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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Marvels of Modern Science, by Paul Severing
+
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+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
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+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: Marvels of Modern Science
+
+Author: Paul Severing
+
+Release Date: July, 2004 [EBook #6139]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on November 19, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARVELS OF MODERN SCIENCE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Emily Ratliff, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+MARVELS OF MODERN SCIENCE
+
+By PAUL SEVERING
+
+Edited by THEODORE WATERS
+
+1910
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER I
+FLYING MACHINES
+Early attempts at flight. The Dirigible. Prof. Langley's
+experiments. The Wright Brothers. Count Zeppelin. Recent aeroplane
+records.
+
+CHAPTER II
+WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY
+Primitive signalling. Principles of wireless telegraphy. Ether
+vibrations. Wireless apparatus. The Marconi system.
+
+CHAPTER III
+RADIUM
+Experiments of Becquerel. Work of the Curies. Discovery of Radium.
+Enormous energy. Various uses.
+
+CHAPTER IV
+MOVING PICTURES
+Photographing motion. Edison's Kinetoscope. Lumiere's
+Cinematographe. Before the camera. The mission of the moving
+picture. Edison's latest triumph.
+
+CHAPTER V
+SKY-SCRAPERS AND HOW THEY ARE BUILT
+Evolution of the sky-scraper. Construction. New York's giant
+buildings. Dimensions.
+
+CHAPTER VI
+OCEAN PALACES
+Ocean greyhounds. Present day floating palaces. Regal
+appointments. Passenger accommodation. Food consumption. The one
+thousand foot boat.
+
+CHAPTER VII
+WONDERFUL CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE
+Mating Plants. Experiments of Burbank. What he has accomplished.
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+LATEST DISCOVERIES IN ARCHAEOLOGY
+Prehistoric time. Earliest records. Discoveries in Bible lands.
+American explorations.
+
+CHAPTER IX
+GREAT TUNNELS OF THE WORLD
+Primitive Tunnelling. Hoosac Tunnel. Croton aqueduct. Great Alpine
+tunnels. New York subway. McAdoo tunnels. How tunnels are built.
+
+CHAPTER X
+ELECTRICITY IN THE HOUSEHOLD
+Electrically equipped houses. Cooking by electricity. Comforts and
+conveniences.
+
+CHAPTER XI
+HARNESSING THE WATER-FALL
+Electric energy. High pressure. Transformers. Development of
+water-power.
+
+CHAPTER XII
+WONDERFUL WAR SHIPS
+Dimensions, displacements, cost and description of battleships.
+Capacity and speed. Preparing for the future.
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+A TALK ON BIG GUNS
+The first projectiles. Introduction of cannon High pressure guns.
+Machine guns. Dimensions and cost of big guns.
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+MYSTERY OF THE STARS
+Wonders of the universe. Star Photography. The infinity of space.
+
+CHAPTER XV
+CAN WE COMMUNICATE WITH OTHER WORLDS?
+Vastness of Nature. Star distances. Problem of communicating with
+Mars. The Great Beyond.
+
+
+
+
+Introduction
+
+The purpose of this little book is to give a general idea of a few of
+the great achievements of our time. Within such a limited space it was
+impossible to even mention thousands more of the great inventions and
+triumphs which mark the rushing progress of the world in the present
+century; therefore, only those subjects have been treated which appeal
+with more than passing interest to all. For instance, the flying machine
+is engaging the attention of the old, the young and the middle-aged,
+and soon the whole world will be on the wing. Radium, "the revealer,"
+is opening the door to possibilities almost beyond human conception.
+Wireless Telegraphy is crossing thousands of miles of space with
+invisible feet and making the nations of the earth as one. 'Tis the
+same with the other subjects,--one and all are of vital, human interest,
+and are extremely attractive on account of their importance in the
+civilization of today. Mighty, sublime, wonderful, as have been the
+achievements of past science, as yet we are but on the verge of the
+continents of discovery. Where is the wizard who can tell what lies
+in the womb of time? Just as our conceptions of many things have been
+revolutionized in the past, those which we hold to-day of the cosmic
+processes may have to be remodeled in the future. The men of fifty
+years hence may laugh at the circumscribed knowledge of the present
+and shake their wise heads in contemplation of what they will term our
+crudities, and which we now call _progress_. Science is ever on the
+march and what is new to-day will be old to-morrow. We cannot go
+back, we must go forward, and although we can never reach finality in
+aught, we can improve on the _past_ to enrich the _future_. If this
+volume creates an interest and arouses an enthusiasm in the ordinary men
+and women into whose hands it may come, and stimulates them to a study
+of the great events making for the enlightenment, progress and elevation
+of the race, it shall have fulfilled its mission and serve the purpose
+for which it was written.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+FLYING MACHINES
+
+  Early Attempts at Flight--The Dirigible--Professor Langley's
+  Experiment--The Wright Brothers--Count Zeppelin--Recent Aeroplane
+  Records.
+
+
+It is hard to determine when men first essayed the attempt to fly. In
+myth, legend and tradition we find allusions to aerial flight and from
+the very dawn of authentic history, philosophers, poets, and writers
+have made allusion to the subject, showing that the idea must have
+early taken root in the restless human heart. Aeschylus exclaims:
+
+    "Oh, might I sit, sublime in air
+    Where watery clouds the freezing snows prepare!"
+
+Ariosto in his "Orlando Furioso" makes an English knight, whom he names
+Astolpho, fly to the banks of the Nile; nowadays the authors are trying
+to make their heroes fly to the North Pole.
+
+Some will have it that the ancient world had a civilization much higher
+than the modern and was more advanced in knowledge. It is claimed that
+steam engines and electricity were common in Egypt thousands of years
+ago and that literature, science, art, and architecture flourished as
+never since. Certain it is that the Pyramids were for a long time the
+most solid "Skyscrapers" in the world.
+
+Perhaps, after all, our boasted progress is but a case of going back
+to first principles, of history, or rather tradition repeating itself.
+The flying machine may not be as new as we think it is. At any rate
+the conception of it is old enough.
+
+In the thirteenth century Roger Bacon, often called the "Father of
+Philosophy," maintained that the air could be navigated. He suggested
+a hollow globe of copper to be filled with "ethereal air or liquid
+fire," but he never tried to put his suggestion into practice. Father
+Vasson, a missionary at Canton, in a letter dated September 5, 1694,
+mentions a balloon that ascended on the occasion of the coronation of
+the Empress Fo-Kien in 1306, but he does not state where he got the
+information.
+
+The balloon is the earliest form of air machine of which we have record.
+In 1767 a Dr. Black of Edinburgh suggested that a thin bladder could
+be made to ascend if filled with inflammable air, the name then given
+to hydrogen gas.
+
+In 1782 Cavallo succeeded in sending up a soap bubble filled with such
+gas.
+
+It was in the same year that the Montgolfier brothers of Annonay, near
+Lyons in France, conceived the idea of using hot air for lifting things
+into the air. They got this idea from watching the smoke curling up
+the chimney from the heat of the fire beneath.
+
+In 1783 they constructed the first successful balloon of which we have
+any description. It was in the form of a round ball, 110 feet in
+circumference and, with the frame weighed 300 pounds. It was filled
+with 22,000 cubic feet of vapor. It rose to a height of 6,000 feet and
+proceeded almost 7,000 feet, when it gently descended. France went
+wild over the exhibition.
+
+The first to risk their lives in the air were M. Pilatre de Rozier and
+the Marquis de Arlandes, who ascended over Paris in a hot-air balloon
+in November, 1783. They rose five hundred feet and traveled a distance
+of five miles in twenty-five minutes.
+
+In the following December Messrs. Charles and Robert, also Frenchmen,
+ascended ten thousand feet and traveled twenty-seven miles in two
+hours.
+
+The first balloon ascension in Great Britain was made by an experimenter
+named Tytler in 1784. A few months later Lunardi sailed over London.
+
+In 1836 three Englishmen, Green, Mason and Holland, went from London to
+Germany, five hundred miles, in eighteen hours.
+
+The greatest balloon exhibition up to then, indeed the greatest ever,
+as it has never been surpassed, was given by Glaisher and Coxwell, two
+Englishmen, near Wolverhampton, on September 5, 1862. They ascended
+to such an elevation that both lost the power of their limbs, and had
+not Coxwell opened the descending valve with his teeth, they would
+have ascended higher and probably lost their lives in the rarefied
+atmosphere, for there was no compressed oxygen then as now to inhale
+into their lungs. The last reckoning of which they were capable before
+Glaisher lost consciousness showed an elevation of twenty-nine thousand
+feet, but it is supposed that they ascended eight thousand feet higher
+before Coxwell was able to open the descending valve. In 1901 in the
+city of Berlin two Germans rose to a height of thirty-five thousand
+feet, but the two Englishmen of almost fifty years ago are still given
+credit for the highest ascent.
+
+The largest balloon ever sent aloft was the "Giant" of M. Nadar, a
+Frenchman, which had a capacity of 215,000 cubic feet and required for
+a covering 22,000 yards of silk. It ascended from the Champ de Mars,
+Paris, in 1853, with fifteen passengers, all of whom came back safely.
+
+The longest flight made in a balloon was that by Count de La Vaulx, 1193
+miles in 1905.
+
+A mammoth balloon was built in London by A. E. Gaudron. In 1908 with
+three other aeronauts Gaudron crossed from the Crystal Palace to the
+Belgian Coast at Ostend and then drifted over Northern Germany and was
+finally driven down by a snow storm at Mateki Derevni in Russia, having
+traveled 1,117 miles in 31-1/2 hours. The first attempt at constructing
+a dirigible balloon or airship was made by M. Giffard, a Frenchman,
+in 1852. The bag was spindle-shaped and 144 feet from point to point.
+Though it could be steered without drifting the motor was too weak to
+propel it. Giffard had many imitations in the spindle-shaped envelope
+construction, but it was a long time before any good results were
+obtained.
+
+It was not until 1884 that M. Gaston Tissandier constructed a dirigible
+in any way worthy of the name. It was operated by a motor driven by
+a bichromate of soda battery. The motor weighed 121 lbs. The cells
+held liquid enough to work for 2-1/2 hours, generating 1-1/3 horse
+power. The screw had two arms and was over nine feet in circumference.
+Tissandier made some successful flights.
+
+The first dirigible balloon to return whence it started was that known
+as _La France_. This airship was also constructed in 1884. The
+designer was Commander Renard of the French Marine Corps assisted by
+Captain Krebs of the same service. The length of the envelope was 179
+feet, its diameter 27-1/2 feet. The screw was in front instead of
+behind as in all others previously constructed. The motor which weighed
+220-1/2 lbs. was driven by electricity and developed 8-1/2 horse power.
+The propeller was 24 feet in diameter and only made 46 revolutions to
+the minute. This was the first time electricity was used as a motor
+force, and mighty possibilities were conceived.
+
+In 1901 a young Brazilian, Santos-Dumont, made a spectacular flight.
+M. Deutch, a Parisian millionaire, offered a prize of $20,000 for the
+first dirigible that would fly from the Parc d'Aerostat, encircle the
+Eiffel Tower and return to the starting point within thirty minutes,
+the distance of such flight being about nine miles. Dumont won the
+prize though he was some forty seconds over time. The length of his
+dirigible on this occasion was 108 feet, the diameter 19-1/2 feet. It
+had a 4-cylinder petroleum motor weighing 216 lbs., which generated
+20 horse power. The screw was 13 feet in diameter and made three hundred
+revolutions to the minute.
+
+From this time onward great progress was made in the constructing of
+airships. Government officials and many others turned their attention
+to the work. Factories were put in operation in several countries of
+Europe and by the year 1905 the dirigible had been fairly well
+established. Zeppelin, Parseval, Lebaudy, Baidwin and Gross were
+crowding one another for honors. All had given good results, Zeppelin
+especially had performed some remarkable feats with his machines.
+
+In the construction of the dirigible balloon great care must be taken
+to build a strong, as well as light framework and to suspend the car
+from it so that the weight will be equally distributed, and above all,
+so to contrive the gas contained that under no circumstances can it
+become tilted. There is great danger in the event of tilting that some
+of the stays suspending the car may snap and the construction fall to
+pieces in the air.
+
+In deciding upon the shape of a dirigible balloon the chief
+consideration is to secure an end surface which presents the least
+possible resistance to the air and also to secure stability and
+equilibrium. Of course the motor, fuel and propellers are other
+considerations of vital importance.
+
+The first experimenter on the size of wing surface necessary to sustain
+a man in the air, calculated from the proportion of weight and wing
+surface in birds, was Karl Meerwein of Baden. He calculated that a man
+weighing 200 lbs. would require 128 square feet. In 1781 he made a
+spindle-shaped apparatus presenting such a surface to the resistance
+of the air. It was collapsible on the middle and here the operator was
+fastened and lay horizontally with his face towards the earth working
+the collapsible wings by means of a transverse rod. It was not a
+success.
+
+During the first half of the 19th Century there were many experiments
+with wing surfaces, none of which gave any promise. In fact it was not
+until 1865 that any advance was made, when Francis Wenham showed that
+the lifting power of a plane of great superficial area could be obtained
+by dividing the large plane into several parts arranged on tiers. This
+may be regarded as the germ of the modern aeroplane, the first glimmer
+of hope to filter through the darkness of experimentation until then.
+When Wenham's apparatus went against a strong wind it was only lifted
+up and thrown back. However, the idea gave thought to many others years
+afterwards.
+
+In 1885 the brothers Lilienthal in Germany discovered the possibility
+of driving curved aeroplanes against the wind. Otto Lilienthal held
+that it was necessary to begin with "sailing" flight and first of all
+that the art of balancing in the air must be learned by practical
+experiments. He made several flights of the kind now known as _gliding_.
+From a height of 100 feet he glided a distance of 700 feet and found he
+could deflect his flight from left to right by moving his legs which
+were hanging freely from the seat. He attached a light motor weighing
+only 96 lbs. and generating 2-1/2 horse power. To sustain the weight he
+had to increase the size of his planes.
+
+Unfortunately this pioneer in modern aviation was killed in an
+experiment, but he left much data behind which has helped others. His
+was the first actual flyer which demonstrated the elementary laws
+governing real flight and blazed the way for the successful experiments
+of the present time. His example made the gliding machine a continuous
+performance until real practical aerial flight was achieved.
+
+As far back as 1894 Maxim built a giant aeroplane but it was too
+cumbersome to be operated.
+
+In America the wonderful work of Professor Langley of the Smithsonian
+Institution with his aerodromes attracted worldwide attention. Langley
+was the great originator of the science of aerodynamics on this side
+of the water. Langley studied from artificial birds which he had
+constructed and kept almost constantly before him.
