Terran Electric

“ Then, as no more stock was offered, Interplanetary Communications Preferred rose sharply to ninety-four and stabilized at that figure. Terran Electric stock went through a valley, made by Kingman's sales, and then headed up, made by purchases on Terra, on Mars, and on Venus.
Don said: "Look, fellows, this has gone far enough. We have control again, and a goodly hunk of Terran Electric as well. Enough, I think, to force them to behave like a good little company and stay out of other people's hair. Let's all get together and celebrate." ”

“ Power they got—but the ozone they can't take; it's poisonous like a nice dose of chlorine. Poor Terran Electric!"
Mark Kingman sat in the control room of a ship of space, and worried. Below the dome, Venus covered three quarters of the sky, and it circled slowly as the Terran Electric ship oscillated gently up and down.
Before Kingman, on the desk, were pages of stock market reports. On a blackboard, a jagged line denoted the vacillation of Interplanetary Communications, Preferred. This phase of his plan was working to perfection. ”

“ Terran Electric's rights shall prevail exclusively—except within the realm of space, upon man-made celestial objects, and upon the satellites and minor natural celestial bodies where stations of the Interplanetary Communications Company are established. ”

“ The contract holds the following intent: Use of the power-transmission tubes for communications purposes shall fall under the jurisdiction of Venus Equilateral. For power transmission, the tubes and associated equipment is under the control of Terran Electric. In the matter of the Solar beam tubes, the contract is as follows: Venus Equilateral holds the control of the Solar beam in space, on man-made bodies in space, and upon those natural bodies in space where Venus Equilateral requires the Solar power to maintain subsidiary relay stations. ”

“ You load up the Relay Girl and we'll be on our way. Stock up the usual supply of bars, blocks, gadgets, and traps. Might include a bar magnet. When we show that it is still magnetized, we'll gain a point for sure."
"If we take a magnet, we'd better take the fluxmeter to show that the magnetic field hasn't dropped."
"Right. Take anything you can think of for a good show. We can knock them dead!"
Mark Kingman put his assistant legal counsel on the witness stand. "You will state the intent of the contract signed between Terran Electric and Venus Equilateral." ”

“ He knew where to take it, luckily. He had worked for Terran Manufacturing, Incorporated and because of his connection there he was not unknown to the chief engineer of Solar Electric. Terran was a small outfit, and though Barden felt that he owed it some loyalty, he felt that the mighty Solar Electric could better afford the price he was prepared to ask. Terran would dig it up—but Solar was prepared at any time for that amount.
And the alien race might not wait—
He was ushered into the office of Hal Weston after an hour of painful waiting. ”

“ But it isn't going to work that way."
"This is going to be a nice, level civilization by the time we get through it," said Kingman. "There'll be no more shopping for food. No more working thirty-five hours a week for your pay so that you can buy the niceties of life. With your household duplicator, you can make everything you need for life, Channing. The Terran Electric label on your duplicator is the label of the New Way of Living." ”

“ In mechanical appliances the new world has seemed to complete the inventions begun in the old world. Such was the case with the recording telegraph, the telephone, and the electric light. But in another class of inventions America did little or nothing. It was Europe that supplied the artificial generators of electricity. The voltaic pile, the thermo-electric pile, the Daniell and Grove batteries, and the dynamo machine were creations of the old world ”

“ Electricity as an illuminant and for all possible purposes is so cheaply procured as to be within the means of all requiring its use. Throughout the irrigated belt and on most portions of Ento there are Stations where thoroughly trained persons attend to the production and distribution of electric currents, and so valued is life that accidents are of very rare occurrence. ”

“ They had even no chariots to run by electricity. The records prove this.”
235
“Then,” spoke Paul, “you are entitled to precedence in this matter, as well. Such things the world is well acquainted with to-day, and we have many uses for electricity which you, perhaps, have never yet dreamed of; but they have all been discovered within the last fifty years.”
This admission seemed to please the Tcha. Ama, who took a deep interest in the discussion, said:
“Tell me, then; what electric devices are in use by your people that we know not of?” ”

“ So some of these, with the aid of the electrical manufacturers, experimented and developed the alternating current of high voltage and low amperage, which is capable of being carried to distant transforming or sub-stations and there reduced to low voltage and high amperage. This alternating [Pg 438] current system, because of its great operating economies, is rapidly becoming the standard for the city railroad systems of metropolitan communities, as well as for the great trunk-line interurban electric roads that are beginning to gridiron the country. ”

“ This expedient, though now considered essential to the successful working of a telegraph, was not practically adopted till nearly a century afterwards, when it was found that as soon as the electricity had done its work the best thing to do with it was to convey it into the earth, for just as the flow of rivers is accelerated by their waters falling into the sea, so electric conduction is greatly improved by establishing a good connection between the end of a telegraph wire and the earth. ”

“ By the electric transmission of power we may hope some day to utilize at a distance such natural sources of energy as the Falls of Niagara, and to work our cranes, lifts, and machinery of every description by means of sources of power arranged at convenient centers. To these applications the brothers Siemens have more recently added the propulsion of trains by currents passing through the rails, the fusion in considerable quantities of highly refractory substances, and the use of electric centers of light in horticulture as proposed by Werner and William Siemens. ”

