A POPULAR DELUSION.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3263, 16 December 1881, Page 3

A POPULAR DELUSION.

The recent advances of electricity, writes the London Echo, have led those only partially acquainted with the subject to talk of the supercession of the steam engine, and the other day the newly-elected member for North Durham spoke of electricity as a substitute for coal. Dr. Siemens, Sir W. Thomson, and others made pointed allusionsat the recent meeting of the British Association to this extraordinary delusion, but in many cases they have been misveported. It must not be forgotten that electricity is only a manifestation of energy—a mode of motion —and that it is in no sense a means of creating power. As Sir William Armstrong put it in his address to section G, get power from wind and water; but, from the action of chemical affinity, we are dependent for our supply of energy entirely on coal and the other substances containing carbon. The great bulk of matter constituting tho earth has already had its chemical affinities satisfied ; but coal, peat, petroleum, and other substances containing carbon are still available for the production of energy by their combination with oxygen, and when our stores of coal are exhausted, wind and water will help us little to keep up the necessary supply of power to our mills. Sir W. Thomson, in fact, doubts whether wo can utilise the wind economically with coal at its present price ; and Mr Hawksley stated that water-power could not be obtained at a much less cost than £1000 per horse-power for the capital outlay. Mr Crompton thinks itmay be had for much less, but Mr Hawksley is probably the better judge of the cost. An experiment is about to be tried in the North of Ireland which will help to settle the question of the actual cost of applying water-power to drive dynamo machines, and it is probable that some cheaper form of windmill may be devised, which will bo suitable for driving electric generators employed in charging accumulating batteries'; but at present there is no doubt that King Coal is the monarch of the industrial world, and that until we can succeed in making wind and water our slaves at a small outlay we shall not be able ;to dispense with him.