POWER WANTED

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 275, 12 April 1913, Page 9

POWER WANTED

HARNESSING THE SUN. Man makes the gods whom once he worshipped his slaves. He has tamed the lightning and enchained the power of the air to his service. The idea of harnessing the sunshine has already passed bevond the region of dreams, savs the "Pal'] Mall Gazette." What 'is known as the Slinman sun-power scheme is already under trial near Cairo.

By the use of lenses the heat of the sun i* made to turn water into steam, which may he used to drive machinery, and Mr. J. Astley Cooper, in a paper on Northern Nigeria, ha- made the suggestion that, if the experiment is successful, an attempt mi slit be made to utilise in this wav the enormous sunpower of the Sahara, which, when it is not wasted, it as present only destrnct ive. OUR DEPENDENCE ON BOTTLED SUNSHINE. Human industry has for centuries depended on coal, which has been poetically described as "bottled sunshine." It it feared that, within a measurable space of time, the vintage may be exhausted, so the happy thought has occurred to scientists to use sunshine "on draught," so to speak. We see no reason why the experiment should not be successful, in countries at least, which the sun is pleased to favour. At the moment of writing it is hard to conjure up a vision of success in this happy land of England. We arc inclined to think that some new means of bottling the sunshine will have to be found unless the centre of the world's work is to he transferred to regions which Horace believed to be denied human habitation. We are, however, persuaded that science will not stay short at the crude experiment of using the sun's heat to boil a giant kettle. A way will he found to utilise the chemical properties of the sun's rays, and even to transmit the power by some new wav of hottling to the zone called by courtesy "temperate."

FOWET! -WANTED FOR THE TILLAGES. The various schemes for harnessing the forces of nature, the sun. the winds, and the tides, have a great fascination for all men. and especially for those who see in the triumphs of Science one of the roads to the amelioration of social ills. MenJ live crowded together in cities mainly lieeanse of the need of power to drive engines and the difficulty of transmitting that power to small communities at sufficiently low cost to make industry remunerative. While the treadle sufficed to (urn the spinning wheel, and the water wheel the loom, industries flourished in (lie villages. Tf power to drive the voracious high-speed machines now required can he distributed cheaply from a few centres, or can he derived directly from natural forces, "garden cities" will at once spring up all over the country, and the (rue balance between industry and agriculture, in some of its forms at any rate, will be automatically mainrafned. The quick communication ami cheap transport i-,xMiired for sale ; nil distribution are alreadv supplied by the telephone and the motor."