+
+To Langley, Chanute, Herring and Manly, America owes much in the way
+of aeronautics before the Wrights entered the field. The Wrights have
+given the greatest impetus to modern aviation. They entered the field
+in 1900 and immediately achieved greater results than any of their
+predecessors. They followed the idea of Lilienthal to a certain extent.
+They made gliders in which the aviator had a horizontal position and
+they used twice as great a lifting surface as that hitherto employed.
+The flights of their first motor machine was made December 17, 1903,
+at Kitty Hawk, N.C. In 1904 with a new machine they resumed experiments
+at their home near Dayton, O. In September of that year they succeeded
+in changing the course from one dead against the wind to a curved path
+where cross currents must be encountered, and made many circular
+flights. During 1906 they rested for a while from practical flight,
+perfecting plans for the future. In the beginning of September, 1908,
+Orville Wright made an aeroplane flight of one hour, and a few days
+later stayed up one hour and fourteen minutes. Wilbur Wright went to
+France and began a series of remarkable flights taking up passengers.
+On December 31, of that year, he startled the world by making the
+record flight of two hours and nineteen minutes.
+
+It was on Sept. 13, 1906, that Santos-Dumont made the first officially
+recorded European aeroplane flight, leaving the ground for a distance
+of 12 yards. On November 12, of same year, he remained in the air for
+21 seconds and traveled a distance of 230 yards. These feats caused
+a great sensation at the time.
+
+While the Wrights were achieving fame for America, Henri Farman was
+busy in England. On October 26, 1907, he flew 820 yards in 52-1/2
+seconds. On July 6, 1908, he remained in the air for 20-1/2 minutes.
+On October 31, same year, in France, he flew from Chalons to Rheims,
+a distance of sixteen miles, in twenty minutes.
+
+The year 1909 witnessed mighty strides in the field of aviation.
+Thousands of flights were made, many of which exceeded the most sanguine
+anticipations. On July 13, Bleriot flew from Etampes to Chevilly, 26
+miles, in 44 minutes and 30 seconds, and on July 25 he made the first
+flight across the British Channel, 32 miles, in 37 minutes. Orville
+Wright made several sensational flights in his biplane around Berlin,
+while his brother Wilbur delighted New Yorkers by circling the Statue
+of Liberty and flying up the Hudson from Governor's Island to Grant's
+Tomb and return, a distance of 21 miles, in 33 minutes and 33 seconds
+during the Hudson-Fulton Celebration. On November 20 Louis Paulhan,
+in a biplane, flew from Mourmelon to Chalons, France, and return, 37
+miles in 55 minutes, rising to a height of 1000 feet.
+
+The dirigible airship was also much in evidence during 1909, Zeppelin,
+especially, performing some remarkable feats. The Zeppelin V.,
+subsequently re-numbered No. 1, of the rigid type, 446 feet long,
+diameter 42-1/2 feet and capacity 536,000 cubic feet, on March 29,
+rose to a height of 3,280, and on April 1, started with a crew of nine
+passengers from Frederickshafen to Munich. In a 35 mile gale it was
+carried beyond Munich, but Zeppelin succeeded in coming to anchor.
+Other Zeppelin balloons made remarkable voyages during the year. But
+the latest achievements (1910) of the old German aeronaut have put all
+previous records into the shade and electrified the whole world. His
+new passenger airship, the _Deutschland_, on June 22, made a 300
+mile trip from Frederickshafen to Dusseldorf in 9 hours, carrying 20
+passengers. This was at the rate of 33.33 miles per hour. During one
+hour of the journey a speed of 43-1/2 miles was averaged. The passengers
+were carried in a mahogany finished cabin and had all the comforts of
+a Pullman car, but most significant fact of all, the trip was made on
+schedule and with all regularity of an express train.
+
+Two days later Zeppelin eclipsed his own record air voyage when his
+vessel carried 32 passengers, ten of whom were women, in a 100 mile
+trip from Dusseldorf to Essen, Dortmund and Bochum and back. At one
+time on this occasion while traveling with the wind the airship made
+a speed of 56-1/2 miles. It passed through a heavy shower and forced
+its way against a strong headwind without difficulty. The passengers
+were all delighted with the new mode of travel, which was very
+comfortable. This last dirigible masterpiece of Zeppelin may be styled
+the leviathan of the air. It is 485 feet long with a total lifting
+power of 44,000 lbs. It has three motors which total 330 horse power
+and it drives at an average speed of about 33 miles an hour. A regular
+passenger service has been established and tickets are selling at $50.
+
+The present year can also boast some great aeroplane records, notably
+by Curtiss and Hamilton in America and Farman and Paulhan in Europe.
+Curtiss flew from Albany to New York, a distance of 137 miles, at an
+average speed of 55 miles an hour and Hamilton flew from New York to
+Philadelphia and return. The first night flight of a dirigible over
+New York City was made by Charles Goodale on July 19. He flew from
+Palisades Park on the Hudson and return.
+
+From a scientific toy the Flying Machine has been developed and
+perfected into a practical means of locomotion. It bids fair at no
+distant date to revolutionize the transit of the world. No other art
+has ever made such progress in its early stages and every day witnesses
+an improvement.
+
+The air, though invisible to the eye, has mass and therefore offers
+resistance to all moving bodies. Therefore air-mass and air resistance
+are the first principles to be taken into consideration in the
+construction of an aeroplane. It must be built so that the air-mass
+will sustain it and the motor, and the motor must be of sufficient
+power to overcome the air resistance.
+
+A ship ploughing through the waves presents the line of least resistance
+to the water and so is shaped somewhat like a fish, the natural denizen
+of that element. It is different with the aeroplane. In the intangible
+domain it essays to overcome, there must be a sufficient surface to
+compress a certain volume of air to sustain the weight of the machinery.
+
+The surfaces in regard to size, shape, curvature, bracing and material,
+are all important. A great deal depends upon the curve of the surfaces.
+Two machines may have the same extent of surface and develop the same
+rate of speed, yet one may have a much greater lifting power than the
+other, provided it has a more efficient curve to its surface. Many
+people have a fallacious idea that the surfaces of an aeroplane are
+planes and this doubt less arises from the word itself. However, the
+last syllable in _aeroplane_ has nothing whatever to do with a flat
+surface. It is derived from the Greek _planos_, wandering, therefore the
+entire word signifies an air wanderer.
+
+The surfaces are really aero curves arched in the rear of the front
+edge, thus allowing the supporting surface of the aeroplane in passing
+forward with its backward side set at an angle to the direction of its
+motion, to act upon the air in such a way as to tend to compress it
+on the under side.
+
+After the surfaces come the rudders in importance. It is of vital
+consequence that the machine be balanced by the operator. In the present
+method of balancing an aeroplane the idea in mind is to raise the lower
+side of the machine and make the higher side lower in order that it
+can be quickly righted when it tips to one side from a gust of wind,
+or when making angle at a sudden turn. To accomplish this, two methods
+can be employed. 1. Changing the form of the wing. 2. Using separate
+surfaces. One side can be made to lift more than the other by giving
+it a greater curve or extending the extremity.
+
+In balancing by means of separate surfaces, which can be turned up or
+down on each side of the machine, the horizontal balancing rudders are
+so connected that they will work in an opposite direction--while one
+is turned to lift one side, the other will act to lower the other side
+so as to strike an even balance.
+
+The motors and propellers next claim attention. It is the motor that
+makes aviation possible. It was owing in a very large measure to the
+introduction of the petrol motor that progress became rapid. Hitherto
+many had laid the blame of everything on the motor. They had
+said,--"give us a light and powerful engine and we will show you how
+to fly."
+
+The first very light engine to be available was the _Antoinette_,
+built by Leon Levavasseur in France. It enabled Santos-Dumont to make
+his first public successful flights. Nearly all aeroplanes follow the
+same general principles of construction. Of course a good deal depends
+upon the form of aeroplane--whether a monoplane or a biplane. As these
+two forms are the chief ones, as yet, of heavier than-air machines,
+it would be well to understand them. The monoplane has single large
+surfaces like the wings of a bird, the biplane has two large surfaces
+braced together one over the other. At the present writing a triplane
+has been introduced into the domain of American aviation by an English
+aeronaut. Doubtless as the science progresses many other variations
+will appear in the field. Most machines, though fashioned on similar
+lines, possess universal features. For instance, the Wright biplane
+is characterized by warping wing tips and seams of heavy construction,
+while the surfaces of the Herring-Curtiss machine, are slight and it
+looks very light and buoyant as if well suited to its element. The
+Voisin biplane is fashioned after the manner of a box kite and therefore
+presents vertical surfaces to the air. Farman's machine has no vertical
+surfaces, but there are hinged wing tips to the outer rear-edges of
+its surfaces, for use in turning and balancing. He also has a
+combination of wheels and skids or runners for starting and landing.
+
+The position to be occupied by the operator also influences the
+construction. Some sit on top of the machine, others underneath. In
+the _Antoinette_, Latham sits up in a sort of cockpit on the top.
+Bleriot sits far beneath his machine. In the latest construction of
+Santos-Dumont, the _Demoiselle_, the aviator sits on the top.
+
+Aeroplanes have been constructed for the most part in Europe, especially
+in France. There may be said to be only one factory in America, that
+of Herring-Curtiss, at Hammondsport, N.Y., as the Wright place at
+Dayton is very small and only turns out motors and experimenting
+machines, and cannot be called a regular factory. The Wright machines
+are now manufactured by a French syndicate. It is said that the Wrights
+will have an American factory at work in a short time. The French-made
+aeroplanes have given good satisfaction. These machines cost from
+$4,000 to $5,000, and generally have three cylinder motors developing
+from 25 to 35 horse power.
+
+The latest model of Bleriot known as No. 12 has beaten the time record
+of Glenn Curtiss' biplane with its 60 horse power motor. The Farman
+machine or the model in which he made the world's duration record in
+his three hour and sixteen minutes flight at Rheims, is one of the
+best as well as the cheapest of the French makes. Without the motor
+it cost but $1,200. It has a surface twenty-five meters square, is
+eight meters long and seven-and-a-half meters wide, weighs 140 kilos,
+and has a motor which develops from 25 to 50 horse power.
+
+The Wright machines cost $6,000. They have four cylinder motors of 30
+horse power, are 12-1/2 meters long, 9 meters wide and have a surface
+of 30 square meters. They weigh 400 kilos. In this country they cost
+$7,500 exclusive of the duty on foreign manufacture.
+
+The impetus being given to aviation at the present time by the prizes
+offered is spurring the men-birds to their best efforts.
+
+It is prophesied that the aeroplane will yet attain a speed of 300
+miles an hour. The quickest travel yet attained by man has been at the
+rate of 127 miles an hour. That was accomplished by Marriott in a
+racing automobile at Ormond Beach in 1906, when he went one mile in
+28 1-5 seconds. It is doubtful, however, were it possible to achieve
+a rate of 300 miles an hour, that any human being could resist the air
+pressure at such a velocity.
+
+At any rate there can be no question as to the aeroplane attaining a
+much greater speed than at present. That it will be useful there can
+be little doubt. It is no longer a scientific toy in the hands of
+amateurs, but a practical machine which is bound to contribute much
+to the progress of the world. Of course, as a mode of transportation
+it is not in the same class with the dirigible, but it can be made to
+serve many other purposes. As an agent in time of war it would be more
+important than fort or warship.
+
+The experiments of Curtiss, made a short time ago over Lake Keuka at
+Hammondsport, N.Y., prove what a mighty factor would have to be reckoned
+with in the martial aeroplane. Curtiss without any practice at all hit
+a mimic battle ship fifteen times out of twenty-two shots. His
+experiment has convinced the military and naval authorities of this
+country that the aeroplane and the aerial torpedo constitute a new
+danger against which there is no existing protection. Aerial offensive
+and defensive strategy is now a problem which demands the attention
+of nations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY
+
+  Primitive Signalling--Principles of Wireless Telegraphy--Ether
+  Vibrations--Wireless Apparatus--The Marconi System.
+
+
+At a very early stage in the world's history, man found it necessary
+to be able to communicate with places at a distance by means of signals.
+Fire was the first agent employed for the purpose. On hill-tops or
+other eminences, what were known as beacon fires were kindled and owing
+to their elevation these could be seen for a considerable distance
+throughout the surrounding country. These primitive signals could be
+passed on from one point to another, until a large region could be
+covered and many people brought into communication with one another.
+These fires expressed a language of their own, which the observers
+could readily interpret. For a long time they were the only method
+used for signalling. Indeed in many backward localities and in some
+of the outlying islands and among savage tribes the custom still
+prevails. The bushmen of Australia at night time build fires outside
+their huts or kraals to attract the attention of their followers.
+
+Even in enlightened Ireland the kindling of beacon fires is still
+observed among the people of backward districts especially on May Eve
+and the festival of mid-summer. On these occasions bonfires are lit
+on almost every hillside throughout that country. This custom has been
+handed down from the days of the Druids.
+
+For a long time fires continued to be the mode of signalling, but as
+this way could only be used in the night, it was found necessary to
+adopt some method that would answer the purpose in daytime; hence
+signal towers were erected from which flags were waved and various
+devices displayed. Flags answered the purposes so very well that they
+came into general use. In course of time they were adopted by the army,
+navy and merchant marine and a regular code established, as at the
+present time.
+
+The railroad introduced the semaphore as a signal, and field tactics
+the heliograph or reflecting mirror which, however, is only of service
+when there is a strong sunlight.
+
+Then came the electric telegraph which not only revolutionized all
+forms of signalling but almost annihilated distance. Messages and all
+sorts of communications could be flashed over the wires in a few minutes
+and when a cable was laid under the ocean, continent could converse
+with continent as if they were next door neighbors.
+
+The men who first enabled us to talk over a wire certainly deserve our
+gratitude, all succeeding generations are their debtors. To the man
+who enabled us to talk to long distances without a wire at all it would
+seem we owe a still greater debt. But who is this man around whose
+brow we should twine the laurel wreath, to the altar of whose genius
+we should carry frankincense and myrrh?
+
+This is a question which does not admit of an answer, for to no one
+man alone do we owe wireless telegraphy, though Hertz was the first
+to discover the waves which make it possible. However, it is to the
+men whose indefatigable labors and genius made the electric telegraph
+a reality, that we also owe wireless telegraphy as we have it at
+present, for the latter may be considered in many respects the resultant
+of the former, though both are different in medium.
+
+Radio or wireless telegraphy in principle is as old as mankind. Adam
+delivered the first wireless when on awakening in the Garden of Eden
+he discovered Eve and addressed her in the vernacular of Paradise in
+that famous sentence which translated in English reads both ways the
+same,--"Madam, I'm Adam." The oral words issuing from his lips created
+a sound wave which the medium of the air conveyed to the tympanum of
+the partner of his joys and the cause of his sorrows.
