DR. SIEMENS ON THE FUTURE OF ELECTRICITY AND OF GAS.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2688, 18 November 1882, Page 3

DR. SIEMENS ON THE FUTURE OF ELECTRICITY AND OF GAS.

[From the “ Argus.] The inaugural address of Dr. C. W. Siemens, the president of the British Association, was one in a different tone and direction from that given last year by Sir John Lubbock. It fell to the lot of Sir John Lubbock to preside over the jubilee meeting of the association, and to review the wonderful record of half a century’s progress in all branches of natural science. The task undertaken by Dr. Siemens was a different one. Dr. Siemens is a specialist, but as it happens he is as a specialist at the head of that department of science which at present engages the widest attention, and from which the greatest practical results are anticipated. Much lias alreadybeen done in the way of practically applying what has been gleaned in the science of electricity. It has given us the telegraph, the telephone, and numberless applications of galvanism and magnetism. But there is a widespread belief that there is much more to come. It is held that the scientific advance made is much greater than the practical applications yet effected, and that some apparently small and unimportant adjustments, to be reached perhaps casually, may permit of many greater utilisations of electricity than we have at command at present. It is well to review the whole field to see what are the objects chiefly kept in view, and the probability of attaining them. No man is better competent to make such a review than Dr. Siemens, and it is in this attempt to forecast the approaching achievements to be expected from electrical science that the interest of his address principally lies. In glancing through its main points and anticipations it is needful to remark how large and important is the sphere of the unexpected in the future of science as in. that of history, and how many and how great have been the scientific discoveries of which the closest observer could not have felt the smallest presentiment. We need not, for the purpose of this article, concern ourselves with the purely scientific part of Dr. Siemens’ address. Our object is briefly to enumerate the practical applications of electricity for which he thinks we are entitled to look at no distant date. And among the foremost of these is the employment of electricity as a means of transmitting mechanical power to a distance. All difficulties have been surmounted, and mechanical power can be transformed into electricity, conveyed to a distance, and reconverted into mechanical power, without losing more than 50 per cent, of the original energy. Railways worked by electricity as motive power will, it is thought, possess great advantages over horse or steam power for towns, in tunnels, and in all cases where natural sources of energy are available j but it is not at present expected that electricity can compete with steam on ordinary railways. Considering how closely identified is Dr. Siemens with electrical science and its applications, it is cheering to those interested in gas to observe how large a sphere of usefulness he allots to gas after electricity has done its utmost. He has, of course, much to say for the electric light—its immunity from injurious products of combustion, the fact that it is white instead of yellow, and thus enables us to see pictures, furniture, flowers, &.C., as by daylight, and its capability to support growing plants instead of poisoning them. Its liability to stoppage has been removed by the introduction of the secondary battery, and all objection on this ground therefore ceases. It is held that electric lighting will inevitably be adopted for the lighting of large drawing and dining rooms, theatres, museums, churches, factories, passenger steamers, and for spreading artificial daylight over large areas such as harbours, railway stations, and the sites of public works. Dr, Siemens, assuming the cost of electric light to be practically the same as gas, considers that the preference for each will in each ease be decided upon grounds of relative convenience, but ho ventures “to think that gas lighting will hold its own as the poor man’s friend.” A good deal of attention is given in the address to the future of gas, and all that the president of the British Association had to say on the subject, is encouraging to the belief that a great future of increasing utility remains for gas. He, indeed, looks on to a time when gas will be largely used as “ the most convenient, the cleanest, and cheapest of heating agents, and when raw coal will be seen only at the colliery or the gasworks. These works, ho considers, will be placed at the mouth or, better still, at the bottom of the coalpit, when this is not too far from the town to be supplied. It is not only that the burning of the raw coal is productive of so many nuisances from the smoke and soot generated, it is also wasteful iu the highest degree. At the present time the by-pro-ducts from coal yielded in the distillation of gas in the United li ingdom largely exceed in value the coal used. Of these, the most important part is the coloring matter wliich yields the beautiful aniline dyes. If the coal is burned in its raw state, all these are not only lost, they remain as poisonous matters in the atmosphere, and spread a murky pall over the cities whore the coal is consumed. It is calculated that the soot contained in the smoke cloud which glooms over London on a winter’s day amounts to fifty tons, and that the carbolic oxide—a poisonous compound resulting from the imperfect combustion of coal may be taken as at least five times that amount. All these products are converted into valuable marketable commodity when the coal is reduced to the form of gas. Moreover it is proved that the fine dust carried into the atmosphere from the imperfect combustion of coal is mainly instrumental in the formation of fog. So that the anticipations of Dr. Siemens hold out the pleasant prospect of smokeless cities, the residents of which will enjoy as bright a sky and will breathe as pure an air as the dwellers in the country. There is another province of usefulness open to gas. It comes with something like a shock to learn that the steam-engine on which two or three generations have been priding themselves as one of man’s greatest triumphs over the forces of nature is wasteful and extravagant, and indeed only a relic of the days of scientific barbarism. The reader will be distressed to learn that this ridiculous engine in its best form does “ not yield in mechanical effect more than l-7th part of the heat-energy residing in the fuel consumed.” It is not only clumsy and wastful; it is also extravagant, and must at no distant day give place to the gas or caloric engine working at a consumption of not more than one pound of coal per effective horse-power per hour. •• The advent of such an engine,” observes Dr. Siemens, “ and of the dynamomachine must mark a new era of material progress at least equal to that produced by the introduction of steam power in the early part of our century.” And thus we may look on to a coming time when the steam engine will be preserved iu museums side by side with a flint arrow, heads of primeval man, and the rude implements of the savage, as an appliance that has been outgrown and discarded, and that is preserved only as a cur * ;iiy.