“ So we have only to send down earth-wires at the two ends—one into the earth of Ireland, the other into the earth of Newfoundland, and straightway the circuit is closed, and the electricity generated in our batteries passes through the cable from earth to earth. ”

“ There is however one phase of this industry, which is rapidly placing—even a general knowledge, of the means by which the electric current is generated and distributed beyond the reach of all but those actually connected with it as a business, or the student who proposes to follow it as a profession; this is the tendency to centralize electric lighting and to substitute large central stations, where the machinery for generating the current is located and whence the wires are run for distributing the same, for the numerous small plants now scattered over the country. ”

“ Tesla produces immensely higher voltages than this for laboratory experiments, but there are few more powerful currents in use in this country for practical purposes. Only about 2,000 volts are required for executing criminals under the electric method employed in New York; 400 volts will run a trolley-car. It is hardly comfortable to know that a single touch of one of the wires or switches in this room means almost certain death. Mr. Fitzgerald gave me a vivid demonstration of the terrific destructive force of the Niagara Falls current. ”

“ In 1833 the celebrated scientists, Gauss and Weber, placed a line of wire from the Observatory of Göttingen University to a building a mile distant, and by sending magneto-electric currents through that wire they communicated intelligible signals; but as the needle they used weighed nearly a hundredweight they saw that their apparatus needed much improvement before it would be of practical utility. Being otherwise engaged themselves, they invited Professor Steinheil, of Munich, to construct an improved electric telegraph ”

“ It is suitable for any frequency, from a few to many thousands of cycles per second, and can be used in the production of currents of tremendous volume and moderate pressure, or of smaller amperage and immense electromotive force. The maximum electric tension is merely dependent on the curvature of the surfaces on which the charged elements are situated and the area of the latter.
Judging from my past experience, as much as 100,000,000 volts are perfectly practicable. On the other hand currents of many thousands of amperes may be obtained in the antenna. ”

“ As a partial offset to the low cost of the continuous-current generators and to the absence of transformers, there is the necessity for motor-generators in a sub-station when current for lighting as well as power is to be distributed. ”

“ With a well-manufactured cable, improved paying-out machinery and an experienced staff of mechanical engineers, not to mention the foremost electricians of the day, the immersion of the cable was successfully effected, after which the American end of the cable of 1865 was raised, a new length spliced on, and the shore-end safely landed in Trinity Bay. Europe and America were thus united together by two electric bonds. ”

“ No time will be lost in putting this announcement to the test, not only of scientific but also of practical verification, and the probability is that all electric lighting stations in the twentieth century will contain not only dynamos of one type for the supply of light, but also direct current generators for transmitting power in all directions over the same cables. ”

“ Some of the aspects of electric traction are highly technical; others are purely financial. It is impossible to understand the achievements and possibilities of electricity in locomotion without a certain amount of discussion of both these points of view; but it is not necessary to go deeply into either in order to catch some of the enthusiasm which inspires the electrical engineer in his efforts to extend electric traction everywhere on road and rail. The hopes of electrical conquest extend, indeed, to locomotion on the sea and in the air as well as on the land. ”

“ That, in turn, means a greater or less resistance offered to the electric current. Its energy is controlled automatically, of course, passing over the wire from the transmitter to the receiver, so that while the transmitting film is passing in front of the selenium at my end of the wire, the sealed tube of Tesla rays at the Chicago office is being moved before a receptive film at the far end of the wire. ”

“ We require to see the eye that glittered with a thousand lofty hopes when the great discovery was made, and the lips that curled with a smile of triumph when it became certain that the lightning of the clouds would become tractable to the most delicate touch. We demand to see the hand which first strung the wire by whose means the slender currents of the electric fluid were taught the alphabet of every living language—the hand which pointed them to the spot where they were to inscribe and leave their messages. ”

“ Where street-car motors draw their energy from the same generators and transmission lines that supply commercial incandescent lamps, some means must be adopted to protect the lighting circuits from the fluctuations of voltage set up by the varying street-car loads. One way to accomplish this purpose is to operate the lighting circuits with generators driven by synchronous motors in the sub-stations. These generators may, of course, be of either direct or alternating type and of any desired voltage. ”

“ Over and over again he sent the call, while in the meantime the condenser built up its charge from the overflow of current from the turbine generator. Then the electrician opened a switch, and the roar outside diminished and finally ceased.
"We can't listen—with the tractor running," he fretted. "The static—from the discharge—would tear—our detector—to pieces." He threw in the receiving instrument. For a few moments the telephones spoke only the whisperings of the arctic aurora, and then suddenly the faint cry of the answering spark was heard. ”

“ These are the cylinders shown in Fig. 130. They simply contain a great many coils of copper wire with a vast amount of iron at the centre. They accomplish in a large way what our spark coil does in a lesser degree. But why go to all this expense to produce such a dangerous and troublesome voltage? The answer briefly is, that while it is dangerous and troublesome the expense is not so great as it would be to supply by any other method the electric current required. Denver and numerous other places, large and small, require electric current. ”

“ An experimental installation was made at Great Barrington, Mass., in the early part of 1886, the first commercial installation being made in Buffalo, New York, in the latter part of the year. This scheme enabled current to be economically distributed to much greater distances. The voltage of the high-tension circuit has been gradually increased as the art has progressed from about a thousand volts to over two hundred thousand volts pressure in a recent installation in California, where electric power is transmitted over two hundred miles. ”