+
+When one person speaks to another the speaker causes certain vibrations
+in the air and these so stimulate the hearing apparatus that a series
+of nerve impulses are conveyed to the sensorium where the meaning of
+these signals is unconsciously interpreted.
+
+In wireless telegraphy the sender causes vibrations not in the air but
+in that all-pervading impalpable substance which fills all space and
+which we call the ether. These vibrations can reach out to a great
+distance and are capable of so affecting a receiving apparatus that
+signals are made, the movements of which can be interpreted into a
+distinct meaning and consequently into the messages of language.
+
+Let us briefly consider the underlying principles at work. When we
+cast a stone into a pool of water we observe that it produces a series
+of ripples which grow fainter and fainter the farther they recede from
+the centre, the initial point of the disturbance, until they fade
+altogether in the surrounding expanse of water. The succession of these
+ripples is what is known as _wave_ motion.
+
+When the clapper strikes the lip of a bell it produces a sound and
+sends a tremor out upon the air. The vibrations thus made are air
+waves.
+
+In the first of these cases the medium communicating the ripple or
+wavelet is the water. In the second case the medium which sustains the
+tremor and communicates the vibrations is the air.
+
+Let us now take the case of a third medium, the substance of which
+puzzled the philosophers of ancient time and still continues to puzzle
+the scientists of the present. This is the ether, that attenuated fluid
+which fills all inter-stellar space and all space in masses and between
+molecules and atoms not otherwise occupied by gross matter. When a
+lamp is lit the light radiates from it in all directions in a wave
+motion. That which transmits the light, the medium, is ether. By this
+means energy is conveyed from the sun to the earth, and scientists
+have calculated the speed of the ether vibrations called light at
+186,400 miles per second. Thus a beam of light can travel from the sun
+to the earth, a distance of between 92,000,000 and 95,000,000 miles
+(according to season), in a little over eight minutes.
+
+The fire messages sent by the ancients from hill to hill were ether
+vibrations. The greater the fires, the greater were the vibrations and
+consequently they carried farther to the receiver, which was the eye.
+If a signal is to be sent a great distance by light the source of that
+light must be correspondingly powerful in order to disturb the ether
+sufficiently. The same principle holds good in wireless telegraphy.
+If we wish to communicate to a great distance the ether must be
+disturbed in proportion to the distance. The vibrations that produce
+light are not sufficient in intensity to affect the ether in such a
+way that signals can be carried to a distance. Other disturbances,
+however, can be made in the ether, stronger than those which create
+light. If we charge a wire with an electric current and place a magnetic
+needle near it we find it moves the needle from one position to another.
+This effect is called an electro-magnetic disturbance in the ether.
+Again when we charge an insulated body with electricity we find that
+it attracts any light substance indicating a material disturbance in
+the ether. This is described as an electro-static disturbance or effect
+and it is upon this that wireless telegraphy depends for its operations.
+
+The late German physicist, Dr. Heinrich Hertz, Ph.D., was the first
+to detect electrical waves in the ether. He set up the waves in the
+ether by means of an electrical discharge from an induction coil. To
+do this he employed a very simple means. He procured a short length
+of wire with a brass knob at either end and bent around so as to form
+an almost complete circle leaving only a small air gap between the
+knobs. Each time there was a spark discharge from the induction coil,
+the experimenter found that a small electric spark also generated
+between the knobs of the wire loop, thus showing that electric waves
+were projected through the ether. This discovery suggested to scientists
+that such electric waves might be used as a means of transmitting
+signals to a distance through the medium of the ether without connecting
+wires.
+
+When Hertz discovered that electric waves crossed space he unconsciously
+became the father of the modern system of radio-telegraphy, and though
+he did not live to put or see any practical results from his wonderful
+discovery, to him in a large measure should be accorded the honor of
+blazoning the way for many of the intellectual giants who came after
+him. Of course those who went before him, who discovered the principles
+of the electric telegraph made it possible for the Hertzian waves to
+be utilized in wireless.
+
+It is easy to understand the wonders of wireless telegraphy when we
+consider that electric waves transverse space in exactly the same
+manner as light waves. When energy is transmitted with finite velocity
+we can think of its transference only in two ways: first by the actual
+transference of matter as when a stone is hurled from one place to
+another; second, by the propagation of energy from point to point
+through a medium which fills the space between two bodies. The body
+sending out energy disturbs the medium contiguous to it, which
+disturbance is communicated to adjacent parts of the medium and so the
+movement is propagated outward from the sending body through the medium
+until some other body is affected.
+
+A vibrating body sets up vibrations in another body, as for instance,
+when one tuning fork responds to the vibrations of another when both
+have the same note or are in tune.
+
+The transmission of messages by wireless telegraphy is effected in a
+similar way. The apparatus at the sending station sends out waves of
+a certain period through the ether and these waves are detected at the
+receiving station, by apparatus attuned to this wave length or period.
+
+The term electric radiation was first employed by Hertz to designate
+waves emitted by a Leyden jar or oscillator system of an induction
+coil, but since that time these radiations have been known as Hertzian
+waves. These waves are the underlying principles in wireless telegraphy.
+
+It was found that certain metal filings offered great resistance to
+the passage of an electric current through them but that this resistance
+was very materially reduced when electric waves fell upon the filings
+and remained so until the filings were shaken, thus giving time for
+the fact to be observed in an ordinary telegraphic instrument.
+
+The tube of filings through which the electric current is made to pass
+in wireless telegraphy is called a coherer signifying that the filings
+cohere or cling together under the influence of the electric waves.
+Almost any metal will do for the filings but it is found that a
+combination of ninety per cent. nickel and ten per cent. silver answers
+the purpose best.
+
+The tube of the coherer is generally of glass but any insulating
+substance will do; a wire enters at each end and is attached to little
+blocks of metal which are separated by a very small space. It is into
+this space the filings are loosely filled.
+
+Another form of coherer consists of a glass tube with small carbon
+blocks or plugs attached to the ends of the wires and instead of the
+metal filings there is a globule of mercury between the plugs. When
+electric waves fall upon this coherer, the mercury coheres to the
+carbon blocks, and thus forms a bridge for the battery current.
+
+Marconi and several others have from time to time invented many other
+kinds of detectors for the electrical waves. Nearly all have to serve
+the same purpose, viz., to close a local battery circuit when the
+electric waves fall upon the detector.
+
+There are other inventions on which the action is the reverse. These
+are called anti-coherers. One of the best known of these is a tube
+arranged in a somewhat similar manner to the filings tube but with two
+small blocks of tin, between which is placed a paste made up of alcohol,
+tin filings and lead oxide. In its normal state the paste allows the
+battery current to get across from one block to another, but when
+electric waves touch it a chemical action is produced which immediately
+breaks down the bridge and stops the electric waves, the paste resumes
+its normal condition and allows the battery current to pass again.
+Therefore by this arrangement the signals are made by a sudden breaking
+and making of the battery circuit.
+
+Then there is the magnetic detector. This is not so easy of explanation.
+When we take a piece of soft iron and continuously revolve it in front
+of a permanent magnet, the magnetic poles of the soft iron piece will
+keep changing their position at each half revolution. It requires a
+little time to effect this magnetic change which makes it appear as
+if a certain amount of resistance was being made against it. (If
+electric waves are allowed to fall upon the iron, resistance is
+completely eliminated, and the magnetic poles can change places
+instantly as it revolves.)
+
+From this we see that if we have a quickly changing magnetic field it
+will induce or set up an electric current in a neighboring coil of
+wire. In this way we can detect the changes in the magnetic field, for
+we can place a telephone receiver in connection with the coil of wire.
+
+In a modern wireless receiver of this kind it is found more convenient
+to replace the revolving iron piece by an endless band of soft iron
+wire. This band is kept passing in front of a permanent magnet, the
+magnetism of the wire tending to change as it passes from one pole to
+the other. This change takes place suddenly when the electric waves
+form the transmitting station, fall upon the receiving aerial conductor
+and are conducted round the moving wire, and as the band is passing
+through a coil of insulated wire attached to a telephone receiver,
+this sudden change in the magnetic field induces an electric current
+in the surrounding coil and the operator hears a sound in the telephone
+at his ear. The Morse code may thus be signalled from the distant
+transmitter.
+
+There are various systems of wireless telegraphy for the most part
+called after the scientists who developed or perfected them. Probably
+the foremost as well as the best known is that which bears the name
+of Marconi. A popular fallacy makes Marconi the discoverer of the
+wireless method. Marconi was the first to put the system on a commercial
+footing or business basis and to lead the way for its coming to the
+front as a mighty factor in modern progress. Of course, also, the honor
+of several useful inventions and additions to wireless apparatus must
+be given him. He started experimenting as far back as 1895 when but
+a mere boy. In the beginning he employed the induction coil, Morse
+telegraph key, batteries, and vertical wire for the transmission of
+signals, and for their reception the usual filings coherer of nickel
+with a very small percentage of silver, a telegraph relay, batteries
+and a vertical wire. In the Marconi system of the present time there
+are many forms of coherers, also the magnetic detector and other
+variations of the original apparatus. Other systems more or less
+prominent are the Lodge-Muirhead of England, Braun-Siemens of Germany
+and those of DeForest and Fessenden of America. The electrolytic
+detector with the paste between the tin blocks belongs to the system
+of DeForest. Besides these the names of Popoff, Jackson, Armstrong,
+Orling, Lepel, and Poulsen stand high in the wireless world.
+
+A serious drawback to the operations of wireless lies in the fact that
+the stations are liable to get mixed up and some one intercept the
+messages intended for another, but this is being overcome by the
+adoption of a special system of wave lengths for the different wireless
+stations and by the use of improved apparatus.
+
+In the early days it was quite a common occurrence for the receivers
+of one system to reply to the transmitters of a rival system. There
+was an all-round mix-up and consequently the efficiency of wireless
+for practical purposes was for a good while looked upon with more or
+less suspicion. But as knowledge of wave motions developed and the
+laws of governing them were better understood, the receiver was "tuned"
+to respond to the transmitter, that is, the transmitter was made to
+set up a definite rate of vibrations in the ether and the receiver
+made to respond to this rate, just like two tuning forks sounding the
+same note.
+
+In order to set up as energetic electric waves as possible many methods
+have been devised at the transmitting stations. In some methods a wire
+is attached to one of the two metal spheres between which the electric
+charge takes place and is carried up into the air for a great height,
+while to the second sphere another wire is connected and which leads
+into the earth. Another method is to support a regular network of wires
+from strong steel towers built to a height of two hundred feet or more.
+
+Long distance transmission by wireless was only made possible by
+grounding one of the conductors in the transmitter. The Hertzian waves
+were provided without any earth connection and radiated into space in
+all directions, rapidly losing force like the disappearing ripples on
+a pond, whereas those set up by a grounded transmitter with the
+receiving instrument similarly connected to earth, keep within the
+immediate neighborhood of the earth.
+
+For instance up to about two hundred miles a storage battery and
+induction coil are sufficient to produce the necessary ether
+disturbance, but when a greater distance is to be spanned an engine
+and a dynamo are necessary to supply energy for the electric waves.
+
+In the most recent Marconi transmitter the current produced is no
+longer in the form of intermittent sparks, but is a true alternating
+current, which in general continues uniformly as long as the key is
+pressed down.
+
+There is no longer any question that wireless telegraphy is here to
+stay. It has passed the juvenile stage and is fast approaching a lusty
+adolescence which promises to be a source of great strength to the
+commerce of the world. Already it has accomplished much for its age.
+It has saved so many lives at sea that its installation is no longer
+regarded as a scientific luxury but a practical necessity on every
+passenger vessel. Practically every steamer in American waters is
+equipped with a wireless station. Even freight boats and tugs are
+up-to-date in this respect. Every ship in the American navy, including
+colliers and revenue cutters, carries wireless operators. So important
+indeed is it considered in the Navy department that a line of shore
+stations have been constructed from Maine on the Atlantic to Alaska
+on the Pacific.
+
+In a remarkably short interval wireless has come to exercise an
+important function in the marine service. Through the shore stations
+of the commercial companies, press despatches, storm warnings, weather
+reports and other items of interest are regularly transmitted to ships
+at sea. Captains keep in touch with one another and with the home
+office; wrecks, derelicts and storms are reported. Every operator sends
+out regular reports daily, so that the home office can tell the exact
+position of the vessel. If she is too far from land on the one side
+to be reached by wireless she is near enough on the other to come
+within the sphere of its operations.
+
+Weather has no effect on wireless, therefore the question of meteorology
+does not come into consideration. Fogs, rains, torrents, tempests,
+snowstorms, winds, thunder, lightning or any aerial disturbance
+whatsoever cannot militate against the sending or receiving of wireless
+messages as the ether permeates them all.
+
+Submarine and land telegraphy used to look on wireless, the youngest
+sister, as the Cinderella of their name, but she has surpassed both
+and captured the honors of the family. It was in 1898 that Marconi
+made his first remarkable success in sending messages from England to
+France. The English station was at South Foreland and the French near
+Boulogne. The distance was thirty-two miles across the British channel.
+This telegraphic communication without wires was considered a wonderful
+feat at the time and excited much interest.
+
+During the following year Marconi had so much improved his first
+apparatus that he was able to send out waves detected by receivers up
+to the one hundred mile limit.
+
+In 1900 communication was established between the Isle of Wight and
+the Lizard in Cornwall, a distance of two hundred miles.
+
+Up to this time the only appliances employed were induction coils
+giving a ten or twenty inch spark. Marconi and others perceived the
+necessity of employing greater force to penetrate the ether in order
+to generate stronger electrical waves. Oil and steam engines and other
+appliances were called into use to create high frequency currents and
+those necessitated the erection of large power stations. Several were
+erected at advantageous points and the wireless system was fairly
+established as a new agent of communication.
+
+In December, 1901, at St. John's, Newfoundland, Marconi by means of
+kites and balloons set up a temporary aerial wire in the hope of being
+able to receive a signal from the English station in Cornwall. He had
+made an arrangement with Poldhu station that on a certain date and at
+a fixed hour they should attempt the signal. The letter S, which in
+the Morse code consists of three successive dots, was chosen. Marconi
+feverishly awaited results. True enough on the day and at the time
+agreed upon the three dots were clicked off, the first signal from
+Europe to the American continent. Marconi with much difficulty set up
+other aerial wires and indubitably established the fact that it was
+possible to send electric waves across the Atlantic. He found, however,
+that waves in order to traverse three thousand miles and retain
+sufficient energy on their arrival to affect a telephonic wave-detecting
+device must be generated by no inordinate power.
