Golden Age, January 7, 1931
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A JOURNAL OF FACT F .aGE
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in this issue
THALES UP TO DATE
SOMETHING ELSE AGAIN
FUSSING ABOUT HEALTH
MY BOY
ENRICHING THE SOIL
OPPOSING ORGANIZATIONS Full text of an address by Judge Rutherford, broadcast in watchtower national chain program
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five cents a copy one dollar a year Canada & Foreign 1.25
Vol. XII - No. 295
January 7, 1930 f
CONTENTS
LABOR AND ECONOMICS
Porto Rico’s Pitiful Plight . . 239
No Unemployment in Russia . 239
Generosity of German Workers 239
Housing Problem in Russia . . 240
2,000,000 Workers Displaced . 243
SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL
Something Else Again . . . 237
Geography for the Blind . . 238
Intelligence at San Quentin . 239
Liquor Business at the Capital 240
Eugenics All Right Except— . 247
Righteousness in Donora . . 248
FINANCE—COMMERCE—TRANSPORTATION
Airways in Asia ..... 237
German Coal Coining to America 238
Heavily Indebted Nations . . 238
Profits in Seattle .... 238
Gin on the Gold Coast . . .
Held Baek the Needles . . .
The Radio Trust . . . . .
Search for Fictitious Values . , 242
POLITICAL—DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN
Denmark Has Disarmed . . 238
Eugene Gillot, War Resister . 240
Regrets of Doctor Salkeld . . 240
Lloyd George on Britain’s New
Palestine Policy
British Treason to Zionism . 241
More About California’s Old Age
Pensions . .
British Rule in India . . . 244
My Boy ! . .
Enriching the Soil .... 254
AGRICULTURE AND HUSBANDRY
Reclamation of American Desert 237
Farming in Wisconsin . . . 243
SCIENCE AND INVENTION
Thai.es Up to Date .... 227
Maxim. Silencers for Offices . . 238
Aluminum High Tension Lines 239
Odd Way to Sharpen a Blade . 245
HOME AND HEALTH
The World Is Waiting . . . 240 Why Do Hospitals Use Aluminum
Utensils? . ...... 243
Fussing About Health Harmful 245
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY
When Christianity Was in the
Catacombs ...... 241
Bishop Not So Hard Up . . . 242
Opposing Organizations . . . 249
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Golden Age
Volume XII Brooklyn, N. Y., Wednesday, January 7, 1931 Number 295
Thales Up to Date
tive (vitreous), negative (resinous),and organic (animal); but this knowledge was of slow development up until about 1872. In nothing is the slow growth of man’s knowledge better illustrated than in the discovery, after thousands of years, that lightning and electricity are one and the same thing.
Franklin’s experiment with the kite led many experimenters into the electrical field; but not much progress could be made, because a steady current of electricity was unknown. A Leyden jar is either charged or not charged. One discharge, and it is unloaded. Franklin vras one of those most engrossed with the new science. He gave his friends shocks, and even killed a hen. The frictional machine and the Leyden jar (condenser) were the only pieces of electrical apparatus with which the eighteenth century was acquainted.
About 1725 Stephen Gray astonished himself and his friends by transmitting electricity (or the ‘electric spark’, as he called it) about 880 feet. As late as 1882 Edison was able to pump it only two miles; but the invention by William Stanly of the alternating-current transformer, and the brilliant mind of Charles P. Steinmetz, had given us by 1922 a commercial span of 250 miles, with a pressure behind the current of 220,000 volts.
Pioneers of the Science
Galvani detected electric current about 1786. Volta, whose death occurred March 5, 1827, developed the first practical electrochemical cell. He is looked up to as the magician who tamed the electric spark. By discovering the principle whereby electricity could be continuously drawn in a current from a cell or battery Volta enriched the ■world with a new source of energy. The volt, named after Volta, has been adopted as the practical unit of electromotive force.
In 1800 Sir Humphry Davy, the Edison of
rp hat,ns, of Miletus, a Greek philosopher, who JL lived 640-548 B. C., was the first to record the fact that amber, when rubbed, has the power to attract light bodies.
It Thales were now to walk down Broadway some night and be told that the millions of electric lights which transform the Great White Way into fairyland are the outcome of his experiments it would surely open his eyes. And if lie i-vere to step into a radio shop and hear Judge Rutherford stoutly proclaiming that the kingdom of heaven is here and functioning it would open his ears too, and, we trust, his heart. And he wrould be interested to know that the radio is but one of the many thousands of applications of electricity to the service of man.
Thales probably never got any farther with his experiments than the rubbing of the amber. The Greek "word for “amber” is elektron, from which is derived our word “electricity”. Later, others discovered that the same phenomena noted by Thales are discernible when a piece of ■wax is rubbed against a coat sleeve, and when a warm glass tube, closed at one end, is rubbed with silk. A warm piece of browm paper, placed on a warm board, and well rubbed with a rubber eraser, -will cling to the board or to the wall until its electricity is dissipated.
In the latter part of the sixteenth century Dr. William Gilbert, a physician of Queen Elizabeth’s time, made a number of experiments with substances other than amber, such as sulphur, wax, glass, etc. He noticed that electrified substances attracted all other substances indiscriminately, whereas a magnet attracted only iron. Gilbert is called the founder of electrical science.
Various Kinds of Electricity
Today there is a very general knowledge of the fact that there are different forms of electricity, static (frictional, common), dynamic (voltaic), thermal, atmospheric, magnetic, posi-
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his day, and inventor of the miners’ safety ■lamp which bears his- name, discovered the principle of the arc light, and nine years later exhibited the light itself before the Royal Institution of London, his carbon points being charcoal .from the willow, and his source of current a voltaic pile.
A great objection to the use of the are system of lighting is that the light is too intense for indoor purposes, and cannot be subdivided readily. Various inventors endeavored to subdivide the light. The greatest improvement was by an American, J. W. Starr, who employed carbon plates inside a glass vessel containing a vacuum.
