Twentieth Century Inventions: A Forecast

by George Sutherland

In the meantime many laudable endeavours are being made towards the application of the pressure from water pipes to the purpose of driving ventilating fans. The extreme wastefulness of power and of water involved in this method of dealing with the difficulty may be partially overlooked on account of the very small amounts required to produce an effect in the desired direction; and yet there is no doubt that a recognition of the wastefulness acts to some extent as a deterrent to artificial ventilation. The benefits of the system are not sufficiently obvious or showy to induce any class of people, excepting physicians and persons fully acquainted with the principles of hygiene, to sanction a material outlay upon the object. When an exactly suitable alternate-current motor has been invented the standard electric light installation will be practically one apparatus with the ventilating fan, and the cost of the latter will hardly be felt as a separate item.

In cooking there is in existing ordinary methods the same enormous waste of heat as there is in the warming of rooms. Something, no doubt, has been done in the direction of economy by the invention of new and improved forms of stoves, but a great preponderance of the heat generated in the fire of even the best stove goes up the chimney. The electric oven, as already invented, is perhaps the nearest approach to a really economical "cooker" that has yet been proposed; but even before the general adoption of such an apparatus there will be ample room for improvement in the cooking stove, first as regards insulation, and secondly in the distribution of the fuel around the objects to be heated. One principal cause of the waste that goes on arises from the fact that the fire burns away from the place at which its heat is most beneficially applied, and no means are adopted, as in the case of the candle in a carriage lamp, for keeping it up to the required level. Additions of fuel are made from the top with the immediate effect of checking the heat.

A great advance in economy of fuel will take place when the household coal intended for cooking purposes is ground up together with the proper proportions of certain waste products of chemistry, so as to make a "smouldering mixture" which can be kept regularly supplied to a shallow or thin fire box by pressure applied from beneath or at the parts farthest away from the objects to be heated. An oven, for instance, may be surrounded by a "jacket" filled with ground smouldering mixture having a non-conducting insulator outside and a connection with a chimney. The heat from the fuel is thus kept in close proximity to the objects requiring to be cooked, and comparatively small waste results.

It is by taking advantage of their superior facilities in the same direction that gas and inflammable oils have already made their mark in the sphere of domestic cookery. Regarded as fuel their initial cost may be relatively heavy; and yet, owing to their more exact method of application, they often effect a saving in the end. Not only do they bring the fire closer to the articles to be heated or cooked, but they also make it easy for the fire to be turned off or on, and this in itself is an important source of economy. Still, with the advent of cheaper and more accessible power in every centre of population, the cost of grinding coal and of mixing it in order to form a fuel comparable in respect of convenience and economy with gas and oil will be so greatly reduced that the "black diamond" will still continue to challenge its rivals in the arena of competition presented by the demands of domestic economy.

Light, as well as heat and air, requires to be evenly and equably distributed throughout the dwelling-house before anything approaching an ideal residence can be secured. As the science of hygiene advances it is demonstrated more and more clearly that sunlight—and even diffused daylight—may be used as a most effective weapon against the spread of disease. Alternations of deep gloom in the dwelling-house with the superior light resulting from brighter weather produce many kinds of nervous derangement, not the least deleterious of which arise from the unnecessary strain to which the eyesight is subjected. The promise of the future is that, through the abundance of windows provided in the walls, roofs and porches of our dwelling-houses—but all supplemented with shutters and blinds of various kinds—there shall be a possibility of regulating, far more accurately than at present, the accessibility of light from outside according to the brightness or dulness of the day.

It is hardly to be expected that many people will build "Crystal Palaces" in which to reside; but with the immense progress that is being made in the construction of dwellings with iron or steel frames, and in the adaptation of various materials so that they may serve for building purposes in conjunction with metallic frameworks, it seems clear that many roofs, as well as large portions of walls, will in future be made on the composite principle, using steel and glass. These will, to a large extent, be permanently sheltered from the direct rays of the sun when high in the heavens, by shutters constructed on the louvre principle so that they may admit the light from the sky continually, but actual rays or beams of sunlight only for a short time after sunrise and at the close of day. The ceilings, if any are provided under the roofs, will also be glazed.

The obstacles presented in the way of such a reform in a city like London may at first sight seem so serious as to be practically insuperable. Long rows of three or four storied houses certainly offer but few facilities for the admission of light through the roofs of any but the rooms on the top floors, and yet it is in the dwelling-houses of this type that the depression caused by gloom and the absence of light during the hours of day are most severely felt as a source of nervous depression. Evolution in a matter of this sort will take place gradually and along the line of least resistance. Portions of courts, areas and yards will be glazed over in the way described; and it will be found that those rooms which are thus enclosed and sheltered from the wind and rain, but left open to the daylight, constitute the most cheerful sitting places in the houses. Then, as rebuilding and alterations proceed, many houses will gradually be remodelled—at least as regards some of their rooms—in the same direction. Physicians will become increasingly insistent on the necessity for admitting plenty of light into the abodes of the sick, more particularly of families inclined towards consumption.

A very large trade will spring up during the twentieth century in household cooling apparatus for use in hot climates. The colonial expansion towards which all European races are now tending inevitably means that very many thousands of persons whose ancestors have been accustomed to life in cold or temperate climates, will be induced to dwell in the dry and warm, or in the humid tropical regions of the earth. It will be an important task of the British, Continental and American machinists of the twentieth century to turn out convenient pieces of apparatus which shall be available for ventilating houses, especially during the night, and for reducing the temperature in them to something approaching that which is natural to the inmates. The old clumsy punkah will be replaced by circular fans keeping up a gentle current of air with a minimum of noise or annoyance of any kind.

At present it is only in specially favoured circumstances that these quiet-working circular punkahs can be actuated by mechanical force, that is to say where a prime motor, or an electric current, or a reticulated water supply for driving a suitable machine may be at hand. In other situations the use of compressed air or gas may be resorted to, and for this purpose small capsules, similar to those already introduced for making soda water by the liberation of compressed carbonic acid gas, will be found handy. For a very small sum of money the householder will be able to purchase a sufficient number of capsules to ensure motive power for his fan during a week of hot nights.

A convenient form of small motor suitable for being driven by compressed air or gases in this way is one in which a diminutive turbine or other wheel is set at the bottom of a thin tube of mercury. The capsule, being fastened to the lower end of this apparatus, liberates at very short intervals of time bubbles of air or gas, which, in the upward ascent, drive the wheel. The arrangement depends upon the fact that a stream of gas ascending in a heavy liquid behaves in the same way as a stream of water descending by its own weight and turning a water-wheel. It supplies what is perhaps the simplest and most inexpensive small motor available for the lightest domestic work to which a gentle but continuous source of power is applicable.