+
+These experiments proved that if stations were erected of sufficient
+power transatlantic wireless could be successfully carried on. They
+gave an impetus to the erection of such stations.
+
+On December 21, 1902, from a station at Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Marconi
+sent the first message by wireless to England announcing success to
+his colleagues.
+
+The following January from Wellsfleet, Cape Cod, President Roosevelt
+sent a congratulatory message to King Edward. The electric waves
+conveying this message traveled 3,000 miles over the Atlantic following
+round an arc of forty-five degrees of the earth on a great circle, and
+were received telephonically, by the Marconi magnetic receiver at
+Poldhu.
+
+Most ships are provided with syntonic receivers which are tuned to
+long distance transmitters, and are capable of receiving messages up
+to distances of 3,000 miles or more. Wireless communication between
+Europe and America is no longer a possibility but an accomplishment,
+though as yet the system has not been put on a general business basis.
+[Footnote: As we go to press a new record has been established in
+wireless transmission. Marconi, in the Argentine Republic, near Buenos
+Ayres, has received messages from the station at Clifden, County Galway,
+Ireland, a distance of 5,600 miles. The best previous record was made
+when the United States battleship _Tennessee_ in 1909 picked up a
+message from San Francisco when 4,580 miles distant.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+RADIUM
+
+  Experiments of Becquerel--Work of the Curies--Discovery of
+  Radium--Enormous Energy--Various Uses.
+
+
+Early in 1896 just a few months after Roentgen had startled the
+scientific world by the announcement of the discovery of the X-rays,
+Professor Henri Becquerel of the Natural History Museum in Paris
+announced another discovery which, if not as mysterious, was more
+puzzling and still continues a puzzle to a great degree to the present
+time. Studying the action of the salts of a rare and very heavy mineral
+called uranium Becquerel observed that their substances give off an
+invisible radiation which, like the Roentgen rays, traverse metals and
+other bodies opaque to light, as well as glass and other transparent
+substances. Like most of the great discoveries it was the result of
+accident. Becquerel had no idea of such radiations, had never thought
+of their possibility.
+
+In the early days of the Roentgen rays there were many facts which
+suggested that phosphorescence had something to do with the production
+of these rays It then occurred to several French physicists that X-rays
+might be produced if phosphorescent substances were exposed to sunlight.
+Becquerel began to experiment with a view to testing this supposition.
+He placed uranium on a photographic plate which had first been wrapped
+in black paper in order to screen it from the light. After this plate
+had remained in the bright sunlight for several hours it was removed
+from the paper covering and developed. A slight trace of photographic
+action was found at those parts of the plate directly beneath the
+uranium just as Becquerel had expected. From this it appeared evident
+that rays of some kind were being produced that were capable of passing
+through black paper. Since the X-rays were then the only ones known
+to possess the power to penetrate opaque substances it seemed as though
+the problem of producing X-rays by sunlight was solved. Then came the
+fortunate accident. After several plates had been prepared for exposure
+to sunlight a severe storm arose and the experiments had to be abandoned
+for the time being. At the end of several days work was again resumed,
+but the plates had been lying so long in the darkroom that they were
+deemed almost valueless and it was thought that there would not be
+much use in trying to use them. Becquerel was about to throw them away,
+but on second consideration thinking that some action might have
+possibly taken place in the dark, he resolved to try them. He developed
+them and the result was that he obtained better pictures than ever
+before. The exposure to sunlight which had been regarded as essential
+to the success of the former experiments had really nothing at all to
+do with the matter, the essential thing was the presence of uranium
+and the photographic effects were not due to X-rays but to the rays
+or emanations which Becquerel had thus discovered and which bear his
+name.
+
+There were many tedious and difficult steps to take before even our
+present knowledge, incomplete as it is, could be reached. However,
+Becquerel's fortunate accident of the plate developing was the beginning
+of the long series of experiments which led to the discovery of radium
+which already has revolutionized some of the most fundamental
+conceptions of physics and chemistry.
+
+It is remarkable that we owe the discovery of this wonderful element
+to a woman, Mme. Sklodowska Curie, the wife of a French professor and
+physicist. Mme. Curie began her work in 1897 with a systematic study
+of several minerals containing uranium and thorium and soon discovered
+the remarkable fact that there was some agent present more strongly
+radio-active than the metal uranium itself. She set herself the task
+of finding out this agent and in conjunction with her husband, Professor
+Pierre Curie, made many tests and experiments. Finally in the ore of
+pitchblende they found not only one but three substances highly
+radio-active. Pitchblende or uraninite is an intensely black mineral
+of a specific gravity of 9.5 and is found in commercial quantities in
+Bohemia, Cornwall in England and some other localities. It contains
+lead sulphide, lime silica, and other bodies.
+
+To the radio-active substance which accompanied the bismuth extracted
+from pitchblende the Curies gave the name _Polonium_. To that which
+accompanied barium taken from the same ore they called _Radium_ and to
+the substance which was found among the rare earths of the pitchblende
+Debierne gave the name _Actinium_.
+
+None of these elements have been isolated, that is to say, separated
+in a pure state from the accompanying ore. Therefore, _pure radium_
+is a misnomer, though we often hear the term used. [Footnote: Since
+the above was written Madame Curie has announced to the Paris Academy
+of Sciences that she has succeeded in obtaining pure radium. In
+conjunction with Professor Debierne she treated a decegramme of bromide
+of radium by electrolytic process, getting an amalgam from which was
+extracted the metallic radium by distillation.] All that has been
+obtained is some one of its simpler salts or compounds and until
+recently even these had not been prepared in pure form. The commonest
+form of the element, which in itself is very far from common, is what
+is known to chemistry as chloride of radium which is a combination of
+chlorin and radium. This is a grayish white powder, somewhat like
+ordinary coarse table salt. To get enough to weigh a single grain
+requires the treatment of 1,200 pounds of pitchblende.
+
+The second form of radium is as a bromide. In this form it costs $5,000
+a grain and could a pound be obtained its value would be
+three-and-a-half million dollars.
+
+Radium, as we understand it in any of its compounds, can communicate
+its property of radio-activity to other bodies. Any material when
+placed near radium becomes radio-active and retains such activity for
+a considerable time after being removed. Even the human body takes on
+this excited activity and this sometimes leads to annoyances as in
+delicate experiments the results may be nullified by the element acting
+upon the experimenter's person.
+
+Despite the enormous amount of energy given off by radium it seems not
+to change in itself, there is no appreciable loss in weight nor
+apparently any microscopic or chemical change in the original body.
+Professor Becquerel has stated that if a square centimeter of surface
+was covered by chemically pure radium it would lose but one thousandth
+of a milligram in weight in a million years' time.
+
+Radium is a body which gives out energy continuously and spontaneously.
+This liberation of energy is manifested in the different effects of
+its radiation and emanation, and especially in the development of heat.
+Now, according to the most fundamental principles of modern science,
+the universe contains a certain definite provision of energy which can
+appear under various forms, but which cannot be increased. According
+to Sir Oliver Lodge every cubic millimeter of ether contains as much
+energy as would be developed by a million horse power station working
+continuously far forty thousand years. This assertion is probably based
+on the fact that every corpuscle in the ether vibrates with the speed
+of light or about 186,000 miles a second.
+
+It was formerly believed that the atom was the smallest sub-division
+in nature. Scientists held to the atomic theory for a long time, but
+at last it has been exploded, and instead of the atom being primary
+and indivisible we find it a very complex affair, a kind of miniature
+solar system, the centre of a varied attraction of molecules, corpuscles
+and electrons. Had we held to the atomic theory and denied smaller
+sub-divisions of matter there would be no accounting for the emissions
+of radium, for as science now believes these emissions are merely the
+expulsion of millions of electrons.
+
+Radium gives off three distinct types of rays named after the first
+three letters of the Greek alphabet--Alpha, Beta, Gamma--besides a
+gas emanation as does thorium which is a powerfully radio-active
+substance. The Alpha rays constitute ninety-nine per cent, of all the
+rays and consist of positively electrified particles. Under the
+influence of magnetism they can be deflected. They have little
+penetrative power and are readily absorbed in passing through a sheet
+of paper or through a few inches of air.
+
+The Beta rays consist of negatively charged particles or corpuscles
+approximately one thousandth the size of those constituting the Alpha
+rays. They resemble cathode rays produced by an electrical discharge
+inside of a highly exhausted vacuum tube but work at a much higher
+velocity; they can be readily deflected by a magnet, they discharge
+electrified bodies, affect photographic plates, stimulate strongly
+phosphorescent bodies and are of high penetrative power.
+
+The radiations are a million times more powerful than those of uranium.
+They have many curious properties.
+
+If a photographic plate is placed in the vicinity of radium it is
+almost instantly affected if no screen intercepts the rays; with a
+screen the action is slower, but it still takes place even through
+thick folds, therefore, radiographs can be taken and in this way it
+is being utilized by surgery to view the anatomy, the internal organs,
+and locate bullets and other foreign substances in the system.
+
+A glass vessel containing radium spontaneously charges itself with
+electricity. If the glass has a weak spot, a scratch say, an electric
+spark is produced at that point and the vessel crumbles, just like a
+Leyden jar when overcharged.
+
+Radium liberates heat spontaneously and continuously. A solid salt of
+radium develops such an amount of heat that to every single gram there
+is an emission of one hundred calories per hour, in other words, radium
+can melt its weight in ice in the time of one hour.
+
+As a result of its emission of heat radium has always a temperature
+higher by several degrees than its surroundings.
+
+When a solution of a radium salt is placed in a closed vessel the
+radio-activity in part leaves the solution and distributes itself
+through the vessel, the sides of which become radio-active and luminous.
+
+Radium acts upon the chemical constituents of glass, porcelain and
+paper, giving them a violet tinge, changes white phosphorous into
+yellow, oxygen into ozone and produces many other curious chemical
+changes.
+
+We have said that it can serve the surgeon in physical examinations
+of the body after the manner of X-rays. It has not, however, been much
+employed in this direction owing to its scarcity and prohibitive price.
+It has given excellent results in the treatment of certain skin
+diseases, in cancer, etc. However it can have very baneful effects on
+animal organisms. It has produced paralysis and death in dogs, cats,
+rabbits, rats, guinea-pigs and other animals, and undoubtedly it might
+affect human beings in a similar way. Professor Curie said that a
+single gram of chemically pure radium would be sufficient to destroy
+the life of every man, woman and child in Paris providing they were
+separately and properly exposed to its influence.
+
+Radium destroys the germinative power of seeds and retards the growth
+of certain forms of life, such as larvae, so that they do not pass
+into the chrysalis and insect stages of development, but remain in the
+state of larvae.
+
+At a certain distance it causes the hair of mice to fall out, but on
+the contrary at the same distance it increases the hair or fur on
+rabbits.
+
+It often produces severe burns on the hands and other portions of the
+body too long exposed to its activity.
+
+It can penetrate through gases, liquids and all ordinary solids, even
+through many inches of the hardest steel. On a comparatively short
+exposure it has been known to partially paralyze an electric charged
+bar.
+
+Heat nor cold do not affect its radioactivity in the least. It gives
+off but little light, its luminosity being largely due to the
+stimulation of the impurities in the radium by the powerful but
+invisible radium rays.
+
+Radium stimulates powerfully various mineral and chemical substances
+near which it is placed. It is an infallible test of the genuineness
+of the diamond. The genuine diamond phosphoresces strongly when brought
+into juxtaposition, but the paste or imitation one glows not at all.
+
+It is seen that the study of the properties of radium is of great
+interest. This is true also of the two other elements found in the
+ores of uranium and thorium, viz., polonium and actinium. Polonium,
+so-called, in honor of the native land of Mme. Curie, is just as active
+as radium when first extracted from the pitchblende but its energy
+soon lessens and finally it becomes inert, hence there has been little
+experimenting or investigation. The same may be said of actinium.
+
+The process of obtaining radium from pitchblende is most tedious and
+laborious and requires much patience. The residue of the pitchblende
+from which uranium has been extracted by fusion with sodium carbonate
+and solution in dilute sulphuric acid, contains the radium along with
+other metals, and is boiled with concentrated sodium carbonate solution,
+and the solution of the residue in hydrochloric acid precipitated with
+sulphuric acid. The insoluble barium and radium sulphates, after being
+converted into chlorides or bromides, are separated by repeated
+fractional crystallization.
+
+One kilogram of impure radium bromide is obtained from a ton of
+pitchblende residue after processes continued for about three months
+during which time, five tons of chemicals and fifty tons of rinsing
+water are used.
+
+As has been said the element has never been isolated or separated in
+its metallic or pure state and most of the compounds are impure. Radium
+banks have been established in London, Paris and New York.
+
+Whenever radium is employed in surgery for an operation about fifty
+milligrams are required at least and the banks let out the amount for
+about $200 a day. If purchased the price for this amount would be
+$4,000.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+MOVING PICTURES
+
+  Photographing Motion--Edison's Kinetoscope--Lumiere's
+  Cinematographe--Before the Camera--The Mission of the Moving
+  Picture.
+
+
+Few can realize the extent of the field covered by moving pictures.
+In the dual capacity of entertainment and instruction there is not a
+rival in sight. As an instructor, science is daily widening the sphere
+of the motion picture for the purpose of illustration. Films are rapidly
+superseding text books in many branches. Every department capable of
+photographic demonstration is being covered by moving pictures.
+Negatives are now being made of the most intricate surgical operations
+and these are teaching the students better than the witnessing of the
+real operations, for at the critical moment of the operation the picture
+machine can be stopped to let the student view over again the way it
+is accomplished, whereas at the operating table the surgeon must go
+on with his work to try to save life and cannot explain every step in
+the process of the operation. There is no doubt that the moving picture
+machine will perform a very important part in the future teaching of
+surgery.
+
+In the naturalist's domain of science it is already playing a very
+important part. A device for micro-photography has now been perfected
+in connection with motion machines whereby things are magnified to a
+great degree. By this means the analysis of a substance can be better
+illustrated than any way else. For instance a drop of water looks like
+a veritable Zoo with terrible looking creatures wiggling and wriggling
+through it, and makes one feel as if he never wanted to drink water
+again.
+
+The moving picture in its general phase is entertainment and instruction
+rolled into one and as such it has superseded the theatre. It is
+estimated that at the present time in America there are upwards of
+20,000 moving picture shows patronized daily by almost ten million
+people. It is doubtful if the theatre attendance at the best day of
+the winter season reaches five millions.
+
+The moving picture in importance is far beyond the puny functions of
+comedy and tragedy. The grotesque farce of vaudeville and the tawdry
+show which only appeals to sentiment at highest and often to the base
+passions at lowest.