In March, 1829, Joseph Henry, of Albany, found that if a wire carrying electricity is fastened to or wound around a piece of soft iron, t Jie iron instantly becomes a magnet, the strength of which depends upon the amount of electricity and the length of the wire, and if the circuit is broken the iron instantly ceases to be magnetic. The whole science and business of telegraphy depends on this fact. The henry, as the practical unit of inductance, is named after this little known experimenter and discoverer.
As the volt, the practical unit of electromotive force, is named after the Italian Volta, so the ohm, as the practical unit of resistance, is named after the euunciator of Ohm’s law, and the ampere, as the practical unit of current strength, is named after the French scientist of that name.
In the year 1831 the great English scientist .'Faraday discovered that if a wire is moved in a magnetic field so as to cut across the lines of force a current will be generated in the wire. It is upon this principle that all dynamo-electric machines depend for their action, and it was this discovery that opened up the field of what might be called the commercial generation of current electricity.
Facts and Theories Electrical
The electric theory of matter has it that all matter in its final analysis is electrical in its nature, and the trend of all scientific investigation is now in that direction. Moreover, the earth itself is a huge dynamo, the sun is another, and the whirling of the worlds in their orbits partakes of the nature of an armature revolving in an electric generator.
One of the apparent effects of electric and chemical activities of the sun is displayed in
those great vortices called "sun spots”. It is -• apparent that these are in some way connected with the electric storms and violent changes of magnetism that occur on the earth. It .goes r without saying that the electric storms on the sun far transcend anything that could ever be........■
experienced on the earth. ...............
Electricity is a form of energy, like the energy of motion, heat, light or chemistry. All forms ' of energy are convertible into one another and can be measured by the same measure. As heat -™ is the simplest form, the British thermal unit (B. T. IL), that is, the amount of heat required............
to raise one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit has become the usual measure of energy, but the joule, or watt-second (one watt equals one volt times one ampere), is rapidly taking its..........
place.
The Conversion of Energy
Any eonverson of energy into another form of energy is bound to result in some loss, and is usually discernible in heat. When heat, which is an irregular motion of the molecules without definite speed or direction, is converted into a regular motion, this loss by conversion is especially great.
In the transformation of the mechanical oner-.....
gy of waterfalls into electric energy, the water power is first converted into rotary motion by the water wheel, and then into electrical energy ■ by the electric generator.
In the transformation of the chemical energy ......
of coal into electric energy, combustion first turns the chemical, energy into heat energy. This in turn is converted in the steam engine into '' mechanical energy, and when this in turn is finally converted into electric energy less than two percent of the energy of the coal goes out to the consumer over the wire.
In the electric battery chemical energy can be converted directly into electrical energy to a limited extent, but the cost of the chemical on-ergy of metals is so high that this form is used only for bells, signaling purposes, and the like.
The leading minds in the electrical world. are............
doing much thinking and experhnenting with...............
a view to a direct conversion of coal into elec- ■■■•••• trical energy without the wasteful intervention of the steam engine. They are also working toward a direct conversion of electrical energy into light. No clue to the first of these problems lias yet presented itself, but the second problem is more hopeful of solution. If solved it will ili|||||||| electric lighting many times cheaper than any other form of illumination, and, with the Power Trust a thing of the past, will displace all other illnminants.
Srep by step interrelations have been discovered between electricity, magnetism, light and gravity. The universe is now conceived of as lifting one of wave phenomena. Shorten the wave length of heat and we have light; shorten 1 he wave length of light and we have electricity; increase the wave length of electricity, that is, retard its movement, and we have heat or light, or both.
The earth is immersed in whirls of magnetism and electricity, both of which powerfully affect man. The entire earth is charged with magnetic electricity. This charge is continuously escaping into the air, yet it is never permanently diminished, noris the charge in the air increased.
Metals, carbon and salt solutions are conductors of electricity, but there is no perfect conductor. Air, glass, rubber, paper and oil are insulators, but there is no perfect insulator. For purposes of electric transmission, conductors .are usually surrounded by insulators thick enough to withstand the electric pressure or voltage employed.
Atmospheric Electricity ■
We were on the point of making this subtitle sg;;„; . «Freo Electricity”, but not wanting to be responsible for the impression in anybody’s mind that Ah i: the Power Trust is really giving something . away, without a string to it, we thought better
of it. Atmospheric electricity comes from a power plant not controlled by the Trust. Supposedly, it comes from the sun.
v.f There is always free electricity in the atmosphere. It may be detected by a pointed metal rod projecting into the air several feet and connected at its lower end to a gold leaf electroscope. When the rod is thus projected the leaves diverge. Kites and balloons have also been used to detect it. The intensity of the free electricity is greater in winter than in summer, and great- . cr in the middle of the day than at morning or night. In fine weather the potential increases with the altitude at the rate of about 30 volts per foot. In clear* weather the air is charged with positive electricity. In cloudy or rainy weather the conditions may change with the greatest rapidity from positive to negative.
Free electricity is ascribed variously to friction of the air upon the ground, to gradual oxidation of plant and animal life, to evaporation, to induction from the sun, and to differences of temperature. The huge lightning flashes are due to the condensation of watery vapor.
Each drop, as it moves through the air, accumulates free electricity on its surface. As the drops grow larger there is a decrease in the total surface of the drops which combined to form them, with the result that the electric potential rises until it overcomes the resisting power of the air.
Lightning is still the most powerful electricity in the world. Artificial lightning of 5,000,000 volts has been produced. The voltage of the usual lightning flash is about 100,000,000 with 100,000 amperes. This represents a thousand billion horsepower and an energy of 4,000 watt hours and is all over in a few millionths of a second.
Over an open field on a clear day the electrical condition of the atmosphere is such as to tend to move a positively charged body downward. This down-thrust is sufficient -when applied to the whole earth’s surface to reduce the negative charge of the earth, to one-half its initial value in ten minutes. The explanation of the maintenance of the earth’s negative charge under these conditions is one of the unsolved riddles of science.
