MR. EDISON'S TASIMETER.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 267, 18 November 1878, Page 4

MR. EDISON'S TASIMETER.

(Scientific; American) Hitherto man's knowledge of the extent of the universe has been boundedby the limits of vision. During the dey, when the range of sight is narrowed by the sun's excessive brightness, we see but a minute fraction even of. the little world we inhabit. At; niaht a wider reach of vision is possible, and some thousands of ste.larand planetary bodies are added to the domain of positive knowledge, thus enlarging enormously man's idea of the magnitude of the universe. But. the increase of knowledge which darkness reveals is alalmost infinitesimal compared with the wider view of the universe opened up by the telescope : and every addition to the telescope's penetrative power brings a larger and larger universe within our ken. That the most powerful of telescopes enables us to reach the limits of the universe no one imagines. See as much as we may, more— perhaps infinitely more — lies beyond. So, at least, all experience leads us to infer; but our positive knowledge ends with the limit of vision. Must this always be so? Hitherto science has given no hint of the possibility of exploring the vast and mysterious beyond, from which no visible ray of light has ever been detected, or is ever likely to be detected, by the most far-reaching and sensitive of optic aids. But now there comes a promise of an extension of positive knowledge to fields of space so remote that light is tired out and lost before it can traverse the intervening distance. A new agent or organ of scientific sense for space exploration has been given to the world in the tasimeter, by which it is possible not only to measure the heat on tbe remotest of visible stars, but, Mr. Edison' believes, to detect by their invisible radi itions stars that are unseen and unseeable ! Mr Edison's plan is to adjust the Tasimeter to its utmost degree of neusitiveness, then attach it to a large telescope, and so explore those parts of the heavens which appear blank when exHinined by tel. scopes of the highest penetrative power. If at any point in such blank space the tasimeter indicates an accession of temperature, and does this nvariably, the legitimate inference will be that the instrument is in range with a stellar body, either non-luminous or so distant as to be beyond the reach of vision assisted by the telescope ; and the position of sueh body can be fixed and mapped the same as if it were visible. Seeing that the tasimeter is aflveted by a wider range of etheric undulations than tbe eye ean take cognisance of, and is withal far more acutely sensitive, the probabilities are that it will open up hitherto inaccessible regions of space, and possibly extend the range of our real Knowledge as far beyond the limit attained by the telescope as that is beyond the narrow reach of unaided vision. Possibly tao it may bring within human ken a vast multitude of nearer bodies — burnt out suns or feebly reflecting planets — upw unkowa because not luminous.

The Wairarapa Standard says :— lt is being kept quite dark by New Zealand merchants, and the colonial Press, that there is just now a considerable tightness in the monetary chest, and somehow or other everybody appears to be in possession of the secret, which of course in such a case is no secret at all. The effects of tbis tightness are being felt at Masterton and Featherston, where a good deal of speculation has been indulged in on borrowed capital. The attempt to hide the fact is like that of the silly bird which fancies that by putting its head under its wing it will escape the eye of the huntsnian. It is silly for other reasons, and one of these is, that the scare can only' be temporary. A correspondent, writing from the Paris Exposition to the San Francisco Mininq and Scientific Pr«ss says:— l have recently witnessed the operation of a nswly-invented hand-power rock drill, it may be worked by two men with a pressure of 80 nounda tier square inch, on the top of the cy'linder, and a proportionate dead blow of 20 pounds per square inch. It is admirablv adapted for tunnel drilling, where the expenses of the steam drill cannot be afforded. It i3 worked by a crank, force being applied to the drills by a system of cams. An old Californian expert in roclr ruining in two minutes drilled with this machinery a bole two aud one-half inches in depth in a block of hard granite. The invention promises to be of a remarkably valuable character for various purposes