Twentieth Century Inventions Part 8

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 princ.i.p.al 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 compet.i.tion 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 gla.s.s.

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, const.i.tute 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 circ.u.mstances 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.

For actually cooling the air, as well as keeping it in motion, similar devices will be resorted to, with the addition of the circulation of the current of air through coils of pipes laid under the surface of the ground. In this way householders will have all the advantages of living in cool underground rooms without incurring the discomforts and dangers which are often inseparable from that mode of life. In the coastal regions, which usually have the most trying climates for Europeans living in tropical countries, a method of cooling the houses will be based on the fact that at moderate depths in the sea the prevailing temperature is a steady one, not much above the freezing point of water. Almost every seaport town within the tropics--where white residents in their houses swelter nightly in the greatest discomfort from the heat--is in close proximity to deep ocean water, in which, at all seasons of the year, the regular temperature is only about thirty-four degrees Fahr. The cost of steel piping strong enough to withstand the pressure of the water in places which possess absolutely the coolest temperature of the ocean would be very heavy; but, on the other hand, the actual reduction of heat demanded for the satisfactory cooling of the air in a dwelling-room is not by any means great, and at quite shallow depths the heat of the air can be satisfactorily abstracted by the sea water surrounding coils of pipes.

Even in colder climates it seems likely that similar systems will be found useful in producing a preliminary reduction in the temperature of the air employed in keeping fresh foodstuffs such as meat, fruits and vegetables. Fruits especially, when placed in suitable receptacles, and stored at temperatures quite steady at about the freezing point of water, will not only be readily kept on land from one season to another, but will be transported to markets thousands of miles distant from the growers, and sold in practically the same condition as if they had just been picked from the trees. During the twentieth century the proportion of the fruit eaters among the peoples of the great manufacturing countries will be very largely augmented, and this result will be brought about mainly through the instrumentality of methods of keeping perishable produce free from deterioration by maintaining it almost at the freezing point--a temperature at which, under suitable conditions as regards exclusion of moisture, and steadiness of hygrometric pressure, the germs of decay in food are practically prevented from coming to maturity.

For the cooling of dwelling-rooms in places distant from the sea, various systems, depending upon the supply of dry cold air from central stations through pipes to the dwellings of subscribers, will no doubt be brought into operation. This, however, will only be practicable in the more populous localities having plenty of residents ready to contribute to the expense. For more isolated houses the cooling and ventilating apparatus of the future may be a modification of the "shower-blast" which has been successfully adapted to metallurgical purposes. When downward jets of water, as in a shower-bath, are enclosed in a large pipe connected horizontally with a room but having facilities for the escape of the water underneath, a strong draught of cool air is created, and the prevailing temperature is quickly reduced. An apparatus of this kind may be intended for application either to the ventilators or to the windows of rooms.

Lifts for conveying persons from one storey of a building to another will probably undergo a considerable amount of modification during the next few years. The establishment of central electric stations and the distribution of electricity for lighting and for power will offer a very great premium upon the preference for electric motors for lifts.

As soon as a maximum of efficiency, combined with the minimum of cost, has been attained, there will be a demand for the introduction of lifts in positions where the traffic is not large enough to warrant the constant presence of an attendant. In fact the desire will be for some kind of elevator which shall be just as free to the use of each individual as is the staircase of an ordinary house.

For this purpose, inclined planes having moving canvas or similar ramps will be extensively brought into use. The pa.s.senger steps upon what is practically an endless belt having suitable slats upon it to prevent his foot from slipping, and, as the hand-railing at the side of this moves concurrently, he is taken up, without any effort, to the landing on which he may alight quite steadily. When this idea, which has already been brought into operation, has been more fully developed, it will be seen that a large circular slowly-revolving disc, set at an angle and properly furnished, will supply a more convenient form of free elevator. One side will be used by those who are going up and the other by those who wish to come down. The "well"

of the staircase for such a lift is made in elliptical form, like the shadow projection of a circle. Steps can be provided so that, when not in motion, the lift will be a staircase not differing much from the old style.

CHAPTER X.

ELECTRIC MESSAGES, ETC.

The telegraphic wire in the home and street will fulfil a very important part in the economy of the twentieth century. For conveying intelligence, as well as for heating, cooking and lighting, the electric current will become one of the most familiar of all the forces called in to a.s.sist in domestic arrangements. The rapidity with which the electric bell-push has taken the place of the old-fashioned knocker and the bell-hanger's system affords one indication of the readiness with which those forms of electric apparatus which are adapted to all the purposes of communicating and reminding will recommend themselves to the public during the twentieth century.

In another direction the eagerness with which every advance in the telephone is hailed by the people may well offer an augury of rapid progress in the immediate future. In this department invention will aim just as much at simplification as at elaboration; and some of the pieces of domestic electrical apparatus universally used during the twentieth century will be astonishingly cheap.