Hydroelectric Power
The cost of electric power derived from falling water does not differ much from that derived from coal by the steam engine, because of the greater investment required in developing a water power and transmitting the electric power to the place of consumption. Where coal is cheap the steam power may be more economical, but where water poorer can be developed cheaply, or where coal is expensive, ■water power is more economical.
The extensive utilization of water power is not limited to natural waterfalls. Some of the most important developments are in locations where a fall of forty to four hundred feet extends over ten to fifty miles, and larger and more powerful dams are being constructed for this purpose constantly.
It has been proposed to dam the Niagara river at the foot of the gorge, thereby making another source of power equal to that of the present falls, and it is not at all unlikely that the dam will he built. The construction of such a dam would be a most interesting and expensive engineering project.
We think of India, Palestine, Russia, Italy and Mexico as relatively backward countries, but water power development in all these countries is proceeding at a rate to cause us shortly to revise our opinions. Power means industry; industry means intelligence and progress, and looks toward liberty.
The Jhelum river, in Kashmir’, India, has a fall of 2,480 feet in eighty miles, with a minimum flow of 30,000 gallons per second. A beginning has been made to develop the 1,000,000 electric horsepower here represented. It. is proposed to utilize this power by turning the limestone of the region into nitrate of lime, combining it until the nitrogen of the air. In time this product may find its way in large quantities to America and other countries, to replenish the failing powers of lands now less productive than formerly. How strange it would be to have rich and prosperous America looking to-ward poverty-stricken India as a source of wealth!
Palestine, Russia, Italy
On October 1 (significant day), 1930, the Ru-tenberg power project at Naharaim, in the Jordan valley, Palestine, was completed, and 250 of the employees took leave of their work to go and found a new colony near by. It was then expected that by the first of the year 1931 all -the necessary machinery would be in place and the entire land of Palestine would thereby be provided with electrical energy for Lighting, heating and power purposes. The government will regulate the charges, and cheap power will be the result, unless the Power Trust manages to get hold of it. Jerusalem itself has had electric light and power for some years, as a result of a concession held by a British company.
Russia had almost no electrical development at the time of the World War. Today there are .more than a thousand central stations serving as many villages, and $100,000,000 is being expended annually for electrical expansion. Every kind of fuel is being utilized, peat, oil waste, lignite and anthracite waste.
Russia’s most ambitious electrical project is the hydroelectric development of the Dnieper river in the Ukraine. The Dnieper station is to have a capacity of 800,000 horsepower and will be the largest in Europe. Three-fourths of the equipment was bought in America, and American engineers planned and built the dam.
Italy is turning all its snows and glaciers and lakes and waterfalls into electricity. More than 7,000 of the 9,000 communities of the country are now supplied with electrical energy. Sixty percent of the power thus obtained is used for motor power, 15 percent for light and heat, 14 percent in the metallurgical and chemical industries, and 11 percent for electrifying railroads. .
The industrial electrification of Mexico is progressing at a most astounding rate, according to observers who have recently visited the land of the Montezumas.
Wind and Sand Generation
Wind power is inexhaustible, and as the winds blow more or less all over the earth’s surface it is not to be wondered at that electrical engineers have often looked in that direction for their power. Several firms are now engaged in the work of manufacturing wind-driven electric plants, and marked progress has been made in their design in recent years.
The Great Northern Railway has used or will use windmills to charge block signal batteries. Holland has tried several experiments of like import, and they have been tried-also in the Lancashire (England) mill district, but in none of these places with marked success.
In southern California there is a wind-power generator that produces electric current • whenever the wind is blowing four miles or more an hour. The generator consists of a tunnel lengthwise through the center of which runs a shaft carrying propellers. By the aid of a huge funnel the wind is concentrated on the propeller blades. These turn the shaft at 180 revoMtious a minute, developing 200 horsepower. Electric controls automatically keep the large funnel squar --ly in the face of the strongest wind. A larger plant, to produce 1,400 horsepower, was under way the last we knew.
It is known that particles of flying sand and dirt generate electric current. During sand storms shocks are suffered from contacts with fence wires, radio antennae and antonwhdos. The dryness of the air prevents the dissipation of the electricity accumulated. In volcanic eruptions the dust and smoke commonly become charged, resulting in continuous thunder.....and January 7, 1931 lightning, with terrifying effects upon the onlookers.
Electric Storage Battery
In an electric storage battery, while it is being charged electrical energy is being converted into chemical energy; when it is being discharged the chemical energy is being reconverted into electric energy. A device of this kind is a necessity where a supply of electrical energy is needed to be instantly available under isolated conditions over long periods of time. An automobile or airplane without a good reliable storage battery would be like a horse without any breathing apparatus.
\Ve do not say that a man is a storage battery, but he is not so dissimilar to it as he might be. (occasionally there is a man who is overcharged. Frederick Stone, a chauffeur at Holsworthy, England, cannot use a telephone without receiving a shock, cannot walk or drive without insu-laiion in his shoes, and can locate buried metals. When he once undertook to wrear his wife’s wrist watch it came all to pieces.
It is well known that there is a connection between electricity and muscular work. The will ‘connects’ with a portion of the brain and sends out an order, which we know travels through the nerves to the muscles. Electricity is evidently the medium of exchange.
A dog lover reports having a tiny Pomeranian puppy, weighing eight ounces, which showed every appearance of dying. The owner held him between his two hands several times, for a few minutes each time, and he rallied. The owner believed the improvement w’as brought about by the electricity from his own body.
It is said that the electricity flowing out of a human body can he amplified and photographed, and that it can be seen just at dusk or twilight under the following conditions: A large, strong man is stood five feet in front of a perfectly black background while the observer takes a position twenty to forty feet away and gazes steadily at him.
It is said that when conditions and distances are right anybody of good sight will see a faint radiance emanating from the man and outlining him on the black background.
Achievements of the Engineers
We have not much use for the financiers of the Power Trust, but nobody can view the work of their engineers without considerable admiration. About 20,000,000 of the 30,000,000 residences of the United States have been wired, and the rate of wiring is at about 1,500,000 residences per annum for those as yet unwired. Besides this there are 3,500,000 commercial users and 1,050,000 power and miscellaneous customers.
