velocity of carriages
through air because the resistance of
water is 100 times the resistance of air.
And it shall come to pass that the
memory Of those sordid and wicked
wretches who oppose such improvements
will be execrated by every good man, as
they ought to be now. Posterity will not
be able to discover why the legislators
of Congress did not grant the inventor
such protection as might have enabled
him to put in operation these great
Improvements sooner, he having asked
neither money nor monopoly of any
existing thing. The clouds of darkness
will be dissipated by time. 1t will be
clearly discovered that to protect inven-
tors for sufficient times is the only way
to get the use of discoveries soon.
THE United States will be the first
Nation to make these discoveries and to
adopt the system, and her wealth and
power will rise to an unparalleled
height. The inventors will be revered
by such base spirits as now insult and
rob them when they are poor, as well
as by the generous and just for having
enriched their country.
"Sanctimonious hypocrites will not
their ncenses-and Satan, losing his
place, will leave this country and enter
the service of the European powers and
the several religious societies will be free
of the burden of these imposters."
In explanation of the last, Evans
seemed to have particularly bad fortune
III ldlilIlS dlOul Ol uIlSCTupulOuS HlulloIclo
of the gospel and as a consequence dis
liked the whole clerical profession. In
one of the anecdotes related in this
same rare volume he tells how Virginia
minister stole the design for a WOOL
carding machine he had invented under
the pretext of holding gospel meeting
at the hotel where he was staying.
The steam carriages described in his
prophecy, which would actually carry
passengers from Washington to New
York in a single day and even/travel at
night, Evans recognized as highly fanci-
full. He made them with his tongue in
his cheek, just as prophet today might
predict eventual rocket trips to the moon.
In a soberer moment, however, he actu-
ally proposed the organization of stock
company to build railroad for carrying
heavy produce between Philadelphia and
New York. His prospectus. printed in the
same rare volume, proposes carriage
with steam engine of the power Of five
horses, with two men to attend it, which
will haul after it perhaps IL others loaded
with two tons each at the rate of 80 miles
in "a hours"
Evans didn't claim his engine could
draw any such load up hill. At the foot
Of an upgrade, he proposed, the engine