Compared with our world, the fuel of Ploid is very scarce, but less is required to supply the industries. Nearly all power is obtained from the winds, running water and the sun's energy.
The winds are harnessed so that they blow not in vain. Almost every home of ordinary intelligence owns one of the many kinds of storage batteries used in this world. These batteries are usually located beneath the lowest floor of the house, and they constitute the reservoir whence is obtained the necessary power for lighting, heating and cooling the apartments of the home.
People who live along streams of water utilize these streams for similar purposes. It is now conceded in Ploid that the storage batteries of the home can be supplied as economically and effectively by winds and the sun's heat as by running streams; hence it is a common sight to see residences throwing out the old water machinery and introducing the latest design of wind-employers or sun-harnessers.
There are certain emergencies when the storage batteries fail to work or when the power is exhausted; this happens when there is a very slight wind for several days or a heavy drain of power. In such cases fuel is used for heating and lighting.
PALACES OF PLOID.
The palaces of Ploid are dreams of beauty and convenience, outshining and surpassing by far the finest mansions on the face of our globe. In these abodes the sum total of glory and convenience converges, flowing from almost numberless discoveries during the last one hundred years. In round numbers, there have been five hundred thousand patents issued in the United States in the nineteenth century, but the Ploidites excel us by double that number for a similar territorial limit.
THE REWARD OF INVENTORS.
Patents are not issued in Ploid. The government gives liberal rewards to each inventor or discoverer. The applicant appears personally before the District Committee on Inventions. If this Committee considers the invention worthy of a reward, the applicant is recommended to one of the Central Committees at the seat of the government.
This Central Committee carefully considers the invention or discovery, places on it an estimate as to its local or governmental value, and fills out papers in accordance with its findings. This paper must be signed by the Chief Inventor, and the applicant at once receives his first installment which is continued, in some instances, during natural life. In the case of some extraordinary invention, the immediate relatives of the inventor are pensioned for five or ten years in his honor.
Naturally, under this system, the government owns all inventions, and reaps a heavy return from them, enough to pay all the installments to the inventors and the officers employed to carry on this branch of the government work.