The United States Department of the Interior estimates that the average family of four persons in the United States has such a share of the 80,000,000,000 kilowatt-hours of electric power as would give them each the services of eleven able-bodied mechanical laborers working eight hours daily, every day in the year, at a total annual cost for the eleven of $75 a year.
Somewhere in the country 17,700,000 flatirons are in use, their number being added to or replaced at the rate of 3,000,000 a year. The vacuum cleaner output is about 1,000,000 a year; toasters, 1,200,000 a year; percolators, 800,000 a year; waffle irons, 600,000 a year. The 10,500,000 people of New York state use about oneseventh of all the electricity produced in the United States.
More than a million persons in the country are now’ more or less conversant with electrical terms and practices. Mr. Edison says we have so far progressed that there is now no reason for human backs to strain, or arms to lift, or legs to stagger under heavy loads, when electricity is so much better able to do the work. In the electrical work of the country something like 20,000 carloads of copper were used last year.
Every Product Utilizes Electricity
There is hardly a thing made or delivered today that does not come in contact in some way with the electric current. Take out of a home the electric lights, electric flatirons, electric washers, electric ranges, electric refrigerators, electric heaters, radios, telephones, electric bells, toasters, percolators and waffle irons and you have taken out much.
Take the electrical devices out of offices and factories and there would be little left today except the walls, and yet what has been done is as nothing compared with what is yet to be done, and will be done under the perfect administration of the kingdom of God.
Even now the transportation men are prophesying that in ten years more most of the railroads bounded by Boston, Buffalo, Pittsburgh and 'Washington 'will be electrified. The roads can be lighted with electric lights to good advantage too. A capital investment of $3,680,000,000 (most of it water) had a year ago an. output valued at $2,700,000,000. Between 1907 and 1927 the gross revenue from the sale of electricity was multiplied by ten.
All communities of 5,000 or more in the United States are now supplied with electric service, and 25 percent of the hamlets of 250 population are also supplied. Since 1923 more than 4,000 rural centers have been added to the list of communities served.
At its plant at Fourteenth street and East river the New York Edison Company has a turbogenerator which provides 215,000 horsepower, or 160,000 kilowatts. It weighs 1,200 tons, and is 21-J feet by 24J feet by 87 feet. The boilers are as high as an eight-story building and contain rixty-nine miles of tubes.
Direct and Alternating Current.
Direct current flows along the wire in one direction. All electric batteries give direct current. It is generally preferred for electric railroading, and often for electric lighting, especially in the centers of large cities. Direct current is required for electrolytic work, and for the charging of storage batteries.
Alternating current flows first in one direction and then in another. The number of double reversals or cycles per second is called the frequency of the alternating current. The current I hat is generated at a frequency of twenty-five cycles per second is called a low frequency current and is used for industrial purposes.
The current that is generated at a frequency of sixty cycles per second is employed for illumination., When the lights are said to flicker the frequency is lower than it should be. When sufficiently high the eye is tricked and cannot discern the pauses in the flow.
High frequency currents are alternating currents reversing very rapidly, often a hundred thousand or a. million times per second. Sometimes they are not constant in value, but die out and then start again, thus becoming oscillating currents. Such are used mainly for wireless telegraphy and telephony.
Alternating currents have the advantage that they can be raised in voltage by stationary apparatus called transformers, and thus transmitted to a distance, and lowered in voltage for use. .Because of this all large electric generating systems now produce alternating current.
Where direct current is required, it is produced from the alternating current supply<jbw?»i*stt rotary transformers called ccuiverterSj'-'Orcstg^^tfi'ji tionary devices called rectifiers. One of the interesting discoveries of recent years is that a little piece of copper, slightly more than an inch square, and so thin that it takes sixty-five or them to make a pile an inch high, has the unique property of carrying a current in one direction only, from its face toward its center. Because of this property it can be used to turn alternating current into direct current, and alter- - --nating current delivered to a consumer is readily converted into direct current on the promises. The device, ‘kuprox,’ is said to be easy to make when one knows how ; and the material, copper, is inexpensive. :
Long Distance Transmission
When the distances to which electric power is transmitted exceeds 15 or 20 miles it is usually spoken of as long distance transmission. Ju America electrical transmission systems Juive reached a maximum of 250 miles in distance . • ■ covered, and 220,000 volts in the line pressure, <■ economically applied to the transmitted current. .A•'
An invention of the last few years, called the..........
‘series capacitor’, is a great aid in the transmission of alternating current. With the aid of this invention the economical transmission of power can be effected over lines spanning 500 miles between generators and consuming devices. ■
A plan is on foot in Europe to transmit power from the many high waterfalls of Norway, do...............................
Germany, by way of Sweden and Denmark. wr a power line 625 miles long. It is claimed that all the engineering details have been workedgizs out. Towers rising above the sea would suppor. cables carrying 1,000,000 horsepower at 380,-' ;; 000 volts. For several years hydroelectric power has been transmitted from Sweden to Denmark by submarine cable.
Only a beginning has been made in the trails-mission of electric power from, the coal mines. : Everything is held back by the outrageous prices : charged the consumers by those who control the •„> Power Trust. If these men were willing to charge a price bearing some reasonable relation to the -z-cost of production, all the work of the countrv could be done by electricity produced at the...............
mine, and the transportation of coal would be ended.
The railroads would.not like that idea, for large share of their business has been the carriage of coal; but the railroads have been great sinners, too. They have tried so hard to gouge the last cent out of the people for railway fares •that now the people are traveling otherwise and the railway cars go through the country almost empty of passengers.
--■-There is a new insulating material, developed by a Russian investigator. It resembles a light varnish, and a thin coating of it is reported to ;-:arvo as a substitute for the bulky and more costly porcelain insulators. The use of this new insulator will probably reduce costs of construe-t ion of new lines materially.
