Free energy

“ But energy—free energy—it was there for the taking. From the molecules of the air, for instance. Refrigerators could be cooled, boilers could get up steam, homes could be heated, forges could be fired—and all without fuel. Planes could fly through the air without a drop of gasoline in their tanks. ”

“ At the climax of that civilisation which had its beginning in the hammered flint and the fire-stick of the savage, just when it is becoming apparent that our ever-increasing needs cannot be borne indefinitely by our present sources of energy, we discover suddenly the possibility of an entirely new civilisation. The energy we need for our very existence, and with which Nature supplies us still so grudgingly, is in reality locked up in inconceivable quantities all about us. ”

“ But we must own that the amount of freedom which is left to us after strictly complying with the principle of the conservation of energy is rather limited. For, even if this law does not exert a necessitating influence over the course of our ideas, it will at least determine our movements. ”

“ We acquire power by being first obedient; and this is in accordance with the principles and facts of science; we must obey nature before we can make nature obey us; the elementary bodies, also, usually acquire the free state, latent power, and the ability to evolve heat and electric energy, only by being first subjected in their crude state to a process of reduction and purification. ”

“ The other important argument against free will is that it would be inconsistent with what is called the Conservation of Energy, since it is said any voluntary act would involve the creation of energy. ”

“ And there are a variety of factors which go into keeping America's energy free and flowing, and it involves supply, it involves infrastructure, it involves conservation, it involves protecting the environment. ”

“ He then adds: "You will therefore be surprised to hear that until very recently the universal opinion has been that living force could be absolutely and irrevocably destroyed at any one's option." Let us add that to-day, after forty-seven years, the law of the conservation of energy, wherever civilisation exists, is accepted as a fully established truth and receives the widest applications in all domains of natural science. ”

“ So we find that the three possible solutions of the great problem of increasing human energy are answered by the three words: food, peace, work. Many a year I have thought and pondered, lost myself in speculations and theories, considering man as a mass moved by a force, viewing his inexplicable movement in the light of a mechanical one, and applying the simple principles of mechanics to the analysis of the same until I arrived at these solutions, only to realize that they were taught to me in my early childhood. ”

“ Now, if we are to coax work out of heat, we must humour its nature, for it may be compared to a pack of schoolboys, who are always ready to run with sufficient violence out of the schoolroom into the open fields, but who have frequently to be dragged back with a very considerable expenditure of energy. So heat will not allow itself to be confined, but will resist any attempt to accumulate it into a limited space. Work cannot, therefore, be gained by such an operation, but must, on the contrary, be spent upon the process. ”

“ Looking at the same phenomena in his humanist mood, he sees the flux and transformation of forces take on and assume a definite design and purpose, which the very logic of his science compels him to postulate as an inherent potency in the very system of energies. He sees every form of energy a potential slave of man. He sees the cities scattered over the face of the globe, as the supreme, the collective, the ceaseless effort of the race to realise this potency of energy, to harness it in the service of man. ”

“ For, while it is seemingly wasting its life-giving power in this struggle with resistance, it may, in reality, be storing up a new supply of potential energy, by which a future activity may be insured. ”

“ All the energy which has reached the earth from the sun and which, stored for ages in our coal-fields, is now used to propel our trains and steamships, to heat and light our cities, to perform all the multifarious tasks of modern life, was conveyed by the ether. Without that universal carrier of energy we should have nothing but a stagnant, lifeless world. ”

“ Man will liberate himself from his dependence upon coal-and-water power, and all large cities will be surrounded by immense apparatus, real sunbeam traps, into which the heat of the sun will be gathered, and the obtained energy will be stored away in tremendous reservoirs. It is the force of the sun, stored away in coal, in waterfalls, in nourishment, that performs all the world’s work. ”

“ Elementary forces which, through ignorance of their true functions in the economy and conservation of nature, were permitted in the past to expend their energy in the destruction of life, have been revealed by science to be man’s most helpful agents in the promotion of comfort, health, and longevity. Electricity was for ages only a thunderbolt, an object of terror, and an agent of destruction, visiting the human residence only to kill its owner and burn the structure. ”

“ After all, in generating electricity in this manner, we should be destroying material, and this would be a barbarous process. We ought to be able to obtain the energy we need without consumption of material. ”

“ What will man do when the forests disappear, when the coal fields are exhausted? Only one thing according to our present knowledge will remain; that is, to transmit power at great distances. Men will go to the waterfalls, to the tides, which are the stores of an infinitesimal part of Nature's immeasurable energy. There will they harness the energy and transmit the same to their settlements, to warm their homes by, to give them light, and to keep their obedient slaves, the machines, toiling. But how will they transmit this energy if not by electricity? ”

“ Bluntly, I must remind you that we have not made satisfactory progress toward achieving energy independence. Energy is absolutely vital to the defense of our country, to the strength of our economy, and to the quality of our lives. ”

“ And when that is accomplished, not by me but by the intelligence of mankind, then I shall make a present to the world of a new mechanical energy. This is my discovery. This Energon is nothing more nor less than the cosmic energy that resides in the solar rays. When it is harnessed by mankind it will do the work of the world. There will be no more multitudes of miners slaving out their lives in the bowels of the earth, no more sooty firemen and greasy engineers. All may dress in white if they so will. ”