The call to awake in the morning will, in cities and towns, be made by wireless telegraphy, which will also be used for the purpose of regulating the domestic clocks, so that if desired any suitable form of clock alarm may be used with the most perfect confidence. A tentative system of this kind has been adopted in connection with certain telephone exchanges, in which special officers are told off whose duty it is to call those subscribers who have paid the small fee covering the expense. These officers are required to time their intimations according to the previously expressed wishes of subscribers. This kind of service, as well as the regulation of the household clock, is eminently a department of domestic economy in which wireless telegraphy will prove itself useful, because it does not demand that a subscriber shall have gone to the expense of installing a wire to his house and of paying a rent or fee for the use of one.

The clock controlled by wireless telegraphy will doubtless undergo a rapid development from the time when it is first introduced.

Practically the same principles which enable the electrician to utilise the "Hertzian waves," or ether vibrations, for the purpose of setting a clock right once a day, or once an hour, will permit of an impulse, true to time, being sent from the central station every second, or every minute, and when this has been accomplished it will be seen that there is no more use for the maintenance of elaborate clockworks at any place excepting the central station. The domestic clock will, in fact, become mainly a "receiver" for the wireless telegraphic apparatus, and its internal mechanism will be reduced, perhaps, to a couple of wheels, which are necessary to transmit the motion of a minute-hand to that which indicates the hours.

The fire-alarm of the future must be very simple and inexpensive in order to ensure its introduction, not only into offices and warehouses but also into shops and houses. The fire-insurance companies will very shortly awake to the fact that prompt telegraphic alarm in case of fire is worth far more than the majority of the prohibitions upon which they are accustomed to insist by way of rendering fires less likely. The main principles upon which the electric fire-alarm will be operated have already been worked out and partially adopted. In the system of fuses and cut-outs used in connection with electric lighting, the methods of preventing fire due to the development of excessive heat have been well studied. But simplification is particularly required in the case of those fire-alarms which are to be useful for giving intimation of a conflagration from any cause arising.

As the telegraphic and telephonic wires are extended so as to traverse practically all the streets of every city, the fire-insurance companies will find it to their advantage to promote a simple plan, depending on the use of a combustible thread pa.s.sing round little pulleys in the corners of all the rooms and finally out to the front, where an electrical "contact-maker" is fixed, so that on the thread being burnt and broken at any point in its circuit, an electric message will be at once sent along the nearest wire to the fire-brigade station and a bell set ringing both inside and outside the premises.

Somewhat similar systems will be used for checking the enterprises of the burglar. The best protected safes of the future will be enmeshed in networks of wires encased in some material which will render it impossible to determine their positions from the outside. These wires will be so related to an electric circuit that the breaking of any one of them, at any part of its course, will have the effect of ringing a bell and giving warning at the police station, as well as at other places where potential thief-catchers may be on hand. For doors and windows very simple contact devices have already been brought out, but the princ.i.p.al objection to their general adoption arises from the fact that so very many houses remain unconnected with any telephone system which may be made available for calling the police. Even were all houses connected it is true that in some instances attempts might be made to cut the wires when a raid was in contemplation, but the risk of discovery in any such operation would prove a very powerful deterrent. In fact the telephone wire, more than any other mechanical device, is destined to aid in "improving" the burglar out of existence.

With the indefinite multiplication of telephone subscribers at very cheap rates, there will come a powerful inducement towards the invention of new appliances for rendering the subscriber independent of the attention of officers at any central exchange. The duty of connecting an individual subscriber with any other with whom he may desire to converse is, after all, a purely mechanical one, and eminently of a kind which, by a combination of engineering and electrical skill, may be quite successfully accomplished. In the apparatus which will probably be in use during the twentieth century, each subscriber will have a dial carrying on its face the names and numbers of all those with whom he is in the habit of holding communication. This will be his "smaller dial," and beside it will be another, intended for only occasional use, through which, by exercising a little more patience, he may connect himself with any other subscriber whatever. Corresponding dials will be fixed in the central office.

Under this system, when the subscriber desires to secure a connection, he moves a handle round his dial until the pointer in its circuit comes to the desired number. An electrical impulse is thus sent along the wire to the central station for every number over which the pointer pa.s.ses, and the corresponding pointer or contact-maker at the central station is moved exactly in sympathy. When the correct number is reached the subscriber is in connection with the person with whom he desires to converse. If, however, the latter should be already engaged, a return impulse causes the bell of the first subscriber to ring. Of course the prime cost of installing such a system as this will be greater than in the case of the simple hand-connected telephones; but the two systems can be used conjointly, and the immense convenience, especially to large firms, of being able to go straight to the parties with whom they wish to communicate, will induce many of them to adopt the automatic apparatus as soon as it has been perfected.

