AN INVENTOR’S FATE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 81, 25 May 1911, Page 4

AN INVENTOR’S FATE.

John Needham Longdon, a wellknown civil and mining engineer and’ Follow of the Society of Engineers, died in New York'’ recently from starvation while seeking for the .secret of generating cheap electricity, which he rightly believed would revolutionise the power system of the world, says the “Montreal Daily Star.” What amount of success attended his search is not known, and perhaps never will he known, but the object of his quest was not an ignis fa tints by any means. At present, only a trifle over ten per cent, of the actual power in coal, when converted into electricity, is delivered to the bus-bar, the wire carrying all the current produced by the source of electrical energy. In other words, nearly ninety per cent, of the power is lost in various forms of leakage, in. the processes of converting coal into heat, heat into steam, steam into electricity, and in delivering the current. The discovery of a method of preventing the greater part of this loss would mean much to the world. The men who make money out of inventions, as a rule, are men who reap where they have not sown, ami gather where they have not strewed.