“ A so-called "water-gas" may no doubt be used for developing heat, but it is not the water which supplies the energy. Trains may be run by electricity, but all that the electricity does is to convey the energy from the point where it is generated to the train which is in motion. Electricity is itself no more a source of power than is the rope with which a horse drags a boat along the canal. There is much more philosophy in the old saying, "Money makes the mare to go," than in the optimistic doctrine we often hear spoken of with regard to the capacity of man for dealing with nature. ”

“ Their scientific meaning and purpose now clear to me: food to increase the mass, peace to diminish the retarding force, and work to increase the force accelerating human movement. These are the only three solutions which are possible of that great problem, and all of them have one object, one end, namely, to increase human energy. ”

“ The essential condition to the development of energy is liberty. Every restriction on liberty, with however good purpose, diminishes the individual responsibility and initiative. Yet we often hear mooted in America, as elsewhere, measures which, under the pretext of correcting abuses, would immeasurably extend the state’s field of action, and reduce the liberty of citizens. It is my earnest hope that the American democracy will reject such enervating proposals, and will remain true to the virile and liberal traditions that have insured the United States so wonderful a growth. ”

“ To-day, I suppose, if it were possible to indicate, in units of energy, the grand total of work upon which the social fabric of the United States or England rests, it would be found that a vastly preponderating moiety is derived from non-human sources, from coal and liquid fuel, and explosives and wind and water. There is every indication of a steady increase in this proportion of mechanical energy, in this emancipation of men from the necessity of physical labour. ”

“ Man makes the powers [61] of nature available for his purposes by transforming them backwards and forwards, now into one, now into another form of energy, as required for the result he wishes to attain. He wants mechanical power to pump water or drive a locomotive or steamboat: he gets it from the steam-engine, by transforming the energy of heat in coal, which came ages ago from the energy of chemical action produced by the sun’s rays in the green leaves of growing plants. ”

“ The man who should stop this senseless waste would be a great benefactor of humanity, though the solution he would offer could not be a permanent one, since it would ultimately lead to the exhaustion of the store of material. Efforts toward obtaining more energy from coal are now being made chiefly in two directions—by generating electricity and by producing gas for motive-power purposes. ”

“ It's time to leave behind rancorous old arguments and build a positive new consensus. With new technology, sound regulation, and plain good sense, we can expand our energy production while protecting the environment. And that is exactly what my energy approach is designed to do. ”

“ We are thus induced to generalize still further, and regard, not only our own system, but the whole material universe when viewed with respect to serviceable energy, as essentially evanescent, and as embracing a succession of physical events which cannot go on for ever as they are. ”

“ Let us begin first with the energy implied in fuel. We can, of course, burn fuel, or cause it to combine with the oxygen of the air; and we are thereby provided with large quantities of heat of high temperature, by means of which we may not only warm ourselves and cook our food, but also drive our heat-engines, using it, in fact, as a source of mechanical power. ”

“ If we pursue the analogy a step further, we shall see that the great capitalist, or the man who has acquired a lofty position, is respected because he has the disposal of a great quantity of energy; and that whether he be a nobleman or a sovereign, or a general in command, he is powerful only from having something which enables him to make use of the services of others. ”

“ But if this chapter were written so as to throw some light on the economy of the energy that is necessary to satisfy human needs, the chapter would gain in precision, as well as in descriptive value. It would clearly show the frightful waste of human energy under the present system, and it would prove that as long as this system exists, the needs of humanity will never be satisfied. ”

“ Why should a living being not be able to obtain all the energy it needs for the performance of its life functions from the environment, instead of through consumption of food, and transforming, by a complicated process, the energy of chemical combinations into life-sustaining energy? ”

“ It exists, and is merely gathered, in a measure and to a certain extent confined and controlled, and sent out as a concentrated form of energy on its various errands. Should a means for the concentration of this universally diffused energy be found whereby it could be made to gather, by the new arrangement of some natural law such as places it in enormous quantities in the thundercloud, a revolution that would permeate and visibly change all the affairs of men would take place, since the industrial world is not a thing apart, but affects all men, and all institutions, and all thought. ”

“ At this point, I would like to list ten positive contributions made by the same revolution toward the development of a social life style that is offering itself as an alternative to civilization.
1. NEW SOURCES OF ENERGY. Up to 1750 human beings had the energy of the human body plus the energy of domestic animals. They used wind to turn mills and sail ships and water to turn crude wheels. They also burned various things, particularly vegetable fibres, to produce heat. During the revolution they have learned to use steam, electricity and chemical explosives. ”

“ If the public understood that electricity is Energy and that it is transmutable at will {258} into Power or Light or Heat, they would better realize the possibilities of the future in town and country, and all that the proper organization and control of Energy means to them. They would at once resolve that the power of government must not be divorced from the Power which will run in the electrical mains of the future, and by the aid of which we can transform the face of our land. ”

“ I am not speaking of a remote future, but of possibilities which can forthwith be realized. How important it is, then, that this Energy supply, which is already entering and will increasingly enter into our everyday lives, should be publicly owned from the first. ”

“ Nor, finally, is the last defensive position of scientific determinism—the theory, namely, that the freedom of the will is incompatible with the doctrine of the conservation of energy—to be accepted without question. That doctrine, if it is to possess cogency as a proof of the impossibility of the libertarian position, must assume that the amount of energy sufficient to account for physical and psychical changes is constant and invariable in quantity, an assumption which no scientific investigator is competent to prove. ”

“ Reflection will also show us how inconvenient it would be if chemical affinity existed at all distances; if coal, for instance, were to combine with oxygen without the application of heat, it would greatly alter the value of this fuel to mankind, and would materially check the progress of human industry. ”