Wireless telephony must come to the front in the near future, but at first for only very special purposes. The prospect of the profits that would be attendant on working up a business unhampered by the heavy capital charges which weigh upon the owners of telephone wires must stimulate inventive enterprise to a remarkable degree in this particular line. The main difficulty, however, in the application of the system to general purposes will lie in the need for an ingenious but simple means for enabling one subscriber to call another.

For this purpose probably the synchronised clock system already referred to will be found essential, each office or house being furnished with a timekeeper of this type kept in constant agreement with a central clock, and so arranged that only when the ethereal electrical impulse is given at a certain fixed point in the minute, will any particular subscriber's bell be rung. This may be effected by some such arrangement as a revolving drum, perforated at a different part of its periphery for each individual subscriber, and capable of permitting the electrical contact which makes a magnet and rings the bell only at the fraction of a moment when the subscriber's slot pa.s.ses the pointer.

This will mean, of course, that only at a certain almost infinitesimally small s.p.a.ce of time in the duration of each minute will it be possible to call any particular subscriber, or rather to release the mechanism which will set his bell ringing for perhaps a minute at a time. In the presence of unscrupulous compet.i.tion, resulting in the flinging out of Hertzian wave vibrations promiscuously, for the purpose of destroying a rival's chances of obtaining satisfactory connections, it would be necessary to make rather more complicated arrangements of a nature a.n.a.logous to those of the puzzle lock. Instead of one impulse during the minute, two or three would be required, in order to release the mechanism for ringing any subscriber's bell; and no ring would take place unless the time-s.p.a.ces between these impulses were exactly in accordance with the agreed form, which might be varied at convenient intervals.

Yet in the cases in which wireless telephony and telegraphy are taken up by local public authorities having power to forbid any one playing "dog in the manger," by preventing useful work by others while failing to promote it himself, the simpler system of wireless telephone call will be practicable. With the advance of munic.i.p.alisation, and of intelligent collectivism generally, enterprises of public utility will be guarded from mere cut-throat commercial hostility much more sedulously in the twentieth century than they have been in the past.

A great mult.i.tude of new applications of the telegraphic and telephonic systems will be introduced in the immediate future. Not only will those subscribers who are connected by wire with central stations have the advantage of being called at any hour in the morning according to their intimated wishes, but such services as lighting the fires in winter mornings, so that rooms may be fairly warmed before they are entered, will be performed by electric messages sent from a central station.

Drawings will also be despatched by telegraph. For such purposes as the transmission of sketches from the scene of any stirring event, the first really practical application of drawing by telegraph will probably depend upon the use of a large number of code words divided into two groups, each of which, on the principles of co-ordinate geometry, will indicate a different degree of distance from the base line and from the side line respectively, so that from any sketch a correct message in code may be made up and the drawing may be reconstructed at the receiving end. Ill.u.s.trated newspapers will in this way obtain drawings exactly at the same time as their other messages, and distant occurrences will be brought before the public eye much more vividly and more correctly than has ever hitherto been practicable.

For special objects, also, photographs can be sent by telegraph through the use of the photo-relief in plaster of Paris, or other suitable material, which travels backwards and forwards underneath a pointer, the rising and falling of which is accurately represented by thick and thin lines--or by the darker and lighter photographic printing of a beam of light of varying intensity--at the other end, so that a shaded reproduction of the photograph is produced. Relief at the sending end is in this way translated into darkness of shade at the receiving end. Any general expansion of this system, if it comes, will necessarily be postponed till long after the full possibilities of the codeword plan have been exploited, because the latter works in exactly with the ordinary methods for sending telegraphic matter.

The keen compet.i.tion between submarine and wireless telegraphy will be one of the most exciting contests furnished by electrical progress in the first quarter of the new century. Attention will be devoted to those directions on the surface of the globe in which it is possible to send messages almost entirely by land lines, and to bridge over comparatively small intervals of s.p.a.ce from land to land by wireless telegraphy. Thus the Asiatic and Canadian route may be expected shortly to enter into compet.i.tion with the Atlantic cables in telegraphic business to the United States; while Australia will be reached _via_ Singapore and Java.

A great impetus will be given to the wireless system as a commercial undertaking when arrangements have been perfected for causing the receiver at any particular station to translate its message into a form suitable for sending automatically. When this has been done, many of the wayside stations will be almost entirely self-working, and messages, indeed, may be despatched from island to island, or from one floating station to another across the Atlantic itself.