• s Speaking of long distance transmission, that was a great achievement when Signor Marconi, ■from his yacht in the harbor of Genoa, Italy, closed a circuit in Sydney, Australia, 11,000 miles away, for the opening of the electrical exhibition in the Sydney Town Hall. Signor Marconi said of this event that “it points the way to a. future day when there will be no elec-i rie wires, and all current of electric power will be transmitted directly through the air in any ■direction and quantity desired”,
Altura BSazdtfs Namesake
•- The incandescent lamp in its modern form was named after Ahura Mazda, the Persian god of light. Incidentally, the Mazda lamp of today gives off more than six times as much light, watt for watt, as did the carbon lamp of fifty years ago, and it has also a much longer service life.
......The incandescent lamp is an almost perfect light, as it gives off no waste products of any kind and does not cause fires unless held in close pnoximity to muslin or paper or other inflammable materials for a considerable length of time.
The first successful lamp was. produced by Edison in 1879. In three years it was in commercial use, and in ten years was in general use all over America and in parts of Europe. The present annual consumption of incandescent lamps in the United States is about 400,000,000, or approximately three lamps per capita.
Broadway, the brightest spot in the world on a dark night, has 20,880 electric signs between The Battery and 135th Street. It takes 1,309,918 lamps to keep these signs aglow, or it did take that many before the signs were changed to neon, argon and xenon gas-filled tubes.
c - Some homes are now being fitted with Cooper-Hewitt mercury vapor lamps. The tubes, perhaps an inch in diameter, are twenty to fifty inches long, and are backed by a metallic reflector. When the current flow’s, a little mercury is allowed to vaporize in the tube and a greenish white light of great intensity is obtained. Such lamps are widely used in factories, closely reproducing daylight conditions, and obviating strain on the eyes.
Some homes are also being fitted with electric lights which produce ultra-violet rays from an ordinary lighting fixture. At a distance of three feet such a lamp will give a sunburn in fifteen hours of exposure.
It has been discovered that ordinary electric lamps may be used for secret signaling. By properly screening the lamps with certain materials only the infra-red rays, which are invisible to the naked eyes, are released. These are received at various distances by sensitive buzzers wliicli sound in response to the rays.
Some recent Applications
An electric light which can be blown out or blov.ni into illumination by a breath, a device so sensitive that a passing shadow or a dewdrop may turn on the lights of a city, start or stop a. railroad train, or maneuver a battleship, give advance warning of thunderstorms, turn off the fuel supply of gas and oil stoves in case the flame is accidentally extinguished, count people, autos or products passing given points, send out alarms in case of fire or intrusion; an electric eye which fires a gun at a prisoner trying to scale the wall, and sounds an alarm simultaneously; an artificial eardrum, still somewhat complicated and dangerous, enabling deaf persons to hear by means of electric waves transmitted direct through the auditory nerve; an electric calculator by which the most difficult mathematical problems are solved rapidly by lightly touching tire numbers involved in the problem; the fissure detector, previously described in these columns, which automatically picks out the weak spots in a rail; the electric prospector which locates orc bodies on the principle that certain ores offer far less resistance to electric current than ordinary rock; the application of the photo-electric cell to the manufacture of paper, so that it automatically adjusts the machinery when the paper is getting too thick or too thin; the robots that run power stations and record their impulses miles away; an .elec-trie arrangement for sandblasting and candling eggs; the use of the electric eye for sorting objects by weight and color as fast at they can be conveyed; an electrically operated paper-pasting machine, which does away with messy paste tables, pails and other equipment; these are but a few of the more recent adaptations of electricity to human work. It is applied to every conceivable problem, from squeezing oranges at a soda fountain to unloading 12,000 tons of ore in half a day from the hold of a vessel. There are lumber camps that are completely electrified, from the felling of the trees with portable saws, aided by a few highly skilled axe strokes, to the loading of the logs on the waiting trains.
Electric Heating
The conversion of electric energy into heat is usually more expensive than direct generation of heat by combustion, and is therefore commercially practicable only for the production of excessively high temperatures, for cooking, for flatirons and for certain purposes where the temperature has to be perfectly controlled.
However, a start has been made in house heating, experiments having been made at Erie, Pa., and at Fort Wayne, Ind. In the Fort Wayne test the method consisted of heating large storage tanks of water, practically huge thermos bottles, using current only at night, when it can be obtained at least cost, and releasing the stored heat in the home as required. The success of this plan depends entirely upon the rates.
Some advantages of electric heating are absolute cleanliness, absence of combustion or flames, automatic temperature control, no noise, no fuel shortage, heat available instantly when required. This method of heating could be made very popular if the Power Trust would be willing to sell its current for say only three to four times what it costs to make it, but when they persist in wanting ten times that amount, they kill the goose.
In some localities where reasonable current rates are enjoyed (and they are not many), an electric radiator has been used. Each is an. independent unit and functions for three months on a pint of water. Steam is generated by contact with water between the poles of an electrode. The current is automatically shut off if the water evaporates or is lost by leakage.
Adaptation® to Agriculture ■
In Germany the farms have been electrified for twenty years; the rates are low. About onefourth of the farms of New York state have electric current. In California the proportion is somewhat larger. Of the 195,000 farms in Indiana, only 15,163 are electrified. Experiments conducted in twenty-three states disclosed 227 applications to the buildings and barnyards. Plowing, harrowing, planting, harvesting and reaping are still preempted by horses and traction engines.
Some of the uses noted are lighting barn, cow yard, washroom and milk storage room; milking; pumping ice water through milk cooler; refrigerating the storage tank; elevating grain to overhead bins; grinding feed; clipping and grooming cows; turning the separator; driving bottling equipment, and operating bottle-washing machine.
An electrically driven vegetable-tying machine handles 150 dozen bunches of celery an hour. Electrically driven blowers have beer-used to dry damp hay. An electric screen door electrocuted 2,500 flies a day at the door of a dairy barn. Truck gardeners have killed many insects by the use of electric lights with pans of kerosene fastened below them. By the use of electric current mushroom growers can control temperatures exactly.
