Alexander Graham Bell

“ I allude to the discovery of radium by Madame Curie of Paris.
Radium has recently upset our most cherished theories of matter and force. The whole subject of chemistry has to be rewritten and our ideas of the constitution of matter entirely changed. Here is a substance which emits light and heat and electricity continuously without any apparent source of supply. It emits light in the dark, and in a cool room maintains itself constantly at a higher temperature than its environment. ”

“ We progress from candles to electricity in one lifetime I said it was a glorious thing to be young; but it is also a glorious thing to be old and look back upon the progress of the world during one's own lifetime. ”

“ I had in mind an old lady, who is now living in Baltimore, at the age of one hundred and seven—she is now in her one hundred and eighth year—with mental faculties unimpaired. Possessed of a bright and active mind, she is able, from her own personal recollections, to look back upon a whole century of progress of the world. ”

“ Knowledge is power; and we now realize that the nation that fosters science becomes so powerful that other nations must, if only in self-defense, adopt the same plan. It is safe to say that scientific men and technical experts are destined in the future to occupy distinguished and honorable positions in all the countries of the world. ”

“ Water vapor is given off by the sea everywhere and at all temperatures; it is even evaporated from ice and snow. Of course, the warmer the sea-water is, the greater is the amount of water vapor thrown out; but water vapor is everywhere present, and the main point in condensation is that it is removed from the surface by the action of the wind and carried to cooler places, where condensation occurs in the form of cloud or rain. No great amount of heat is required to produce evaporation and no great amount of cold is necessary to effect condensation. ”

“ Our growing crops and even weeds can be used. The waste products of our farms are available for this purpose and even the garbage from our cities. We need never fear the exhaustion of our present fuel supplies so long as we can produce an annual crop of alcohol to any extent desired.
The world will probably depend upon alcohol more and more as time goes on, and a great field of usefulness is opening up for the engineer who will modify our machinery to enable alcohol to be used as the source of power. ”

“ When I was a young man the institutions of learning, the higher schools and colleges, paid a great deal more attention to the teaching of Latin and Greek than to the study of science; they made scholars rather than scientists. ”

“ All that is necessary is a current of air over your salt water to remove the water vapor collected there, and then the carrying of this confined current into a cool reservoir where the water may condense.
The thermos-bottle idea applied to a water tank As little or no artificial heating is required, a great saving can be effected in the matter of fuel. It is extraordinary how wasteful we are in our means of producing heat and in retaining it after it has been produced. It is safe to say that a great deal more heat goes up the chimney than we utilize from a fire. ”

“ One of the great evils attending our civilization is the extreme congestion of the population into the larger cities, and one of the great problems of the future is how to spread the population more equally over the land.
The congestion is caused by difficulties of transportation; for, of course, it costs much more to send a person to a distant place than to one near at hand. ”

“ We have plenty of heat going to waste in Washington during the summer-time, for the sun's rays are very powerful, and we do not use the roofs of our buildings except to keep off the rain. What wide expanses of roof are available in all our large cities for the utilization of the sun's rays! Simple pipes laid up on the roof and containing oil or some other liquid would soon become heated by the sun's rays. The hot oil could be carried into an insulated tank and stored. ”

“ Possibilities of alcohol There is, however, one other source of fuel supply which may perhaps solve this problem of the future. Alcohol makes a beautiful, clean, and efficient fuel, and, where not intended for consumption by human beings, can be manufactured very cheaply in an indigestible or even poisonous form. Wood alcohol, for example, can be employed as a fuel, and we can make alcohol from sawdust, a waste product of our mills. ”

“ The railroads, for example, have to expend millions of dollars in the construction of railroad tracks; and what would the automobile be worth without a good road on which to travel? Water transportation is much cheaper than railroad transportation, chiefly because we do not have to build roads in the sea for our ships.
I will conclude with this thought: that a possible solution of the problem over land may lie in the development of aërial locomotion. However much money we may invest in the construction of huge aërial machines carrying many passengers, we don't have to build a road. ”

“ You will readily understand the difficulty when you remember that cold air is specifically heavier than warm air. You can take a bucket of cold air, for example, and carry it about in the summer-time and not spill a drop; but if you make a hole in the bottom of your bucket, then, of course, the cold air will all run out. ”

“ The distance from Honolulu to the Eiffel Tower must be 8,000 miles at least—one-third the distance around the globe—and this achievement surely foreshadows the time when we may be able to talk with a man in any part of the world by telephone and without wires. ”

“ Our most cherished theories upset by a woman The above illustrations exhibit what we might call “mutations” of science; but the greatest of all these mutations was the discovery that opened the twentieth century, and I may add for the encouragement of our young lady graduates that it was made by a woman. ”

“ I think that all the hot water required for the use of a household, and even for warming a house, could be obtained without special expenditure for fuel by utilization of the waste heat produced from the kitchen fire and the heat given off by the illuminants employed. ”

“ I reflected, however, that the condensation of moisture resulted from the fact that the sides of the tank were cooler than the air admitted. Water vapor will not condense on anything that is warmer than itself, and it occurred to me that if I introduced air that was very much colder than I wanted to use, then it would be warming up in the tank and becoming dryer all the time. ”

“ This is still the form of the modern bicycle; but a gasoline motor has been added to do the work of the feet, giving us the power of going faster than railroad trains, on the common roads of the country, and without any physical exertion at all. I believe the speed record upon race-tracks stands at about 137 miles an hour.
Many chances for the inventor On every hand we see the substitution of machinery and artificial motive power for animal and man power. There will therefore be plenty of openings in the future for young, bright mechanical engineers working in this direction. ”

“ At that time the papers were speaking of some ice plant that had been installed in the White House and congratulated the President upon a temperature of only 80 degrees when the thermometer showed 100 degrees outside. At this very time I enjoyed in my house a temperature of 65 degrees (the ideal temperature) , with a delicious feeling of freshness in the air. Even when the air had risen to the same temperature as the rest of the house, as measured by a thermometer, the room still felt cool, because the air was drier, thus promoting perspiration that cooled the skin. ”

“ There is, however, one obstacle to further advance, in the increasing price of the fuel necessary to work machinery. Coal and oil are going up and are strictly limited in quantity. We can take coal out of a mine, but we can never put it back. We can draw oil from subterranean reservoirs, but we can never refill them again. ”

“ At a central station steam-engines pump air into the pipes and keep up a continuous pressure of from four to five atmospheres. As there are several hundred kilometers of these pipes under the streets of Paris, they form a huge reservoir of compressed air at the ground temperature.
In the cooling room of a café they simply turn a little cock and admit the compressed air into the room. A gas meter measures the amount of air admitted and charges are made accordingly. ”

“ Will aërial locomotion solve the road question? Now, it is noteworthy that the main element of cost resides not so much in the vehicles and locomotives employed as in the cost of the roads on which they have to run; it is this element that increases with the distance. ”

“ The compressed air, by its expansion, produces great cold, and the cooling effect is still further increased by allowing the air to do work during the process of expansion. Dumb-waiters, elevators, and even sewing-machines are thus run very economically in connection with the system by means of compressed-air engines. ”