Another requirement for really cheap telegraphy on the new system is a more rapid method of making the letters or signals. The irregular intervals at which the sparks from the coil of the transmitter fly from one terminal to the other render it impossible to split up the succession of flashes into intervals on the dot-and-dash principle, without providing for each dot a much longer period of time than is required for the transmission of messages on land lines. In fact the need for going slowly in the sending of the message is the princ.i.p.al stumbling-block which disconcerts ordinary telegraphic operators when they come to try wireless telegraphy. For remedying this defect the most hopeful outlook is in the direction of a multiplication of the pieces of apparatus for spark-making and the combining of pairs of them in such a way that, whenever the first one fails during an appreciable interval of time to emit a spark, the second is called into requisition. In this way a constant stream of sparks may be ensured, without incurring the risk of running faster than the coil will supply the electrical impulses necessary for the transmission of the message.

Increased rapidity in land telegraphy by the ordinary system of transmission by wire, and facility in making the records at the receiving end in easily read typewriting--these are two desiderata which at the close of the nineteenth century have been almost attained, but which will take some time to introduce to general notice. In the commercial system of the twentieth century the merchant's clerk will write his messages on a typewriter which perforates a strip of paper with holes corresponding to the various letters, while it sets down in printing, on another strip, the letters themselves. The latter will be kept as a record, but the former will be taken to the telegraph office and put through the sending machine without being read by the operator. The message will print itself at the other end and wrap itself up in secret, nothing but the address being made visible to the operator.

For the use of the general public who are not possessed of the special apparatus necessary to perforate the paper another system is available. Sets of movable type may be provided at the telegraph office in small compartments, the letters being on one side and indentations corresponding to the required perforations being cut or stamped into the other sides of the movable pieces. The sender of a message will set it up in a long shallow tray or "galley" like those used by printers, and he will then turn the faces of the letters downwards and see the whole pa.s.sed through the machine without being read by the operator; after which he can distribute the letters if he chooses. In this way telegraphy will gradually become at once far more secret and far cheaper than it is at present, and a large amount of correspondence which at present pa.s.ses through the post will be sent along the wire.

Many merchants will have their telephonic apparatus fitted with arrangements for setting up type or perforating strips of paper, as already described; and also with receiving apparatus for making the records in typewriting. If they fail to find a subscriber or correspondent on hand at the time when he is wanted, they can write a note to him which he will find hanging on a paper strip from his telephone when he returns. Another mode of accomplishing a somewhat similar result is to provide the telephone receiver itself with a moving strip of steel, which, in its varying degrees of magnetisation, records the spoken words so that they will, at some distance of time, actuate the diaphragm of the receiver and emit spoken words. The degree of permanency which can be attained by this system is, of course, a vital point as regards its practical merits.

Still unsolved electrical problems are the making of a satisfactory alternate current motor suitable for running with the kind of currents generally used for electric lighting purposes--the utilisation of the glow lamp having a partial vacuum or attenuated gas for giving a cheap and soft light somewhat on the principle of the Geissler tube--and last, but not least, the direct conversion of heat into electricity.

With regard to the first-mentioned, the prospects have been materially altered by a discovery announced at the New York meeting of the American a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Science within a few weeks of the close of the nineteenth century. The handy and effective alternate current motor indeed seemed then as far distant as it had been in 1896, when Sir David Salomons remarked, in his work on _Electric Light Installations_ (vol. ii., p. 97): "No satisfactory alternate current motor available on all circuits exists as yet, although," he added later, "the demand for such an appliance increases daily". It seems, however, that electricians have been looking in the wrong direction for the solution of using the same wire for alternate current lighting and for motive power at the same time. Professor Bedell, of Cornell University, announced at the New York meeting referred to his discovery of the important fact that when direct and alternate currents are sent over the same line each behaves as if the other were not there, and thus the same line can be used for two distinct systems of transmitting electrical energy. No time will be lost in putting this announcement to the test, not only of scientific but also of practical verification, and the probability is that all electric lighting stations in the twentieth century will contain not only dynamos of one type for the supply of light, but also direct current generators for transmitting power in all directions over the same cables.

The glow lamp having no carbon filament, but setting up a bright light with only a fraction of the resistance presented by carbon, would, if perfected, render electric lighting by far the cheapest as well as the best method of illumination. Tentative work has indicated a high degree of probability that success will be achieved, and the glowing bulb is at any rate a possibility of the future which it will be well to reckon with.

In reference to the conversion of heat into electricity without the intervention of machinery to provide motion, and thus to cause magnetic fields to cross one another, very little promise has yet been shown of any fundamental principle upon which a practical apparatus of the kind could be based. The electrician who works at this problem has to begin almost _de novo_, and his task is an immensely difficult one, although on every ground of a.n.a.logy success certainly looks possible. In the meantime, as has already been indicated, the steam turbine and dynamo combined, working practically as a single machine for the generation of electricity, offers practically the nearest approach to direct conversion which is yet well in sight.

CHAPTER XI.