Experiments in the electrification of the soil have been made, but -while some have made extravagant claims as to what could be done by this means, another who tried ripening st rawberries in forty days by that method declared that each ripe berry cost him about Sb. In the latter instance two 1200-watt electric lamps were set four feet above the plants.
We still hear occasionally of the electric plow, invented by Hamilton L. Roe, of Leroy, N. Y. The inventor claims that an electric charge passing through the soil makes the plant food in. it. more readily available and eliminates the need of fertilizer, and also kills weeds and poisons and makes the plants less susceptible to droughts.
Discovering that ladybugs live on mealy bugs, and that mealy bugs were eating up their fruit, California orchardists have built cabins for the ladybugs and kept them at a warm., even temperature so that they would be contented and. stay on the job of exterminating their common foe.
St, Elmo’s Fire
One of the strangest things that happens at sea is the luminous body which can be seen on wet nights perched upon or skipping about the masts and rigging of the ship. Sometimes the flame is single, and sometimes double. The Roman soldiers called the single flame Helene, and the double one Castor and Pollux, and believed these manifestations of static electricity to be ;gods, and good ones at that. The modern sailor . has a better understanding of the phenomenon and calls it “St. Elmo’s fire”.
St. Elmo’s fire has also been observed flitting about Pike’s peak, and on one occasion was so brilliant that an airplane was sent to see if possibly some hikers might be stranded on the mountain top. However, a thorough aerial search of the mountain revealed no trace of any persons.
Another curious manifestation of electricity on the briny deep, or in it, is the electric eel, which can discharge sufficient electricity to kill an animal of considerable size. When in full power it is able to knock down a man and benumb his affected limb in the most painful manner for several hours. The eel is about six feet long, and five-sixths of its length is a current-gencrutmg apparatus. After shocking a victim it has io retire for a considerable time to get its batteries recharged. An eel properly hooked up will light an electric bulb, run a toy train or operate an egg beater. In South America the natives capture them by driving horses among them. The eels attack the horses, sometimes so painfully that they fall and are drowned. After the attacks the eels are readily captured.
This is as good a place as any to mention that electrically-driven passenger liners are or soon will be in operation on the high seas. One of the chief advantages claimed or hoped for electric propulsion is the greater flexibility of control. The Dollar Line is having two such vessels built.
Some Recent Meas
Dr. E. 0. Hulburt, of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, lias announced his belief that eighty or ninety miles above the earth there are three great belts of electric current continually swirling like tidal waves. There are two daytime currents, one immediately above . the other, one flowing eastward and the other westward. At night another current flows continually eastward. These currents influence radio transmission at sea, produce variation of magnetic compasses, and alter the world weath
er.
It is believed that much of the light given off by shooting stars is electrical. The air is known to be highly electrified at the levels at which shooting stars begin to be visible and powerful electric action appears to take place when a solid particle enters the atmosphere at the speed at which shooting stars travel. The shooting star is therefore an electric light, at least in part, traveling at a high rate of speed.
The British government is experimenting with a device, the Harrison Wood patent, for which most remarkable things are claimed. It is said that if this little machine is plugged into the socket of a lamp holder on a household lighting circuit it will light six 100-watt 200-volt lamps for the cost of the original one, and has actually done this over a period of months.
A doctor has stirred things by expressing his belief that chemical activity in the cells of the human body produces electricity, that, this electricity maintains the life process, and that lack of it finally causes death. He believes the human current has a great influence over all our emotions, including love, and thinks this may explain why certain people are attracted to one another, or vice versa.
Marconi’s beam shot from the harbor' of Genoa, Italy, to Sydney, Australia, and hitting his mark so fairly as to light a chain of lamps 11,000 miles away, leads some to hope that ere long the airplane 10,000 feet above us will be able to have its storage batteries replenished without coming down to earth, and to fear that in war these rays will be powerful enough to paralyze everything in their path, detonate explosives, etc.
A Prodigious Infant
Fifty years ago there was no electrical business. It was an infant, barely able to cross the threshold. The first incandescent lighting industrial station was opened at Pearl Street, Ne*w York, in September, 1882, with a load of about 400 lamps distributed among the buildings of the neighborhood. It was ten years after that before even the largest companies were seriously thinking of operating machines by electric motors. .
In 1890, when electric lights were first installed in. the White House, only one person dared to turn the lights on or off. The chief electrician turned the lights on at night and came
around and turned them off in the morning. Later this lighting and the service of turning the lights on and off was extended to the bedrooms, and sometimes the bedroom lights ‘blazed’ all night because nobody dared turn them out. . .
The electric light companies got their first start by selling current to the electric street railways. That was only twenty years ago; and now the street railways are done for and are rapidly passing out. Electrical engineering as a profession is only about fifteen years old.
■Today the telephone, the telegraph and'the radio have become domestic and international necessities; and when we add to this list the applications of electricity for light, power, transportation, heating and household appliances, man has in his hands the most prodigious infant he has ever tried to carry. Indeed, the infant is now trying to carry the man.
Electrocution Items
Electrocutions are recognized as of three classes: (1) Where several horsepower are used the direct effect of the large power upon the body may cause its destruction by heat. (2) A very heavy discharge, as of lightning, may cause the mechanical destruction of vital organs. (3) A lesser discharge may cause paralysis of the nervous system, stoppage of the heart and respiratory organs. In these latter cases resuscitation is possible when external heat to the body, artificial respiration and cardiac stimulants are used simultaneously.
When loosely touched with, dry hands a 100-vo H circuit may hardly give any sensation, while, grasped with wet hands, a 50-volt circuit may be unbearable. Pressures of 500 to 600 volts are considered as still safe. At Sing Sing prison 300 volts of alternating current has produced death and 1,500 volts is virtually certain to do so. With continuous current 3,000 volts may be required.
