William H. Wahl

“ The great and obvious advantage of gaseous fuel—to leave the question of its convenience, at present, out of sight—resides in the fact that the character of the fuel permits of its instantaneous and perfect intermixture with the air, by which a vastly more perfect combustion is insured—an advantage that finds admirable expression in the regenerative furnace of Siemens. ”

“ The French physicist Pouillet, with the aid of elaborately refined apparatus, estimated that the earth receives from the sun in each and every minute 2,247 billions of units of heat—a quantity sufficient, if converted into mechanical force, to raise 2,247 billions × 774 pounds to the height of one foot. To come down to figures that are less difficult of conception, let us confine our attention to that part of the solar heat that falls upon the oceans, and to the fraction of that portion which is expended in the work of evaporating the water. ”

“ Great rivers above tide-water are rolling down a wealth of power in their currents; and a hundred factories along their banks, heedless of the fact, are using steam-power. And it is one of the standing marvels that manufacturers fail to recognize the elementary fact in mechanics, that it is not necessary for a stream to have from ten to two hundred feet of fall, in order to do their work ”

“ With a perfect boiler, therefore, we ought to get 5.5 horse-power per hour out of every pound of coal burned on the grate-bars. Now, let us inquire, What do we get in practice? Surely, you will say, our scientific mechanics and engineers have succeeded in getting a goodly percentage out of this possible figure; and the splendid engines, of massive construction, that work so beautifully as to excite our wonder and admiration at their smoothness and ease of their movements, must be very near perfection. ”

“ A wind of twenty-five miles an hour, or what sailors would call a good stiff breeze, travels 39·67 feet per second, and exerts a pressure of from 2·208 to 3·075 pounds per square foot. The prodigious energy of a hurricane, traveling not infrequently at the rate of one hundred miles per hour, is too well known by its disastrous effects to need repetition. The power of the wind, however, save for ship-propulsion, is utilized in but few situations, its unreliability having caused it to be but very slightly esteemed in comparison with water-power and steam. ”

“ Here, then, is power enough to satisfy the most enthusiastic inventor, and leave him plenty of margin; and if the believers in the sun-engine shall ever succeed in giving mechanical expression to but the merest fraction of this superabundance, they may safely count upon creating as profound a revolution in the world of industry as that which was ushered in with the steam-engine. ”

“ A consideration of this topic, however, would take so much of our time this evening that I must pass it by with the brief remark that the galvanic battery can not compete in economy with the steam-engine, until some cheap mode of generating electricity shall be discovered. The fuel of the battery is zinc, and, even though we can get fifty per cent. of its theoretical power by burning it in the battery, its cost is so much higher than that of coal, the fuel of the steam-engine, that the latter has the advantage, at the present time, of forty to one on its side. ”

“ Every exhibition of force, physical or chemical, inorganic or vital, the multifarious consequences connected with the circulation of air and water over the surface of the earth, and in her oceans, and which involve the causation of the winds, aerial and aqueous currents, and rainfall, and the effects of these commonplace but vastly important phenomena in establishing and maintaining those climatic conditions upon which the existence of life upon the earth is absolutely dependent, are directly referable to the forces of solar radiation. ”

“ Not to over-estimate the capabilities of the new system, Ericsson, in his consideration of the practical side of the subject, assumes that a sun-engine of one horse-power will demand the concentration of heat from one hundred square feet; and on this estimate he proceeds to show that in all reasonable probability those regions of the earth that now suffer from an excess of heat will some day derive such benefits from their unlimited command of motive power as to vastly overbalance their climatic disadvantages. ”

“ Of late, however, small windmills, especially designed with superior mechanical skill, have been rapidly growing in popularity in this country, mainly for pumping water for railway and domestic purposes, an application for which these devices are excellently adapted; and I entertain no doubt that there are many situations where work is to be done that does not demand a continuous exercise of power, and where the prime consideration to be observed is the element of cheapness, where wind-power might be most advantageously employed. ”

“ For domestic purposes, however, in the form of gas-stoves, even at the present high cost of this form of gas, it has been already largely adopted, and with advantage and economy; while for every form of light work, where power is only required intermittently, as in printing-offices, elevators, hoists, and the like, gas-engines, using ordinary coal-gas, are, even at present prices, decidedly more economical than steam, since they may be started and stopped instantaneously, and when idle are wasting nothing. ”

“ The recent great advances, however, that have been made in the construction and improvement of what are known as dynamo-electric machines, by which mechanical power, no matter how generated, whether from the steam-engine, the wind, or waterfall, could be directly converted into electricity, appear to have solved the problem of the cheap generation of electricity in any quantity, and have opened a wide field of speculation as to the possible extensive introduction of magnetic engines to take the place of steam. ”

“ I refer to the question of the practicability of transmitting mechanical power to great distances by converting it into electricity, through the agency of what are called dynamo-electric machines, and utilizing this either for the production of powerful lights for illuminating cities and towns, or by converting it back again into mechanical power with the aid of magneto-electric engines, by which mills, factories, and workshops may be furnished with the power they now obtain from steam or water. ”

