Interior Heat
Professor T. C. Mendenhall has recently suggested that the internal heat of the earth might be used as a source of power. In such an age we are bound to be a little cautious in pronouncing anything impossible. Experiments show that the temperature of the earth, as we descend into its depths, increases one degree for every sixty feet. At this rate it would be necessary to bore ten thousand feet to obtain the temperature necessary to convert water into steam.
Professor William Hallock, of Columbia University, has already a plan in mind. A few feet apart he would sink two parallel pipes into the earth to the distance required. Both of these would terminate in a subterranean reservoir which could be made by the explosion of dynamite cartridges.
Then through one of the pipes a supply of water would be introduced into the reservoir. Here, by the earth’s heat, it would be converted into steam, and in this form conducted, by the other pipe, to the surface, where it would be utilized.