Yet it seems that electric current can be de-amperized, as coffee is de-caffeined or tobacco is de-nicotined, and with such a de-amperized current a child by the name of Harry Church had 85,000 volts passed through his body, and gave out sparks two inches long, in his father’s laboratory, and without hurting him in the least. Better not try this experiment unless you know just how it is done.
A person, dead or alive, is a conductor of electricity, because he is made up mostly of water. If a person is in contact with an electric current those rescuing him should break his < contact with the circuit by means of some insulated tool, such as a long, dry stick, or a long, :-dry rope. Where the voltage is under 6,600 a coat may be used for a rope by throwing it around the wire with the loop thus made.
A monkey will run up and doAvn on a live wire for an hour at a time without seeming to mind it, but if he touched another wire there would he a dead monk. Electrocutions of men and animals are constantly occurring as a result of getting .....
over onto live rails, running automobiles into .....
poles carrying high-tension wires, coming in contact with fallen wires, playing streams of water on burning buildings in which live wires are exposed, attempting to handle live 'wires without proper precautions, coming too close to high-powered wires on the towers which carry them, and working in water with electric trouble lights. _ ..........
Experts recognize electrical injuries as of ten different kinds. A characteristic of electrical injuries is that they are not associated with pain or with any reaction of adjacent tissues. They result finally in the loss of the injured member, or, in contrast with other burns, they heal readily.
A Final Word About Rates
As a result of agitation by a few courageous publications electrical rates are slowly coming down here and there, and the Wall Street News has noticed this and the self-evident complementary truth that “with each cut comes an increase of consumption”, which is something the PoAver Trust should have been able to see Avith-out being told.
Morris Llewellyn Cook, eminent management........
engineer and expert on public utilities, is of the :......:
opinion that four cents a kilowatt hour would in most instances be about a fair rate to charge, though in many instances even that low rate Avould include too high a margin of profit. If you compare that statement Avith your last electric bills you aauII find that you are now pay- > ing just about twice what you should pay.
At the navy yard at Portsmouth the officers are alloAved a certain amount of free current. After they haArn used their free allowance they ’ are billed for the balance that they use at Avhat i< estimated to be its cost, namely, one cent a kilowatt hour.
The city of Toronto buys electricity generated at Niagara Falls at 2 mills a kilowatt hour, carries it 90 miles to Toronto and sells it to house holders for domestic lighting at a shade over 2 cents a kilowatt hour. The Alabama Power Company buys electricity generated at Muscle Shoals by the United Slates Government, also paying 2 mills a kilowatt hour. Then it carries it 100 miles to Birmingham, Alabama, and charges the Birmingham householders for lighting purposes 8.5 cents a kilowatt hour, or over four times what the Birmingham people would have to pay if they lived in Toronto. The American power trust is one of the most oppressive elements of the Devil’s organization in American life today.
Something
Every Bee a Complete Radio Set
A SWISS scientist, Dr. Leuenberger, lias dis
covered that every bee is a complete radio broadcasting and radio receiving set, the insect Inning power to communicate with its own hive at a distance, but not with any other hive. 'Each hive has its own peculiar wave length.
Reclamation of American Desert
BAST year crops of the value of $161,064,930
were produced in the United States on lands which twenty-eight years ago were listed as arid. There are now 600,000 persons living on the 40,788 irrigated farms and in the towns and cities included in this reclamation area. Sixteen states are affected.
Ought to Adjust Prices
FA.RMEBS of the South complain that mow
ing machines are being sold in Mexico for $60 which the American farmer cannot obtain for less than $120. The worst of it is that these machines are made in the same factory a nd made of the same materials and by the same workmen.
Airways, in Asia
London now has a nine-day air service to
India; Holland has one to Java and Singapore; France has one to Bagdad and Indo-China; and Germany has one across Siberia to Mmivolhi and Northern China. There are also air lines in operation in the Asiatic states of Japan, China and Siam.
Poisonous Fumes from Aluminum Paint TTTHILE painting a standpipe at Post Falls, W Idaho, John Morrison, of Spokane, was ovt'ieome with the fumes of the aluminum paint used and lost his life. Another man, Aaron Mc-
Else Again
Coy, of the same city, was barely able to climb out of the standpipe and go for the help which arrived too late.
Reduced Costs of Manufacture
WE HAVE heard much in recent years about how greatly costs of manufacture have been reduced. It seems odd to learn, therefore, that in the South at this time, where, at night, lanterns are much needed, a lantern now costs $1.40 which could have been bought twenty years ago for 35^. Looks as if somebody were holding out for more money.
Britain Heading Toward a Crisis
Mr. Lloyd George, speaking at Stowmarket, England, said: “The country is moving at an accelerated rate towards a crisis. The figures in the Economist, especially the railway figures, show that. The state of trade is bad and getting worse, and it is complicated by the situation in India.”
Arabic-speaking Mexicans
TUBKISH merchants in Mexico have found a tribe of* Arabic-speaking Mexicans. The evidence continues to increase more and more that ''God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the whole earth’. Most certainly the American continents, North and South, were settled from the Old World.
Preparing to Control New York
WHEN the next big scrimmage starts, Uncle Sam will be well prepared to govern New York city. A new map is being made, at three .indies to the mile, ■which will be about twelve feet square and will provide artillery fire control data. If trouble breaks out in any district that entire 'district can be blown from the map before the inhabitants can say Jack Robinson.
Maxim Silencer for Offices
THE Maxim silencer for offices is said to be perfected, and orders for the device are being placed by some New York office buildings. These silencers, five inches wide, and each including an electric fan, are installed by merely opening a window and sliding the silencer into the opening. They prevent outside noises from finding any considerable entrance.
German Coal Coming to America
STRANGE as it may seem, German anthracite coal is now being brought across the Atlantic ocean and sold by the shipload less than 150 miles away from America’s great anthracite mines. The New York wholesalers who are marketing the German coal put up a story about the difficulty of getting supplies from American mines. Every person living in the anthracite coal mining regions of America knows that these high-sounding excuses are merely outright falsehoods. Big Business buys German coal because it pays for them to do so. The German miners get next to nothing for their work. American miners, when they have the work, are well paid.