+
+Despite prurient opposition it is making rapid headway. It is entering
+very largely into the instructive and the entertaining departments of
+the world's curriculum. Millions of dollars are annually expended in
+the production of films. Companies of trained and practiced actors are
+brought together to enact pantomimes which will concentrate within the
+space of a few minutes the most entertaining and instructive incidents
+of history and the leading happenings of the world.
+
+At all great events, no matter where transpiring, the different moving
+picture companies have trained men at the front ready with their cameras
+to "catch" every incident, every movement even to the wink of an
+eyelash, so that the "stay-at-homes" can see the _show_ as well, and
+with a great deal more comfort than if they had traveled hundreds,
+or even thousands, of miles to be present in _propria persona_.
+
+How did moving pictures originate? What and when were the beginning?
+It is popularly believed that animated pictures had their inception
+with Edison who projected the biograph in 1887, having based it on
+that wonderful and ingenious toy, the Zoetrope. Long before 1887,
+however, several men of inventive faculties had turned their attention
+to a means of giving apparent animation to pictures. The first that
+met with any degree of success was Edward Muybridge, a photographer
+of San Francisco. This was in 1878. A revolution had been brought about
+in photography by the introduction of the instantaneous process. By
+the use of sensitive films of gelatine bromide of silver emulsion the
+time required for the action of ordinary daylight in producing a
+photograph had been reduced to a very small fraction of a second.
+Muybridge utilized these films for the photographic analysis of animal
+motion. Beside a race-track he placed a battery of cameras, each camera
+being provided with a spring shutter which was controlled by a thread
+stretched across the track. A running horse broke each thread the
+moment he passed in front of the camera and thus twenty or thirty
+pictures of him were taken in close succession within one or two seconds
+of time. From the negatives secured in this way a series of positives
+were obtained in proper order on a strip of sensitized paper. The strip
+when examined by means of the Zoetrope furnished a reproduction of the
+horse's movements.
+
+The Zoetrope was a toy familiar to children; it was sometimes called
+the wheel of life. It was a contrivance consisting of a cylinder some
+ten inches wide, open at the top, around the lower and interior rim
+of which a series of related pictures were placed. The cylinder was
+then rapidly rotated and the spectator looking through the vertical
+narrow slits on its outer surface, could fancy that the pictures inside
+were moving.
+
+Muybridge devised an instrument which he called a Zoopraxiscope for
+the optical projection of his zoetrope photographs. The succession of
+positives was arranged in proper order upon a glass disk about 18
+inches in diameter near its circumference. This disk was mounted
+conveniently for rapid revolution so that each picture would pass in
+front of the condenser of an optical lantern. The difficulties involved
+in the preparation of the disk pictures and in the manipulation of the
+zoopraxiscope prevented the instrument from attracting much attention.
+However, artistically speaking, it was the forerunner of the numerous
+"graphs" and "scopes" and moving picture machines of the present day.
+
+It was in 1887 that Edison conceived an idea of associating with his
+phonograph, which had then achieved a marked success, an instrument
+which would reproduce to the eye the effect of motion by means of a
+swift and graded succession of pictures, so that the reproduction of
+articulate sounds as in the phonograph, would be accompanied by the
+reproduction of the motion naturally associated with them.
+
+The principle of the instrument was suggested to Edison by the zoetrope,
+and of course, he well knew what Muybridge had accomplished in the
+line of motion pictures of animals almost ten years previously. Edison,
+however, did not employ a battery of cameras as Muybridge had done,
+but devised a special form of camera in which a long strip of sensitized
+film was moved rapidly behind a lens provided with a shutter, and so
+arranged as to alternately admit and cut off the light from the moving
+object. He adjusted the mechanism so that there were 46 exposures a
+second, the film remaining stationary during the momentary time of
+exposure, after which it was carried forward far enough to bring a new
+surface into the proper position. The time of the shifting was about
+one-tenth of that allowed for exposure, so that the actual time of
+exposure was about the one-fiftieth of a second. The film moved,
+reckoning shiftings and stoppages for exposures, at an average speed
+of a little more than a foot per second, so that a length of film of
+about fifty feet received between 700 and 800 impressions in a circuit
+of 40 seconds.
+
+Edison named his first instrument the kinetoscope. It came out in 1893.
+It was hailed with delight at the time and for a short period was much
+in demand, but soon new devices came into the field and the kinetoscope
+was superseded by other machines bearing similar names with a like
+signification.
+
+A variety of cameras was invented. One consisted of a film-feeding
+mechanism which moves the film step by step in the focus of a single
+lens, the duration of exposure being from twenty to twenty-five times
+as great as that necessary to move an unexposed portion of the film
+into position. No shutter was employed. As time passed many other
+improvements were made. An ingenious Frenchman named Lumiere, came
+forward with his Cinematographe which for a few years gave good
+satisfaction, producing very creditable results. Success, however, was
+due more to the picture ribbons than to the mechanism employed to feed
+them.
+
+Of other moving pictures machines we have had the vitascope, vitagraph,
+magniscope, mutoscope, panoramagraph, theatograph and scores of others
+all derived from the two Greek roots _grapho_ I write and _scopeo_ I
+view.
+
+The vitascope is the principal name now in use for moving picture
+machines. In all these instruments in order that the film projection
+may be visible to an audience it is necessary to have a very intense
+light. A source of such light is found in the electric focusing lamp.
+At or near the focal point of the projecting lantern condenser the
+film is made to travel across the field as in the kinetoscope. A water
+cell in front of the condenser absorbs most of the heat and transmits
+most of the light from the arc lamp, and the small picture thus highly
+illuminated is protected from injury. A projecting lens of rather short
+focus throws a large image of each picture on the screen, and the rapid
+succession of these completes the illusion of life-like motion.
+
+Hundreds of patents have been made on cameras, projecting lenses and
+machines from the days of the kinetoscope to the present time when
+clear-cut moving pictures portray life so closely and so well as almost
+to deceive the eye. In fact in many cases the counterfeit is taken for
+the reality and audiences as much aroused as if they were looking upon
+a scene of actual life. We can well believe the story of the Irishman,
+who on seeing the stage villain abduct the young lady, made a rush at
+the canvas yelling out,--"Let me at the blackguard and I'll murder
+him."
+
+Though but fifteen years old the moving picture industry has sent out
+its branches into all civilized lands and is giving employment to an
+army of thousands. It would be hard to tell how many mimic actors and
+actresses make a living by posing for the camera; their name is legion.
+Among them are many professionals who receive as good a salary as on
+the stage.
+
+Some of the large concerns both in Europe and America at times employ
+from one hundred to two hundred hands and even more to illustrate some
+of the productions. They send their photographers and actors all over
+the world for settings. Most of the business, however, is done near
+home. With trapping and other paraphernalia a stage setting can be
+effected to simulate almost any scene.
+
+Almost anything under the sun can be enacted in a moving picture studio,
+from the drowning of a cat to the hanging of a man; a horse race or
+fire alarm is not outside the possible and the aviator has been depicted
+"flying" high in the heavens.
+
+The places where the pictures are prepared must be adapted for the
+purpose. They are called studios and have glass roofs and in most of
+them a good section of the walls are also glass. The floor space is
+divided into sections for the setting or staging of different
+productions, therefore several representations can take place at the
+same time before the eyes of the cameras. There are "properties" of
+all kinds from the ragged garments of the beggar to kingly ermine and
+queenly silks. Paste diamonds sparkle in necklaces, crowns and tiaras,
+seeming to rival the scintillations of the Kohinoor.
+
+At the first, objections were made to moving pictures on the ground
+that in many cases they had a tendency to cater to the lower instincts,
+that subjects were illustrated which were repugnant to the finer
+feelings and appealed to the gross and the sensual. Burglaries, murders
+and wild western scenes in which the villain-heroes triumphed were
+often shown and no doubt these had somewhat of a pernicious influence
+on susceptible youth. But all such pictures have for the most part
+been eliminated and there is a strict taboo on anything with a degrading
+influence or partaking of the brutal. Prize fights are often barred.
+In many large cities there is a board of censorship to which the
+different manufacturing firms must submit duplicates. This board has
+to pass on all the films before they are released and if the pictures
+are in any way contrary to morals or decency or are in any respect
+unfit to be displayed before the public, they cannot be put in
+circulation. Thus are the people protected and especially the youth
+who should be permitted to see nothing that is not elevating or not
+of a nature to inspire them with high and noble thoughts and with
+ambitions to make the world better and brighter.
+
+Let us hope that the future mission of the moving picture will be along
+educational and moral lines tending to uplift and ennoble our boys and
+girls so that they may develop into a manhood and womanhood worthy the
+history and best traditions of our country.
+
+     *       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Wizard of Menlo Park has just succeeded after two years of hard
+application to the experiment in giving us the talking picture, a real
+genuine talking picture, wholly independent of the old device of having
+the actors talk behind the screen when the films were projected. By
+a combination of the phonograph and the moving picture machine working
+in perfect synchronism the result is obtained. Wires are attached to
+the mechanism of both the machines, the one behind the screen and the
+one in front, in such a way that the two are operated simultaneously
+so that when a film is projected a corresponding record on the
+phonograph acts in perfect unison supplying the voice suitable to the
+moving action. Men and women pass along the canvas, act, talk, laugh,
+cry and "have their being" just as in real life. Of course, they are
+immaterial, merely the reflection of films, but the one hundred
+thousandth of an inch thick, yet they give forth oral sounds as
+creatures of flesh and blood. In fact every sound is produced
+harmoniously with the action on the screen. An iron ball is dropped
+and you hear its thud upon the floor, a plate is cracked and you can
+hear the cracking just the same as if the material plate were broken
+in your presence. An immaterial piano appears upon the screen and a
+fleshless performer discourses airs as real as those heard on Broadway.
+Melba and Tettrazini and Caruso and Bonci appear before you and warble
+their nightingale notes, as if behind the footlights with a galaxy of
+beauty, wealth and fashion before them for an audience. True it is not
+even their astral bodies you are looking at, only their pictured
+representations, but the magic of their voices is there all the same
+and there is such an atmosphere of realism about the representations
+that you can scarcely believe the actors are not present in _propriae
+personae_.
+
+Mr. Edison had much study and labor of experiment in bringing his
+device to a successful issue. The greatest obstacle he had to overcome
+was in getting a phonograph that could "hear" far enough. At the
+beginning of the experiments the actor had to talk directly into the
+horn, which made the right kind of pictures impossible to get. Bit by
+bit, however, a machine was perfected which could "hear" so well that
+the actor could move at his pleasure within a radius of twenty feet.
+That is the machine that is being used now. This new combination of
+the moving picture machine and the phonograph Edison has named the
+_kinetophone_. By it he has made possible the bringing of grand
+opera into the hamlets of the West, and through it also our leading
+statesmen may address audiences on the mining camps and the wilds of
+the prairies where their feet have never trodden.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+SKY-SCRAPERS AND HOW THEY ARE BUILT
+
+  Evolution of the Sky-scraper--Construction--New York's Giant
+  Buildings--Dimensions.
+
+
+The sky-scraper is an architectural triumph, but at the same time it
+is very much of a commercial enterprise, and it is indigenous,
+native-born to American soil. It had its inception here, particularly
+in New York and Chicago. The tallest buildings in the world are in New
+York. The most notable of these, the Metropolitan Life Insurance
+Building with fifty stories towering up to a height of seven hundred
+feet and three inches, has been the crowning achievement of
+architectural art, the highest building yet erected by man.
+
+How is it possible to erect such building--how is it possible to erect
+a sky-scraper at all? A partial answer may be given in one
+word--_steel_.
+
+Generally speaking the method of building all these huge structures
+is much the same. Massive piers or pillars are erected, inside which
+are usually strong steel columns; crosswise from column to column great
+girders are placed forming a base for the floor, and then upon the
+first pillars are raised other steel columns slightly decreased in
+size, upon which girders are again fixed for the next floor; and so
+on this process is continued floor after floor. There seems no reason
+why buildings should not be reared like this for even a hundred stories,
+provided the foundations are laid deep enough and broad enough.
+
+The walls are not really the support of the buildings. The essential
+elements are the columns and girders of steel forming the skeleton
+framework of the whole. The masonry may assist, but the piers and
+girders carry the principal weight. If, therefore, everything depends
+upon these piers, which are often of steel and masonry combined, the
+immense importance will be seen of basing them upon adequate
+foundations. And thus it comes about that to build high we must dig
+deep, which fact may be construed as an aphorism to fit more subjects
+than the building of sky-scrapers.
+
+To attempt to build a sky-scraper without a suitable foundation would
+be tantamount to endeavoring to build a house on a marsh without
+draining the marsh,--it would count failure at the very beginning. The
+formation depends on the height, the calculated weight the frame work
+will carry, the amount of air pressure, the vibrations from the running
+of internal machines and several other details of less importance than
+those mentioned, but of deep consequence in the aggregate.
+
+Instead of being carried on thick walls spread over a considerable
+area of ground, the sky-scrapers are carried wholly on steel columns.
+This concentrates many hundred tons of load and develops pressure which
+would crush the masonry and cause the structures to penetrate soft
+earth almost as a stone sinks in water.
+
+In the first place the weight of the proposed building and contents
+is estimated, then the character of the soil determined to a depth of
+one hundred feet if necessary. In New York the soil is treacherous and
+difficult, there are underground rivers in places and large deposits
+of sand so that to get down to rock bottom or pan is often a very hard
+undertaking.
+
+Generally speaking the excavations are made to about a depth of thirty
+feet. A layer of concrete a foot or two thick is spread over the bottom
+of the pit and on it are bedded rows of steel beams set close together.
+Across the middle of these beams deep steel girders are placed on which
+the columns are erected. The heavy weight is thus spread out by the
+beams, girders and concrete so as to cause a reduced uniform pressure
+on the soil. Cement is filled in between the beams and girders and
+packed around them to seal them thoroughly against moisture; then clean
+earth or sand is rammed in up to the column bases and covered with the
+concrete of the cellar floor.
+
+In some cases the foundation loads are so numerous that nothing short
+of masonry piers on solid rock will safely sustain them. To accomplish
+this very strong airtight steel or wooden boxes with flat tops and no
+bottoms are set on the pier sites at ground water level and pumped
+full of compressed air while men enter them and excavating the soil,
+undermine them, so they sink, until they land on the rock and are
+filled solid with concrete to form the bases of the foundation piers.
+
+On the average the formation should have a resisting power of two tons
+to the square foot, dead load. By dead load is meant the weight of the
+steelwork, floors and walls, as distinguished from the office furniture
+and occupants which come under the head of living load. Some engineers
+take into consideration the pressure of both dead and live loads gauging
+the strength of the foundation, but the dead load pressure of 2 tons
+to the square foot will do for the reckoning, for as a live load only
+exerts a pressure of 60 lbs. to the square foot it may be included in
+the former.