“ The first and greatest source of loss resides in the difficulty—I may, I think, safely say the impossibility—of burning solid fuel economically in any form of furnace that has yet been devised; and this prime difficulty is an unanswerable argument in favor of the substitution of liquid or gaseous fuel for steam-making as for other purposes. Let us analyze the matter: The buyer of coal purchases at the outset at least 10 to 15 per cent. of non-combustible and useless material with every pound of coal, in the form of ash; while at least 5 per cent. ”

“ To convey some adequate notion of the incalculable floods of power that await the bidding of the compelling genius of invention, I will invite your attention to a very brief résumé of the well-substantiated results of scientific research applied to the subject. ”

“ The saving in wages of stokers, to clear the fireplaces, and keep the heat of the furnace always at the proper intensity—difficulties which the adoption of gaseous fuel would entirely obviate, since it furnishes no ashes to remove—and the proper regulation of the gas supply, would insure a perfectly uniform heating effect for hours together, without supervision or attention of any kind. The incidental saving of fuel or steam, whenever, by improper regulation, or the inattention of stokers, the furnaces are allowed to become too hot ”

“ A dynamo-electric machine actuated by water-power could be made to generate powerful electrical currents, which could be transmitted through insulated metallic wires or cables to a great distance with but little loss, comparatively speaking, and could thus be made to run magneto-electric engines to do the work of steam in our mills and workshops, to ignite electric lamps, etc. ”

“ The furnace gases can not, by any possible mode of constructing boilers, be retained long enough in contact with the steam-generator to yield up all their heat, and they are thrown out from the chimney frequently at a temperature of 800° Fahr.; and, what is still worse, their combustion is frequently so imperfect that they carry off with them out of the chimney great volumes of unburned carbon in the form of smoke ”

“ And now, having briefly shown, by a few typical examples, what modern invention has done and is doing to utilize the waste products of nature and of the arts, I shall invite you to consider with me whether there are not waste forces in nature that can and should be turned to useful account, or to vastly better account than we are now putting them ”

“ The rise and fall of the tides vary, according to local conditions, from a few inches, as in the Mediterranean Sea, to seventy feet, as in the Bay of Fundy, and their force in almost any one of our rivers would, if properly applied, suffice to furnish ample power to all the mills and factories and workshops that could be built side by side upon their banks. They would drive under-shot wheels unfailingly. ”

“ To introduce this topic properly, I beg to remind you at the outset that the progress of science during the last half century has been most pronounced and satisfactory in the investigation of the nature, origin, interdependence, and interconvertibility of the various manifestations of energy that are called familiarly “the forces of nature” ”

“ So, too, the enormous hills of anthracite-coal dirt, that in the coal regions of our State have for years borne silent but eloquent testimony to the crudity and wastefulness of our methods of mining coal, now bid fair soon to disappear beneath boilers supplied with ingenious dust-burning devices, or in the form of lumps of artificial fuel. ”

“ The gas-wells of the oil regions have been permitted to spout away wealth enough to have repaid a hundred-fold all the money ever lost in oil speculations; but it is gratifying to be able to say that the great value of these natural supplies of heat and light is now very generally recognized, and that in many localities the gas is turned to useful account in supplying light and heat to towns and cities and factories and mills. ”

“ But, to return from a digression that is only of incidental interest to us here, I desire you to conceive of the amazing fact that the stupendous aggregate of terrestrial activity is derived from that infinitesimal fraction only of the solar emanations that is intercepted by the earth—a fraction less than the two-billionth part of the sum total of energy that he is unceasingly radiating into space ”

“ In such regions, therefore, Nature has supplied us with an exhaustless store of energy, capable of meeting the most extravagant demands that may be made upon it. Even the region of the temperate zones, where the winds are variable, our seashores have their strong land- and sea-breezes which for nine days out of ten may be relied upon ”

“ I do not wish to be understood as intimating that the use of our common burning-gas would be a panacea for all the ills I have narrated, for its cost would preclude its general adoption for industrial purposes, to take the place of coal or wood. ”

“ Where Nature, however, supplies us with an abundance of combustible gases, as in certain favored localities in our oil regions, to which I shall have occasion to refer hereafter, an additional advantage is gained, since she has saved us the necessity of making it; and the practical utilization of the product of the numerous gas-wells of our oil regions has proved of enormous advantage to the manufacturers of these localities. ”

“ Siemens, would be capable of transmitting a thousand horse-power to a distance of say thirty miles—an amount sufficient to give the light of a quarter million of candles, and suffice to illuminate a town of moderate size. Two eminent American investigators, Professors Houston and Thomson, of Philadelphia, having just made an investigation with the especial purpose of determining the practicability of transmitting the power of Niagara to great distances by means of electricity, go even further than Dr. Siemens. ”

“ Ay, there is good reason for the belief, which is entertained by most competent and eminent authorities, that the periodical recurrence of famines and pestilences and other scourges that afflict mankind, and which the superstitious of all ages are wont to ascribe to the anger of an offended deity, coincides with the periodical maxima and minima in the intensity of the solar emanations that reach the earth ”