856. Water Power.—The time will also come when the thousands of cataracts and rapids that now waste their energies will all be harnessed and set to work. It is estimated that the water power of Niagara is as great as would be the steam power produced by 226,000,000 tons of coal a year. This one cataract has power enough to make a thousand millionaires, and there are hundreds of smaller waterfalls running to waste.
857. Windmills.—Steam is costly and water is not always available, but the wind is everywhere, and costs little or nothing. It has the disadvantage of inconstancy and uncertainty, but it is invaluable for storing up force for future use. The windmill is susceptible of great improvements, and waits for another Morse or Watt.
858. A Sand Mill.—One ingenious man out West has equipped his windmill with an endless belt provided with buckets, like a grain elevator. These dip into a box of dry sand and discharge it upon a large wheel like an overshot water-wheel, which it turns as water would. The sand is discharged again into the box and thus is used over again endlessly. We think the man has not patented his invention; he has missed a fortune which somebody else will pick up.
859. Sea Power.—Next to the power of the sun is the power of the ocean. An experiment with a dynanometer has shown that the pressure exerted by the sea waves during a storm often exceeds 7,600 pounds per square foot. Multiply this by 1,393,920,000,000,000 feet, which the surface of the ocean presents, and we gather some little notion of the inconceivable power that is running to waste. When will come the inventor who will harness the sea and set it to lighting our cities and carrying men and mail-bags? There is said to be millions upon millions of gold strewn on the ocean’s bed as the result of wrecks, but there is vastly more gold for the daring inventor in the waves that forever pound upon the beach.
860. Artesian Well.—The artesian well plant is coming into prominence. Formerly the well was only employed as a means of getting water to drink; it is only recently that it has occurred to people that here is an immense and unused water motor. Water power from running streams is only available here and there, but with the advent of the artesian well there is no spot on earth that may not have as much cheap power as it needs, the cost being almost nothing when once the power is obtained. Here is another opportunity for enterprise and fortune.
861. Liquid Air.—This is a new discovery, and one very rich in promise. Here is doubtless the long-sought-for method of the storage battery. It has been found that the same force of liquid air as applied in the electric storage battery scores from one-tenth to one-twentieth more than the electric fluid is able to do. Here we have a power whose application will result in such unknown quantities of usefulness and wealth as to defy the power of figures and even the imagination itself.
CHAPTER XXIII.
MONEY IN BUILDING MATERIALS.
Boundless Wealth in Brick, Wood and Stone—Farmers Who have Untouched and Unknown Mines—A Man With 2,000,000 Acres—How a Farmer Astonished a Lawyer—A New Way to Measure Land—Men Who Don’t Know They are Rich—Are You One?—More Money in the Builder’s Stone than in the Philosopher’s Stone—Secrets of Brick Making—The Exploits of “Lucky” Baldwin—A Man Who Lives in a Glass House—The Floor of the Future—Time is Money, but the Shorter the Time the More the Money.
It is certain that nearly all the structures now upon the earth will have to be rebuilt during the next half century. When we consider the immense cost and vast number of these buildings, aggregating thousand of millions of dollars, the demand for building materials surpasses all computation and imagination. During the next few decades untold myriads of persons will get rich, either in this discovery of new fields for these materials, exploiting the old ones, or in the invention of new building matter.
“How large is your farm?” inquired a lawyer of a verdant farmer whom he meant to guy. The man of the law winked at his companion as much as to say, “See what sport I will have with the old fool!” “Well,” said the haymaker, “I reckon I have about 2,000,000 acres.” “Two million acres!” gasped the attorney, gazing round; “pray, where is it?” “Down yere,” replied the farmer, pointing his long, skinny fingers at the ground. “I have got a hundred acres on top, and I reckon I own about down to the middle of the y’arth.” The man of the soil spake wiser than he knew. He was rich, but not exactly in the way he imagined, for a granite quarry of the finest kind was found on his land, which caused him to realize a large sum.