FOOD FROM AIR, EARTH, AND WATER.

Clutha Leader, Volume IV, Issue 207, 28 June 1878, Page 3

FOOD FROM AIR, EARTH, AND WATER.

The Daily Times' American correspondent says : — I am almost afraid to tax your credulity by mentioning Mr Edison's very latest discovery j yet there is quite as little doubt of its truth as there is of the phonograph. The discovery was detailed somewhat minutely as to the results in the New York Graphic j but as the patent rights have, not been fully secured a description of tho machine is withheld. It is neither more nor less than the making of food, whether animal or vegetable, out, of the three simple elements of earth, air, and water. In the process of his scientific research the thought struck Edison that analytical chemistry had been pursued to the neglect of synthetical chemistry, and he put the question to himself — " Can't I anticipate the slow process of Nature, and produce food for man in the laboratory of science without depending wholly upon its manufacture in the laboratory of nature." Acting upon this thought he set to work, and the result is a machine which he thinks can be made with forty variations, that is, to produce forty different kinds of food. He has so far succeeded in making about forty varieties of flesh, fowl, cereals, vegetables, fruit, coffee, tea, wine, <fec.j and on actual test the only difference between the chemically produced beef, mutton, and game from that of the living animals, is an absence of fibre. This may appear astounding to jour readers, but a moment's reflection will show that however greatly more important the economic results ot the food creator may be than those of the phonograph, its realisation by a competent chemist is by no means so marvellous as the mechanical contrivance for reproducing every variety of sound with unvarying fidelity. The process is going on perpetually, according to unvarying natural laws. The only notice of this invention has been in the Graphic. It is a scientific baby newly born, but bigger than its father. Should it prove what its inventor claims for it, it will solve the problem of poverty, revolutionise social conditions, and put an end to the martyrdom of man. Faraday stopped on the edge of this discovery, which was foreshadowed by Bacon with the prophetic intuition of