Twentieth Century Inventions: A Forecast

by George Sutherland

It has been the custom during the nineteenth century to institute comparisons between the marvellous economy of steam power and the expensive wastefulness of human muscular effort. For instance, the full day's work of an Eastern porter, specially trained to carry heavy weights, will generally amount to the removal of a load of from three to five hundred-weight for a distance of one mile; but such a labourer in the course of a long day has only expended as much power as would be stored up in about five ounces of coal.

Still the fact remains that one of the greatest problems of the future is that which concerns the reduction in the cost of power. Hundreds of millions of the human race pass lives of a kind of dull monotonous toil which develops only the muscular, at the expense of the higher, faculties of the body; they are almost entirely cut off from social intercourse with their fellow-men, and they sink prematurely into decrepitude simply by reason of the lack of a cheap and abundant supply of mechanical power, ready at hand wherever it is wanted. Scores of "enterprises of great pith and moment" in the industrial advancement of the world have to be abandoned by reason of the same lack. In mining, in agriculture, in transport and in manufacture the thing that is needful to convert the "human machine" into a more or less intelligent brainworker is cheaper power. All the technical education in the world will not avail to raise the labourer in the intellectual scale if his daily work be only such as a horse or an engine might perform.

The transmission of power through the medium of the electric current will naturally attain its first great development in the neighbourhoods of large waterfalls such as Niagara. When the manufacturers within a short radius of the source of power in each case have begun to fully reap the benefit due to cheap power, competition will assert itself in many different ways. The values of real property will rise, and population will tend to become congested within the localities' served.

It will be found, however, that facilities for shipment will to a large extent perpetuate the advantage at present held by manufactories situated on ports and harbours; and this, of course, will apply with peculiar force to the cases of articles of considerable bulk. Where a very great deal of power is needed for the making of an article or material of comparatively small weight and bulk proportioned to its value—such for instance as calcium carbide or aluminium—the immediate vicinity of the source of natural power will offer superlative inducements. But an immense number of things lie between the domains of these two classes, and for the economical manufacture of these it is imperative that both cheap power and low wharfage rates should be obtainable.

An increasingly intense demand must thus spring up for systems of long distance transmission, and very high voltage will be adopted as the means of diminishing the loss of power due to leakage from the cables. Similarly the "polyphase" system—which is eminently adapted to installations of the nature indicated—must demand increasing attention.

Taking a concrete example, mention may be made of the effects to be expected from the proposed scheme for diverting some of the headwaters of the Tay and its lakes from the eastern to the western shores of Scotland and establishing at Loch Leven—the western inlet, not the inland lake of that name—a seaport town devoted to manufacturing purposes requiring very cheap supplies of power. It is obvious that the owners of mills in and around Glasgow, and only forty or fifty miles distant, will make the most strenuous exertions to enable them to secure a similar advantage.

It is already claimed that with the use of currents of high voltage for carrying the power, and "step-down transformers" converting these into a suitable medium for the driving of machinery, a fairly economical transmission can be ensured along a distance of 100 miles. It therefore seems plain that the natural forces derived from such sources as waterfalls can safely be reckoned upon as friends rather than as foes of the vested interests of all the great cities of the United Kingdom.

The possibilities of long distance transmission are greatly enhanced by the very recent discovery that a cable carrying a current of high voltage can be most effectually insulated by encasing it in the midst of a tube filled with wet sawdust and kept at a low temperature, preferably at the freezing point of water.

Wireless transmission of a small amount of power has been proved to be experimentally possible. In the rarefied atmosphere at a height of five or ten miles from the earth's surface, electric discharges of very high voltage are conveyed without any other conducting medium than that of the air. By sending up balloons, carrying suspended wires, the positions of despatch and of receipt can be so elevated that the resistance of the atmosphere can be almost indefinitely diminished. In this way small motors have been worked by discharges generated at considerable distances, and absolutely without the existence of any connection by metallic conductors. Possibilities of the exportation of power from suitable stations—such as the neighbourhoods of waterfalls—and its transmission for distances of hundreds or even thousands of miles have been spoken of in relation to the industrial prospects of the twentieth century.

Comparing any such hypothetical system with that of sending power along good metallic conductors, there is at once apparent a very serious objection in the needless dispersion of energy throughout space in every direction. If a power generator by wireless transmission, without any metallic connection, can work one motor at a distance of, say, 1,000 miles, then it can also operate millions of similar possible motors situated at the same distance; and by far the greater part of its electro-motive force must be wasted in upward dispersion.