Every Other Family Has a Radio
THE Department of Commerce estimates that every other family in the United States now has a receiving set. The number of sets in use on July 1 is placed at 13,478,600. The number in New York state is placed at 1,752,000. California comes next, with 1,470,000, and Illinois third, with 1,060,000 sets. Pennsylvania just escaped getting into the million column.
Denmark Has Disarmed
THE World War was to end war; and it has done it, for just one nation, Denmark. That little country just went ahead and did it. All the rest of the countries are still talking as to whether or not they will hold a conference to decide whether or not they will disarm. Meantime they are building armaments as fast as they can and getting ready for the anticipated war.
Heavily Indebted Nations
THE only nations that have a debt of more than three billion dollars are Spain, which is in debt just slightly more than that amount; Italy, whose debt is more than three times that amount; the United States and France, whose debts are each more than five times that amount; and Britain, whose debt is more than ten times that amount.
Brooklyn Edison’s Turbine Generators
CpHE Brooklyn Edison Company’s new turbine -*■ generators will supply enough electrical energy to light a path from here to the moon, with only a yard between the individual lamps. Stated otherwise, each of these two generators will be of 160,000 kilo-watts capacity, with a maximum output of 200,000 kilovolt amperes. Each will weigh more than 1,000 tons.
Profits in Seattle
A SEATTLE concern has just been detected making a profit of 12,400 percent for its services. Taking advantage of the government laws it pays Uncle Sam $32 to file on 2,560 acres of Alaska oil and gas lands. Out of each 2,560 acres it keeps 560 acres for itself and then charges its customers $2 an acre for filing on the 2,000 acres of oil and gas lands it has for sale, which is $4,000. Subtract $32 from $4,000, and the profit for the company’s services is $3,968, plus 560 acres. And there is no financial risk.
The Dukes of Atholl
THE dukes of Atholl have some strange rights.
They have the right to maintain a private army of 1,000 men, complete, with artillery. If sentenced to be-hanged they may demand a silken cord instead of hemp, and may demand a scaffold thirty feet higher than usual. Dukes of the House of Percy, if hanged, may even demand burial in Westminster Abbey.
Steel Employees Share Their Pay
IT IS touching to read that the employees of the Inland Steel Company, Chicago, have pledged part of their earnings to help care for their fellows who could no longer be carried on the payroll on account of lack of work. Some are even hoping that the Power Trust may now see fit to charge a little bit less than thirty times the cost of current, so that somebody else may have something, instead of keeping it all themselves.
A Geography for the Blind
AFTER four years’ work, embodying more than a million hammer blows, there has recently been completed in Britain a geography of the British Isles, for instruction of blind boys and girls. The dots used are of thirty different sizes, and each one requires to be struck three times to produce the right result. The work comprises seven large volumes, weighing, all together, 23 pounds.
Porto Rico’s Pitiful Plight
Ol T of 290,421 workers in Porto Rico, 170,421, or over 58 percent were unemployed, at last accounts. Wages for most of the workers, when they have any work, are around 80 cents a day. The principal food is polished rice, a food v. hich is unfit for human consumption, as the life-giving elements have mostly been removed from it. As a consequence, sickness is widespread.
Aluminum High Tension Lines
A NEW and every-way desirable use for alu-minimi has been found. It has been discovered that it can be advantageously used for high tension power lines instead of copper. Aluminum lines of many strands are wound over steel lines of few strands, the entire conductor ■being 1-3/8 inches in diameter. Despite the size of the cable the conductor weighs only one pound to the foot.
Puddlers Must Go
FOR a generation it has looked as if the iron puddler had a permanent job, but the new sAston process produces a ball that will weigh 6.01)0 to 8,000 pounds, as against a 200-pound hail by hand puddling, and by the new process 100 men can produce as much as 1,000 did pre-x musly. The 1920 census showed 5,115 puddlers in the country. It would seem that nine-tenths of these must go.
No Unemployment in Russia
Walter Duranty in the New York Times says: "There is really no unemployment in the Soviet Union today because of the unparalleled growth of socialized industry and agriculture. In construction work alone there is a shortage of 300,000 workers. As far as the facts are concerned, there is no doubt Commissar Tsikhon is correct in stating that a labor shortage actually exists in Russian industry.”
Breakfast in Berlin; Dinner in New York
TF PRESENT plans of the Jankers company Jt materialize it may he possible to fly from Berlin to New York between breakfast and dinner. The huge plane that is in process of construction is intended to attain an altitude of 35,000 to 40,000 feet and a speed of 500 to 800 miles an hour. It is hoped to have one of the new planes ready for trial within the next two or three months.
Chicago Medical Society
Du. Louis E. Schmidt, a leading physician of
Chicago, has been expelled from the ranks of the Chicago Medical Society. He openly charges the Society with having expelled him because of his efforts to reduce medical costs to persons of moderate means or of no means at all. It does seem that great numbers of medical men are positively determined that they will do all in their power to convince the common people that they are the latter’s mortal enemies. How this can eventuate in any lasting good to the medical profession is hard to see. One would think the medicos should be better able to read the signs of the times than to incur the public ill will just at a time when there is increasing evidence that drugless methods really help sufferers, and help them permanently, while the drug and serum route is coming more and more into popular disfavor.
Splendid Generosity of German Workers
GERMAN iron and steel workers. 150,000 of them, agreed to accept eight hours less work weekly provided the 1,200,000 work hours so liberated are distributed among 30,000 men now receiving the dole. What this really means is that in the interest of their fellow men these German workers are sacrificing one-sixth of their pay. Wonder how many financiers would be willing to do a tiling like that.
Power Trust Cuts Bates
PERHAPS you did not know that the Georgia
Power Company, branch of the Power Trust, has cut its rates 35 percent, but it has. But do not be alarmed: it did this only in Crisp county, Georgia, when confronted with competition. The principal lesson to learn is that the Power Trust can make a 35-percent cut in rates and not feel it, when it comes to sidetracking a competitor.
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