+
+The columns carry the entire weights including dead and live loads and
+the wind pressure, into the footings, these again distributing the
+loads on the soil. The aim is to have an equal pressure per square
+foot of soil at the same time, for all footings, thus insuring an even
+settlement. The skeleton construction now almost wholly consists of
+wrought steel. At first cast-iron and wrought-iron were used but it
+was found they corroded too quickly.
+
+There are two classes of steel construction, the cage and the skeleton.
+In the cage construction the frame is strengthened for wind stresses
+and the walls act as curtains. In the skeleton, the frame carries only
+the vertical loads and depends upon the walls for its wind bracing.
+It has been found that the wind pressure is about 30 lbs. for every
+square foot of exposed surface.
+
+The steel columns reach from the foundation to the top, riveted together
+by plates and may be extended to an indefinite height. In fact there
+is no engineering limit to the height.
+
+The outside walls of the sky-scraper vary in thickness with the height
+of the building and also vary in accordance with the particular kind
+of construction, whether cage or skeleton. If of the cage variety, the
+walls, as has been said, act as curtains and consequently they are
+thinner than in the skeleton type of construction. In the latter case
+the walls have to resist the wind pressure unsupported by the steel
+frame and therefore they must be of a sufficient width. Brick and
+terra-cotta blocks are used for construction generally.
+
+Terra-cotta blocks are also much used in the flooring, and for this
+purpose have several advantages over other materials; they are
+absolutely fire-proof, they weigh less per cubic foot than any other
+kind of fire-proof flooring and they are almost sound-proof. They do
+equally well for flat and arched floors.
+
+It is of the utmost importance that the sky-scraper be absolutely
+fire-proof from bottom to top. These great buzzing hives of industry
+house at one time several thousand human beings and a panic would
+entail a fearful calamity, and, moreover, their height places the upper
+stories beyond reach of a water-tower and the pumping engines of the
+street.
+
+The sky-scrapers of to-day are as fireproof as human ingenuity and
+skill can make them, and this is saying much; in fact, it means that
+they cannot burn. Of course fires can break out in rooms and apartments
+in the manufacturing of chemicals or testing experiments, etc., but
+these are easily confined to narrow limits and readily extinguished
+with the apparatus at hand. Steel columns will not burn, but if exposed
+to heat of sufficient degree they will warp and bend and probably
+collapse, therefore they should be protected by heat resisting agents.
+Nothing can be better than terra-cotta and concrete for this purpose.
+When terra-cotta blocks are used they should be at least 2 inches thick
+with an air space running through them. Columns are also fire-proofed
+by wrapping expanded metal or other metal lathing around them and
+plastering.
+
+Then a furring system is put on and another layer of metal, lathing
+and plastering. This if well done is probably safer than the layer of
+hollow tile.
+
+The floor beams should be entirely covered with terra-cotta blocks or
+concrete, so that no part of them is left exposed. As most office
+trimmings are of wood care should be taken that all electric wires are
+well insulated. Faulty installation of dynamos, motors and other
+apparatus is frequently the cause of office fires.
+
+The lighting of a sky-scraper is a most elaborate arrangement. Some
+of them use as many lights as would well supply a good sized town. The
+Singer Building in New York has 15,000 incandescent lamps and it is
+safe to say the Metropolitan Life Insurance Building has more than
+twice this number as the floor area of the latter is 2-1/2 times as
+great. The engines and dynamos are in the basement and so fixed that
+their vibrations do not affect the building. As space is always limited
+in the basements of sky-scrapers direct connected engines and dynamos
+are generally installed instead of belt connected and the boilers
+operated under a high steam pressure. Besides delivering steam to the
+engines the boilers also supply it to a variety of auxiliary pumps,
+as boiler-feed, fire-pump, blow-off, tank-pump and pump for forcing
+water through the building.
+
+The heating arrangement of such a vast area as is covered by the floor
+space of a sky-scraper has been a very difficult problem but it has
+been solved so that the occupant of the twentieth story can receive
+an equal degree of heat with the one on the ground floor. Both hot
+water and steam are utilized. Hot water heating, however, is preferable
+to steam, as it gives a much steadier heat. The radiators arc
+proportioned to give an average temperature of 65 degrees F. in each
+room during the winter months. There are automatic regulating devices
+attached to the radiators, so if the temperature rises above or falls
+below a certain point the steam or hot water is automatically turned
+on or off. Some buildings are heated by the exhaust steam from the
+engines but most have boilers solely for the purpose.
+
+The sanitary system is another important feature. The supplying of
+water for wash-stands, the dispositions of wastes and the flushing of
+lavatories tax all the skill of the mechanical engineer. Several of
+these mighty buildings call for upwards of a thousand lavatories.
+
+In considering the sky-scraper we should not forget the role played
+by the electric elevator. Without it these buildings would be
+practically useless, as far as the upper stories are concerned. The
+labor of stair climbing would leave them untenanted. No one would be
+willing to climb ten, twenty or thirty flights and tackle a day's work
+after the exertion of doing so. To climb to the fiftieth story in such
+a manner would be well-nigh impossible or only possible by relays, and
+after one would arrive at the top he would be so physically exhausted
+that both mental and manual endeavor would be out of the question.
+Therefore the elevator is as necessary to the skyscraper as are doors
+and windows. Indeed were it not for the introduction of the elevator
+the business sections of our large cities would still consist of the
+five and six story structures of our father's time instead of the
+towering edifices which now lift their heads among the clouds.
+
+Regarded less than half a century ago as an unnecessary luxury the
+elevator to-day is an imperative necessity. Sky-scrapers are equipped
+with both express and local elevators. The express elevators do not
+stop until about the tenth floor is reached. They run at a speed of
+about ten feet per second. There are two types of elevators in general
+use, one lifting the car by cables from the top, and the other with
+a hydraulic plunger acting directly upon the bottom of the car. The
+former are operated either by electric motors or hydraulic cylinders
+and the latter by hydraulic rams, the cylinders extending the full
+height of the building into the ground.
+
+America is pre-eminently the land of the sky-scraper, but England and
+France to a degree are following along the same lines, though nothing
+as yet has been erected on the other side of the water to equal the
+towering triumphs of architectural art on this side. In no country in
+the world is space at such a premium as in New York City, therefore,
+New York _per se_ may be regarded as the true home of the tall building,
+although Chicago is not very much behind the Metropolis in this respect.
+
+As figures are more eloquent than words in description the following
+data of the two giant structures of the Western World may be
+interesting.
+
+The Singer Building at the corner of Broadway and Liberty Street, New
+York City, has a total height from the basement floor to the top of
+the flagstaff of 742 feet; the height from street to roof is 612 feet,
+1 inch. There are 41 stories. The weight of the steel in the entire
+building is 9,200 tons. It has 16 elevators, 5 steam engines, 5 dynamos,
+5 boilers and 28 steam pumps. The length of the steam and water piping
+is 5 miles. The cubical contents of the building comprise 66,950,000
+cubic feet, there are 411,000 square feet of floor area or about 9-1/2
+acres. The weight of the tower is 18,300 tons. Little danger from a
+collapse will be apprehended when it is learned that the columns are
+securely bolted and caissons which have been sunk to rock-bed 80 feet
+below the curb.
+
+The other campanile which has excited the wonder and admiration of the
+world is the colossal pile known as the Metropolitan Building. This
+occupies the entire square or block as we call it from 23rd St. to
+24th St. and from Madison to Fourth Avenue. It is 700 feet and 3 inches
+above the sidewalk and has 50 stories. The main building which has a
+frontage of 200 feet by 425 feet is ten stories in height. It is built
+in the early Italian renaissance style the materials being steel and
+marble. The Campanile is carried up in the same style and is also of
+marble. It stands on a base measuring 75 by 83 feet and the
+architectural treatment is chaste, though severe, but eminently
+agreeable to the stupendous proportions of the structure. The tower
+is quite different from that of the Singer Building. It has twelve
+wall and eight interior columns connected at every fourth floor by
+diagonal braces; these columns carry 1,800 pounds to the linear foot.
+The wind pressure calculated at the rate of 30 lbs. to the square foot
+is enormous and is provided for by deep wall girders and knee braces
+which transfer the strain to the columns and to the foundation. The
+average cross section of the tower is 75 by 85 feet, the floor space
+of the entire building is 1,080,000 square feet or about 25 acres.
+
+The tower of this surpassing cloud-piercing structure can be seen for
+many miles from the surrounding country and from the bay it looks like
+a giant sentinel in white watching the mighty city at its feet and
+proclaiming the ceaseless activity and progress of the Western World.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+OCEAN PALACES
+
+  Ocean Greyhounds--Present Day Floating Palaces--Regal
+  Appointments--Passenger Accommodation--Food Consumption--The One
+  Thousand Foot Boat.
+
+
+The strides of naval architecture and marine engineering have been
+marvelous within the present generation. To-day huge leviathans glide
+over the waves with a swiftness and safety deemed absolutely impossible
+fifty years ago.
+
+In view of the luxurious accommodations and princely surroundings to
+be found on the modern ocean palaces, it is interesting to look back
+now almost a hundred years to the time when the _Savannah_ was
+the first steamship to cross the Atlantic. True the voyage of this
+pioneer of steam from Savannah to Liverpool was not much of a success,
+but she managed to crawl across the sails very materially aiding the
+engines, and heralded the dawn of a new day in transatlantic travel.
+No other steamboat attempted the trip for almost twenty years after,
+until in 1838 the _Great Western_ made the run in fifteen days.
+This revolutionized water travel and set the whole world talking. It
+was the beginning of the passing of the sailing ship and was an event
+for rejoicing. In the old wooden hulks with their lazily flapping
+wings, waiting for a breeze to stir them, men and women and children
+huddled together like so many animals in a pen, had to spend weeks and
+months on the voyage between Europe and America. There was little or
+no room for sanitation, the space was crowded, deadly germs lurked in
+every cranny and crevice, and consequently hundreds died. To many
+indeed the sailing ship became a floating hearse.
+
+In those times, and they are not so remote, a voyage was dreaded as
+a calamity. Only necessity compelled the undertaking. It was not travel
+for pleasure, for pleasure under such circumstances and amid such
+surroundings was impossible. The poor emigrants who were compelled
+through stress and poverty to leave their homes for a foreign country
+feared not toil in a new land, but they feared the long voyage with
+its attending horrors and dangers. Dangerous it was, for most of the
+sailing vessels were unseaworthy and when a storm swept the waters,
+they were as children's toys, at the mercy of wind and wave. When the
+passenger stepped on board he always had the dread of a watery grave
+before him.
+
+How different to-day. Danger has been eliminated almost to the vanishing
+point and the mighty monsters of steel and oak now cut through the
+waves in storms and hurricanes with as much ease as a duck swims through
+a pond.
+
+From the time the _Great Western_ was launched, steamships sailing
+between American and English ports became an established institution.
+Soon after the _Great Western's_ first voyage a sturdy New England
+Quaker from Nova Scotia named Samuel Cunard went over to London to try
+and interest the British government in a plan to establish a line of
+steamships between the two countries. He succeeded in raising 270,000
+pounds, and built the _Britannia_, the first Cunard vessel to cross the
+Atlantic. This was in 1840. As ships go now she was a small craft
+indeed. Her gross tonnage was 1,154 and her horse power 750. She carried
+only first-class passengers and these only to the limit of one hundred.
+There was not much in the way of accommodation as the quarters were
+cramped, the staterooms small and the sanitation and ventilation
+defective. It was on the _Britannia_ that Charles Dickens crossed
+over to America in 1842 and he has given us in his usual style a pen
+picture of his impressions aboard. He stated that the saloon reminded
+him of nothing so much as of a hearse, in which a number of half-starved
+stewards attempted to warm themselves by a glimmering stove, and that
+the staterooms so-called were boxes in which the bunks were shelves
+spread with patches of filthy bed-clothing, somewhat after the style
+of a mustard plaster. This criticism must be taken with a little
+reservation. Dickens was a pessimist and always censorious and as he
+had been feted and feasted with the fat of the land, he expected that
+he should have been entertained in kingly quarters on shipboard. But
+because things did not come up to his expectations he dipped his pen
+in vitriol and began to criticise.
+
+At any rate the _Britannia_ in her day was looked upon as the _ne plus
+ultra_ in naval architecture, the very acme of marine engineering. The
+highest speed she developed was eight and one-half knots or about nine
+and three-quarters miles an hour. She covered the passage from Liverpool
+to Boston in fourteen and one-half days, which was then regarded as a
+marvellous feat and one which was proclaimed throughout England with
+triumph.
+
+For a long time the _Britannia_ remained Queen of the Seas for speed,
+but in 1852 the Atlantic record was reduced to nine and a half days by
+the _Arctic_. In 1876 the _City of Paris_ cut down the time to eight
+days and four hours. Twelve years later in 1879 the _Arizona_ still
+further reduced it to seven days and eight hours. In 1881 the _Alaska_,
+the first vessel to receive the title of "_Ocean Greyhound_," made the
+trip in six days and twenty-one hours; in 1885 the _Umbria_ bounded over
+in six days and two hours, in 1890 the _Teutonic_ of the White Star line
+came across in five days, eighteen hours and twenty-eight minutes, which
+was considered the limit for many years to come. It was not long
+however, until the Cunard lowered the colors of the White Star, when the
+_Lucania_ in 1893 brought the record down to five days and twelve
+hours. For a dozen years or so the limit of speed hovered round the
+five-and-a-half day mark, the laurels being shared alternately by the
+vessels of the Cunard and White Star Companies. Then the Germans entered
+the field of competition with steamers of from 14,500 to 20,000 tons
+register and from 28,000 to 40,000 horse power. The _Deutschland_
+soon began setting the pace for the ocean greyhounds, while other
+vessels of the North German Lloyd line that won transatlantic honors
+were the _Kaiser Wilhelm II., Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, Kronprinz
+Wilhelm and Kronprinzessin Cecilie_, all remarkably fast boats with
+every modern luxury aboard that science could devise. These vessels
+are equipped with wireless telegraphy, submarine signalling systems,
+water-tight compartments and every other safety appliance known to
+marine skill. The _Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse_ raised the standard
+of German supremacy in 1902 by making the passage from Cherbourg to
+Sandy Hook lightship in five days and fifteen hours.
+
+In 1909, however, the sister steamships _Mauretania_ and _Lusitania_ of
+the Cunard line lowered all previous ocean records, by making the trip
+in a little over four and a half days. They have been keeping up this
+speed to the present time, and are universally regarded as the fastest
+and best equipped steamships in the world,--the very last word in ocean
+travel. On her last mid-September voyage the _Mauretania_ has broken all
+ocean records by making the passage from Queenstown to New York in 4
+days 10 hours and 47 minutes. But they are closely pursued by the White
+Star greyhounds such as the _Oceanic_, the _Celtic_ and the _Cedric_,
+steamships of world wide fame for service, appointments, and equipment.
