A GLIMPSE

Taranaki Daily News, 9 February 1916, Page 6

A GLIMPSE

THOMAS A. EDISON TALKS. Thomas A. Edison, seeing America west of the Rockies for the first time in thirty-nine years, was asked at San Diego. 'What is the future of electriMr. Edison knows—who better? —what has been achieved, for the world is indebted to him for a considerable proportion of the practical uses ol' electricity; he knows what attempts have proved abortive; lie understands the field of electrical potentiality thoroughly as far as the mechanical application goes. Yet he stopped dead at the query, and his heavy brows were knitted. "I don't know," lie said. "What do you believe about it?" "I believe we are only beginning—that we have scarcely started."

ONLY SCRATCHED THE TOPSAIL. That was a broader statement than might have been expected, l)nt Mr. Edison defended it promptly; "I mean that exactly. We have only seen the surface of the possibilities of practical electricity. By that I refer, not only to the number of labor-saving and timesaving machines operated by motors, but to tile whole range of possibilities for undreamed-of applications of the energy we call by this name. A few years ago wireless telegraphy was not known—no one thought of it, as no one now could conceive of water running uphill. There are undiscovered possibilities in electricity to-day just as revolutionary as the wireless. T mean exactly that we have only scratched the surface.

"One problem which all who are engaged in electrical research have for solution on their laboratory tables today is that of gaining light without heat. The firefly has it; man hasn't. We don't yet understand the firefly, but some day we shall, or if we fail there, we shall at least bo able to produce a glow without warmth by moms of electricity. This is only one example of what might be expected in the future. "Much simpler for the layman is the field of applied electricity. Stop and consider the number of uses to which it is put to-day. It has halved the wise wife's labors. Tt lights, cleans, dusts, churns, sews, heats, cools, cooks, it brings the shopkeeper into the kitchen, whether he is one block distant, or ten miles; it is coming to make the ranch wife's lot almost as light as that of the woman in a city flat; it obliterates distance, lengthens the day, and is harnessed to make recreation a problem no longer. ANOTHER FIELD. "Take another field—the farm. Take another—the scientific laboratory. Another—the odice. Another—inter-city communication. Another gasolineengine ignition. The battery or cell is a small part of the automobile, the aeroplane, the deep-well pumping engine; and yet without such stored or generated energy every gasoline engine would stop for the last time. There is nothing insuperable in the way of a limitless extension of these activities of electricity.

"I am particularly impressed by the value of electrical energy in mines. Danger lias been reduced marvellously. The miner with his electric headlight, equipped with ft light battery that will last through a whole shift, is almost immune from the old terror of gas and dust explosions. The mules that once dragged this ore or muck to the surface have been replaced by the quick, eflicient, powerful electric locomotive. And that is only a beginning. Storage butteries are almost nothing more than experiments to-day compared to what they will become. For the transmission of electrical energy, especially in cities, the storage battery has limitless possibilities. Tile progress that has been made in the past will lie outstripped ill the future—and soon, too."

''Wireless telephony?"' Mr. Edison smiled. "The word 'hello' requires several hundred vibrations. Why waste, them when, by splitting them up into dots and dashes, they can be made to earn" a thousand words of telegraphy to the minute? Wireless telephony is interesting—but it is mainly sentimental. not practical. Wireless telegraphy —that is the field with the future. "We know vaenely some of the things which cannot be done with electrical energy. But, what can Ijc done, in spite of what T have said, we don't know. We have only begun to find out, only begun."