+Yet at the present writing the Cunard Company has another vessel on the
+stocks, to be named the _Falconia_ which in measurements will eclipse
+the other two and which they are confident will make the Atlantic trip
+inside four days.
+
+The White Star Company is also building two immense boats to be named
+the _Olympic_ and _Titanic_. They will be 840 feet in length and will be
+the largest ships afloat. However, it is said that freight and
+passenger-room is being more considered in the construction than
+speed and that they will aim to lower no records. Each will be able
+to accommodate 5,000 passengers besides a crew of 600.
+
+All the great liners of the present day may justly be styled ocean
+palaces, as far as luxuries and general appointments are concerned,
+but as the _Mauretania_ and _Lusitania_ are best known, a description of
+either of these will convey an idea to stay-at-homes of the regal
+magnificence and splendors of the floating hotels which modern science
+places at the disposal of the traveling public.
+
+Though sister ships and modeled on similar lines, the _Mauretania_ and
+_Lusitania_ differ somewhat in construction. Of the two the _Mauretania_
+is the more typical ship as well as the more popular. This modern
+triumph of the naval architect and marine engineer was built by the firm
+of Swan, Hunter & Co. at Wellsend on the Tyne in 1907. The following are
+her dimensions: Length over all 790 feet. Length between perpendiculars
+760 feet. Breadth 88 feet. Depth, moulded 60.5 feet. Gross tonnage
+32,000. Draught 33.5 feet. Displacement 38,000 tons.
+
+She has accommodation space for 563 first cabin, 500 second cabin, and
+1,300 third class passengers. She carries a crew of 390 engineers, 70
+sailors, 350 stewards, a couple of score of stewardesses, 50 cooks,
+the officers and captain, besides a maritime band, a dozen or so
+telephone and wireless telegraph operators, editor and printers for
+the wireless bulletin published on board and two attendants for the
+elevator.
+
+The type of engine is what is known as the Parsons Turbine. There are
+23 double ended and 2 single ended boilers. The engines develop 68,000
+horse power; they are fed by 192 furnaces; the heating surface is
+159,000 square feet; the grate surface is 4,060 square feet; the steam
+pressure is 195 lbs. to the square inch.
+
+The highest speed attained has been almost 26 knots or 30 miles an
+hour. At this rate the number of revolutions is 180 to the minute. The
+coal daily consumed by the fiery maw of the furnaces is enormous. On
+one trip between Liverpool and New York more than 7,000 tons is required
+which is a consumption of over 1,500 tons daily.
+
+There are nine decks, seven of which are above the water line. Corticine
+has been largely used for deck covering, instead of wood as it is much
+lighter. On the boat deck which extends over the greater part of the
+centre of the ship are located several of the beautiful _en suite_
+cabins. Abaft these at the forward end are the grand Entrance Hall,
+the Library, the Music-Room and the Lounging-Room and Smoking-Room
+for the first cabin passengers.
+
+There is splendid promenading space on the boat deck where passengers
+can exercise to their hearts' content and also indulge in games and
+sports with all the freedom of field life. Many life boats swing on
+davits and instead of being a hindrance or obstacle, act as shades
+from the sunshine and as breaks from the wind.
+
+In the space for first-class passengers are arranged a large number
+of cabins. What are known as the regal suites are on both port and
+starboard, and along each side of the main deck are more _en suite_
+rooms.
+
+On the shelter deck there are no first-class cabin quarters. At the
+forward end of this deck are the very powerful Napier engines for
+working the anchor gear. Abaft this on the starboard side is the general
+lounging room for third-class passengers, while on the port-side is
+their smoking room with a companion way leading to the third-class
+dining saloon below and to the third-class cabins on the main and lower
+decks. The third-class galleys are accommodated on the main deck house
+and close by is a set of the refrigerating machinery used in connection
+with the rooms for the storage of supplies for the kitchen department.
+The side of the ship for a considerable distance aft of this is plated
+up to the promenade deck level so that the third-class passengers have
+not only convenient rooms but a protected promenade. Abaft this
+promenade is another open one. Indeed the accommodations for the third
+class are as good as what the first-class were accustomed to on most
+of the liners some dozen years ago.
+
+To the left of the grand staircase on the deck house is a children's
+dining saloon and nursery.
+
+On the top deck are dining saloons for all three classes of passengers,
+that for the third being forward, for the first amidships and for the
+second near the stern; 470 first-class passengers can be seated at a
+time, 250 second class and more than 500 of the third class.
+
+The main deck is given up entirely to staterooms. The whole of the
+lower deck forward is also arranged for third-class staterooms. The
+firemen and other engine room and stokehold workers are located in
+rooms above the machinery with separate entrances and exits to and
+from their work. Promenade and exercise space is provided for them on
+the shelter deck which is fenced off from the space of the second and
+third class passenger. Amidships is a coal bunker with a compartment
+under the engines for the storage of supplies.
+
+The coal trimmers are accommodated alongside the engine casing and
+abaft this are the mailrooms with accommodation for the stewards and
+other helpers. The "orlop" or eighth deck is devoted entirely to
+machinery with coal bunkers on each side of the boilers to provide
+against the effect of collisions.
+
+The general scheme of color throughout the ship is pleasing and
+harmonious. The wood for the most part is oak and mahogany. There are
+over 50,000 square feet of oak in parquet flooring. All the carving
+and tracing is done in the wood, no superpositions or stucco work
+whatever being used to show reliefs.
+
+The grand stairway shows the Italian renaissance style of the 16th
+century; the panels are of French walnut; the carving of columns and
+pilasters is of various designs but the aggregate is pleasing in effect.
+
+The Library extends across the deck house, 33 by 56 feet; the walls
+of the deck house are bowed out to form bay windows. When you first
+enter the Library the effect is as though you were looking at shimmering
+marble, this is owing to the lightness of the panels which are sycamore
+stained in light gray. The mantelpiece is of white statuary marble.
+The great swing doors which admit you, have bevelled glass panels set
+in bronze casings. The chairs have mahogany frames done in light plush.
+
+The first class lounging room is probably the most artistic as well
+as the most sumptuous apartment in the ship. The panels are of beautiful
+ingrained mahogany dully polished a rich brown. The white ceiling is
+of simple design with boldly carved mouldings and is supported by
+columns embossed in gold of exquisite workmanship. Some of the panels
+are of curiously woven tapestries, the fruit of oriental looms.
+Chandeliers of beautiful design in rich bronze and crystal depend from
+the ceiling. The curtains, hanging with their soft folds against the
+dull gold of the carved curtainboxes, are of a charming cream silk and
+with their flower borders lend a tone both sumptuous and refined. The
+carpet is of a slender trellis design with bluish pink roses trailing
+over a pearl grey ground and forms a perfect foil to the splendid
+furniture. The chairs are of polished beech covered with 18th century
+brocade.
+
+The smoking-room of the first-class is done in rich oak carving with
+an inlaid border around the panels. An unusual feature in the main
+part of the room is a jube passageway extending the whole length and
+divided into recesses with divans and card tables. Writing tables may
+be found in secluded nooks free from interruption. The windows of
+unusual size, are semicircular and give a home-like appearance to the
+room.
+
+The dining saloon is in light oak with all carvings worked in the wood.
+A children's nursery off the main stairway in the deck house is done
+in mahogany. Enameled white panels depict the old favorite of the Four
+and Twenty Blackbirds baked in a Pie.
+
+An air of delicate refinement and rich luxury hangs about the regal
+rooms. A suite consists of drawing-room, dining-room, two bedrooms,
+bathroom and a private corridor. The drawing- and dining-rooms of
+these suites are paneled in East India satin-wood, probably the hardest
+and most durable of all timber. The bedrooms are in Georgian style
+finished in white with satin hangings.
+
+The special staterooms are also finished in rich woods on white and
+gold and have damask and silk hangings and draperies. An idea of the
+richness and magnificence of the interior decorations may be obtained
+when it is learned that the cost of these decorations exceeded three
+million dollars.
+
+The galleys, pantries, bakery, confectionery and utensil cleaning rooms
+extend the full length of the ship. Electricity plays an important
+part in the culinary department. Electric motors mix dough, run grills
+and roasters, clean knives and manipulate plate racks and other articles
+of the kitchen. The main cooking range for the saloon is 24 by 8 feet,
+heated by coal. There are four steam boilers and 12 steam ovens. There
+are extensive cold storage compartments and refrigerating chambers.
+
+In connection with the commissariat department it is interesting to
+note the food supply carried for a trip of this floating caravansary.
+Here is a list of the leading supplies needed for a trip, but there
+are hundreds of others too numerous to mention: Forty thousand pounds
+of fresh beef, 1,000 lbs. of corned beef, 8,000 lbs. of mutton, 800
+lbs. of lamb, 600 lbs. of veal, 500 lbs. of pork, 4,000 lbs. of fish,
+2,000 fowls, 100 geese, 150 turkeys, 350 ducks, 400 pigeons, 250
+partridges, 250 grouse, 200 pheasants, 800 quail, 200 snipe, 35 tons
+of potatoes, 75 hampers of vegetables, 500 quarts ice ream, 3,500
+quarts of milk, 30,000 eggs and in addition many thousand bottles of
+mineral water and spirituous liquors.
+
+The health of the passengers is carefully guarded during the voyage.
+The science of thermodynamics has been brought to as great perfection
+as possible. Not alone is the heating thoroughly up to modern science
+requirements but the ventilation as well, by means of thermo tanks,
+suction valves and exhaust fans. All foul air is expelled and fresh
+currents sent through all parts of the ship.
+
+There is an electric generating station abaft the main engine room
+containing four turbo-generators each of 375 kilowatts capacity.
+
+There are more than 5,000 electric lights and every room is connected
+by an electric push-bell. There is a telephone exchange through which
+one can be connected with any department of the vessel. When in harbor,
+either at Liverpool or New York, the wires are connected to the City
+Central exchange so that the ships can be communicated with either by
+local or long distance telephone.
+
+By means of wireless telegraphy voyagers can communicate with friends
+during almost the entire trip and learn the news of the world the same
+as if they were on land. A bulletin is published daily on board giving
+news of the leading happenings of the world.
+
+There is a perfect fire alarm system on board with fire mains on each
+side of the ship from which connections are taken to every separate
+department. There are boxes with hydrant and valve in each room and
+a system of break glass fire alarms with a drop indicator box in the
+chartroom and also one in the engine-room to notify in case of any
+outbreak.
+
+The sanitation is all that could be desired. There are flush lavatories
+on all decks in marble and onyx and with all the sanitary contrivances
+in apparatus of the best design.
+
+The vessel is propelled by four screws, rotated by turbine engines and
+the power developed is equal to that of 68,000 horses. Now 68,000
+horses placed head to tail in a single line would reach a distance of
+90 miles or as far as from New York to Philadelphia; and if the steeds
+were harnessed twenty abreast there would be no fewer than 3,400 rows
+of powerful horses.
+
+Such is the steamship of to-day but there is no doubt that the thousand
+foot boat is coming, which probably will cross the Atlantic ocean in
+less than four days if not in three. But the question is, where shall
+we put her, that is, where shall we dock her?
+
+To build a thousand foot pier to accommodate her, appears like a good
+answer to this question, but the great difficulty is that there are
+United States Government regulations restricting the length of piers
+to 800 feet. Docking space along the shore of New York harbor is too
+valuable to permit the ship being berthed parallel to the shore,
+therefore vessels must dock at right angles to the shore. Some
+provisions must soon be made and the regulations as to dock lengths
+revised.
+
+The thousand footer may be here in a couple of years or so. In the
+meantime the two 840 footers are already on the stocks at Belfast and
+are expected to arrive early in 1911. Before they come changes and
+improvements must be made in the docking and harbor facilities of the
+port of New York.
+
+If higher speed is demanded, increased size is essential, since with
+even the best result every 100 horse-power added involves an addition
+to machinery weight of approximately 14 tons and to the area occupied
+of about 40 square feet. To accomplish this the ship must be as much
+larger in proportion.
+
+The ship designer has to work within circumscribed limits. If he could
+make his vessel of any depth he might build much larger and there would
+be theoretically no limit to his speed: 40 knots an hour might be
+obtained as easily as the present maximum of 26, but in designing his
+ship he must remember that in the harbors of New York or Liverpool the
+channels are not much beyond 30 feet in depth. High speed necessitates
+powerful engines, but if the engines be too large there will not be
+space enough for coal to feed the furnaces. If the breadth of the ship
+is increased the speed is diminished, while on the other hand, if too
+powerful engines are put in a narrow vessel she will break her back.
+The proper proportions must be carefully studied as regards length,
+breadth, depth and weight so that the vessel will derive the greatest
+speed from her engines.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+WONDERFUL CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE
+
+Mating Plants--Experiments of Burbank--What he has Accomplished.
+
+
+In California lives a wonderful man. He has succeeded in doing more
+than making two blades of grass grow where grew but one. Yearly, daily
+in fact, this wizard of plant life is playing tricks on old Mother
+Nature, transforming her vegetable children into different shapes and
+making them no longer recognizable in their original forms. Like the
+fairies in Irish mythology, this man steals away the plant babies, but
+instead of leaving sickly elves in their places, he brings into the
+world exceedingly healthy or lusty youngsters which grow up into a
+full maturity, and develop traits of character superior to the ones
+they supplant. For instance he took away the ugly, thorny insipid
+cactus and replaced it by a beautiful smooth juicy one which is now
+making the western deserts blossom as the rose. The name of this man
+is Luther Burbank whose fame as a creator of new plants has become
+world wide.
+
+The basic principle of Burbank's plant magic comes under two heads,
+viz.: breeding and selection. He mates two different species in such
+a way that they will propagate a type partaking of the natures of both
+but superior to either in their qualities. In order to effect the best
+results from mating, he is choice in his selection of species--the
+best is taken and the worst rejected. It is a universal law that the
+bad can never produce the good; consequently when good is desired, as
+is universally the case, bad must be eliminated. In his method, Burbank
+gives the good a chance to assert itself and at the same time takes
+away all opportunity from the bad. So that the latter cannot thrive
+but must decay and pass out of being. He takes two plants--they may
+be of the same species, but as a general rule he prefers to experiment
+with those of different species; he perceives that neither one in its
+present surroundings is putting forth what is naturally expected from
+it, that each is either retrograding in the scale of life or standing
+still for lack of encouragement to go forward. He knows that back of
+these plants is a long history of evolutions from primitive beginnings
+to their present stage just as in the case of man himself. 'Tis a far
+cry from the cliff-dweller wielding his stone-axe and roaming nude
+through the fields and forests after his prey--the wild beast--to the
+lordly creature of to-day--the product of long ages of civilization
+and culture, yet high as the state is to which man has been brought,
+in many cases he is hemmed in and surrounded by circumstances which
+preclude him from putting forth the best that is in him and showing
+his full possibilities to the world. The philosopher is often hidden
+in the ploughman and many a poor laborer toiling in corduroys and
+fustian at the docks, in the mills, or sweeping the streets may have
+as good a brain as Edison, but has not the opportunity to develop it
+and show its capabilities. The same analogy is applicable to plant
+life. Under adverse conditions a plant or vegetable cannot put forth
+its best efforts. In a scrawny, impoverished soil, and exhausted
+atmosphere, lacking the constituents of nurture, the plant will become
+dwarfed and unproductive, whereas on good ground and in good air, which
+have the succulent properties to nourish it the best results may be
+expected. The soil and the air, therefore, from which are derived the
+constituents of plant life, are indispensably necessary, but they are
+not the primal principles upon which that life depends for its being.
+The basis, the foundation, the origin of the life is the seed which
+germinates in the soil and evolves itself into the plant.
+
+A dead seed will not germinate, a contaminated seed may, but the plant
+it produces will not be a healthy one and it will only be after a long
+series of transplantings, with patience and care, that at length a
+really sound plant will be obtained. The same principle holds good in
+regard to the human plant. It is hard to offset an evil ancestry. The
+contamination goes on from generation to generation, just as in the
+case of the notorious Juke family which cost New York State hundreds
+of thousands of dollars in consequence of criminality and idiocy. It
+requires almost a miracle to divert an individual sprung from a corrupt
+stem into a healthy, moral course of living. There must be some powerful
+force brought to bear to make him break the ligatures which bind him
+to ancestral nature and enable him to come forth on a plane where he
+will be susceptible to the influence of what is good and noble. Such
+can be done and has been accomplished.
+
+Burbank is accomplishing such miracles in the vegetable kingdom, in
+fact he is recreating species as it were and developing them to a full
+fruition. Of course as in the case of the conversion of a sinner from
+his evil instincts, much opposition is met and the progress at first
+is slow, but finally the plant becomes fixed in its new ways and starts
+forward on its new course in life. It requires patience to await the
+development Burbank is a man of infinite patience. He has been five,
+ten, fifteen, twenty years in producing a desired blossom, but he
+considers himself well rewarded when his object has been obtained.
+Thousands of experiments are going on at the same time, but in each
+case years are required to achieve results, so slow is the work of
+selection, the rejecting of the seemingly worthless and the eternal
+choosing of the best specimens to continue the experiments.
+
+When two plants are united to produce a third, no human intelligence
+can predict just what will be the result of the union. There may be
+no result at all; hence it is that Burbank does not depend on one
+experiment at a time. If he did the labors of a life-time would have
+little to show for their work. In breeding lilies he has used as high
+as five hundred thousand plants in a single test. Such an immense
+quantity gave him a great variety of selection. He culled and rejected,
+and culled and rejected until he made his final selection for the last
+test.
+
+Sometimes he is very much disappointed in his anticipations. For
+instance, he marks out a certain life for a flower and breeds and
+selects to that end. For a time all may go according to his plans, but
+suddenly some new trait develops which knocks those plans all out of
+gear. The new flower may have a longer stem and narrower leaves than
+either parent, while a shorter stem and broader leaves are the
+desideratum. The experimenter is disappointed, but not disheartened;
+he casts the flower aside and makes another selection from the same
+species and again goes ahead, until his object is attained.
+
+It may be asked how two plants are united to procure a third. The act
+is based on the procreative law of nature. Plant-breeding is simply
+accomplished by sifting the pollen of one plant upon the stigma of
+another, this act--pollenation--resulting in fertilization, Nature in
+her own mysterious ways bringing forth the new plant.
+
+In order to get an idea of the Burbank method, let us consider some
+of his most famous experiments, for instance, that in which by uniting
+the potato with the tomato he has produced a new variety which has
+been very aptly named the pomato. Mr. Burbank, from the beginning of
+his wonderful career, has experimented much with the potato. It was
+this vegetable which first brought the plant wizard into worldwide
+prominence. The Burbank potato is known in all lands where the tuber
+forms an article of food. It has been introduced into Ireland and
+promises to be the salvation of that distressed island of which the
+potato constitutes the staple diet. The Burbank potato is the hardiest
+of all varieties and in this respect is well suited for the colder
+climates of the Temperate Zone. Apart from this potato which bears his
+name, Mr. Burbank has produced many other varieties. He has blended
+wild varieties with tame ones, getting very satisfactory results. Mr.
+Burbank believes that a little wild blood, so to speak, is often
+necessary to give tone and vigor to the tame element which has been
+long running in the same channels. Probably it was Emerson, his favorite
+author, who gave him the cue for this idea. Emerson pointed out that
+the city is recruited from the country. "The city would have died out,
+rotted and exploded long ago," wrote the New England sage, "but that
+it was reinforced from the fields. It is only country that came to
+town day before yesterday, that is city and court to-day."
+
+In Burbank's greenhouses are mated all kinds of wild and tame varieties
+of potatoes, producing crosses and combinations truly wonderful as
+regards shape, size, and color. One of the most palatable potatoes he
+has produced is a magenta color approaching crimson, so distributed
+throughout that when the tuber is cut, no matter from what angle, it
+presents concentric geometric figures, some having a resemblance to
+human and animal faces.
+
+Before entering on any experiment to produce a new creation, Burbank
+always takes into consideration the practical end of the experiment,
+that is, what the value of the result will be as a practical factor
+in commerce, how much it will benefit the race. He does not experiment
+for a pastime or a novelty, but for a purpose. His object in regard
+to the potato is to make it a richer, better vegetable for a food
+supply and also to make it more important for other purposes in the
+commerce of the nations.
+
+The average potato consists of seventy-five per cent. water and
+twenty-five per cent. dry matter, almost all of which is starch. Now
+starch is a very important article from a manufacturing standpoint,
+but only one-fourth of the potato is available for manufacturing, the
+other three-fourths, being water, is practically waste matter. Now
+if the water could be driven out to a great extent and starchy matter
+increased it is easy to understand that the potato would be much
+increased in value as an article of manufacture. Burbank has not
+overlooked this fact in his potato experiments. He has demonstrated
+that it is as easy to breed potatoes for a larger amount of starch,
+and he has really developed tubers which contain at least twenty-five
+per cent. more starch than the normal varieties; in other words, he
+has produced potatoes which yield fifty per cent. of starch instead
+of twenty-five per cent. The United States uses about $12,000,000
+worth of starch every year, chiefly obtained from Indian corn and
+potatoes. When the potato is made to yield double the amount of starch,
+as Burbank has proved it can yield and more, it will be understood
+what a large part it can be made to play in this important manufacture.
+
+Also for the production of alcohol the potato is gaining a prominent
+place. The potato starch is converted into maltose by the diastase of
+malt, the maltose being easily acted upon by ferment for the actual
+production of the alcohol. Therefore an increase in the starch of the
+potato for this purpose alone is much to be desired.
+
+Of course the chief prominence of the potato will still consist in its
+adaptability as an article of food. Burbank does not overlook this.
+He has produced and is producing potatoes with better flavor, of larger
+and uniform size and which give a much greater yield to the area.
+Palatability in the end decides the permanence of a food, and the
+Burbank productions possess this quality in a high degree.
+
+Burbank labored long and studied every characteristic of the potato
+before attempting any experiments with the tomato. Though closely
+related by family ties, the potato and the tomato seemed to have no
+affinity for each other whatever. In many other instances it has also
+been found that two varieties which from a certain relation might
+naturally be expected to amalgamate easily have been repellant to each
+other and refused to unite.
+
+In his first experiment in trying to cross the potato and tomato,
+Burbank produced tomatoes from the seeds of plants pollenated from
+potato pollen only. He next produced what he called "aerial potatoes"
+of very peculiar twisted shapes from a potato vine grafted on a
+Ponderosa or large tomato plant. Then reversing this operation he
+grafted the same kind of tomato plant upon the same kind of potato
+plant and produced underground a strange-looking potato with marked
+tomato characteristics. He saw he was on the right road to the
+production of a new variety of vegetable, but before experimenting
+further along this line he crossed two distinct species of tomatoes
+and obtained a most ornamental plant, different from the parent stems,
+about twelve inches high and fifteen inches across with large unusual
+leaves and producing clusters of uniform globular fruit, the whole
+giving a most pleasing and unique appearance. The fruit were more
+palatable than the ordinary tomatoes, had better nutritive qualities
+and were more suitable for preserving and canning.
+
+Very pleased with this result he went back to his experiments with the
+potato-tomato, and succeeded in producing the most wonderful and unique
+fruit in the world, one which by a happy combination of the two names,
+he has aptly called the pomato. It may be considered as the evolution
+of a potato seed-ball. It first appears as a tiny green ball on the
+potato top and as the season progresses it gradually enlarges and
+finally develops into a fruit about the size and shape of the ordinary
+tomato. The flesh is white and the marrow, which contains but a few
+tiny white seeds, is exceedingly pleasant to the taste, possessing a
+combination of several different fruit flavors, though it cannot be
+identified with any one. It may be eaten either raw or cooked after
+the manner of the common tomato. In either case it is most palatable,
+but especially so when cooked. It is exceptionally well adapted to
+preserving purposes.
+
+The production of such a fruit from a vegetable is one of the crowning
+triumphs of the California wizard. Probably it is the most novel of
+all the wonderful crosses and combinations he has given to the world.
+
+It would be impossible here to go into detail in regard to some of the
+other wonders accomplished in the plant world by this modern magician.
+There is only space to merely mention a few more of his successful
+achievements. He has given the improved thornless and spiculess cactus,
+food for man and beast, converting it into a beautifier and reclaimer
+of desert wastes; the plum-cot which is an amalgamation of the plum
+and the apricot with a flavor superior to both; many kinds of plums,
+some without pits, others having the taste of Bartlett pears, and still
+others giving out a fragrance as sweet as the rose; several varieties
+of walnuts, one with a shell as thin as paper and which was so easily
+broken by the birds that Burbank had to reverse his experiment somewhat
+in order to get a thicker shell; another walnut has no tannin in the
+meat, which is the cause of the disagreeable flavor of the ordinary
+fruit; the world-famed Shasta daisy, which is a combination of the
+Japanese daisy, the English daisy and the common field daisy, and which
+has a blossom seven inches in diameter; a dahlia deprived of its
+unpleasant odor and the scent of the magnolia blossom substituted; a
+gladiolus which blooms around the entire stem like a hyacinth instead
+of the old way on one side only; many kinds of lilies with chalices
+and petals different from the ordinary, and exhaling perfumes as varied
+as those of Oriental gardens; a poppy of such dimension that it is
+from ten to twelve inches across its brilliant bloom; an amaryllis
+bred up from a couple of inches to over a foot in diameter; several
+kinds of fruit trees which withstand frost in bud and in flower; a
+chestnut tree which bears nuts in eighteen months from the time of
+seed-planting; a white blackberry (paradoxical as it may appear), a
+rare and beautiful fruit and as palatable as it is beautiful; the
+primusberry, a union of the raspberry and the blackberry; another
+wonderful and delicious berry produced from the California dewberry
+and the Cuthbert-raspberry; pieplants four feet in diameter, bearing
+every day in the year; prunes, three, four, and five times as large
+as the ordinary and enriched in flavor; blackberries without their
+prickly thorns and hundreds of other combinations and crosses of fruits
+and flowers too numerous to mention. He has improved plums, pears,
+apples, apricots, quinces, peaches, cherries, grapes, in short, all
+kinds of fruit which grow in our latitude and many even that have been
+introduced. He has developed hundreds of varieties of flowers, improving
+them in color, hardiness and yield. Thus he has not only added to the
+food and manufacturing products of the world, but he has enriched the
+aesthetic side in his beautiful flower creations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+LATEST DISCOVERIES IN ARCHAEOLOGY
+
+  Prehistoric Time--Earliest Records--Discoveries in Bible Lands--
+  American Explorations.
+
+
+For the earliest civilization and culture we must go to that part of
+the world, which according to the general belief, is the cradle of the
+human race. The civilization of the Mesopotamian plain is not only the
+oldest but the first where man settled in great city communities, under
+an orderly government, with a developed religion, practicing
+agriculture, erecting dwellings and using a syllabified writing. All
+modern civilization had its source there. For 6,000 years the cuneiform
+or wedge-shaped writing of the Assyrians was the literary script of
+the whole civilized ancient world, from the shores of the Mediterranean
+to India and even to China, for Chinese civilization, old as it is,
+is based upon that which obtained in Mesopotamia. In Egypt, too, at
+an early date was a high form of neolithic civilization. Six thousand
+years before Christ, a white-skinned, blond-haired, blue-eyed race
+dwelt there, built towns, carried on commerce, made woven linen cloth,
+tanned leather, formed beautiful pottery without the wheel, cut stone
+with the lathe and designed ornaments from ivory and metals. These
+were succeeded by another great race which probably migrated into Egypt
+from Arabia. Among them were warriors and administrators, fine
+mechanics, artisans, artists and sculptors. They left us the Pyramids
+and other magnificent monumental tombs and great masses of architecture
+and sculptured columns. Of course, they declined and passed away, as
+all things human must; but they left behind them evidences to tell of
+their prestige and power.
+
+The scientists and geologists of our day are busy unearthing the remains
+of the ancient peoples of the Eastern world, who started the waves of
+civilization both to the Orient and the Occident. Vast stores of
+knowledge are being accumulated and almost every day sees some ancient
+treasure trove brought to light. Especially in Biblical lands is the
+explorer busy unearthing the relics of the mighty past and throwing
+a flood of light upon incidents and scenes long covered by the dust
+of centuries.
+
+Babylon, the mightiest city of ancient times, celebrated in the Bible
+and in the earliest human records as the greatest centre of sensual
+splendor and sinful luxury the world has ever seen, is at last being
+explored in the most thorough manner by the German Oriental Society,
+of which the Kaiser is patron. Babylon rose to its greatest glory under
+Nebuchadnezzar, the most famous monarch of the Babylonian Empire. At
+that period it was the great centre of arts, learning and science,
+astronomy and astrology being patronized by the Babylonian kings. The
+city finally came to a terrible end under Belshazzar, as related in
+the Bible. The palace of the impious king has been uncovered and its
+great piles of masonry laid bare. The great hall, where the young
+prophet Daniel read the handwriting on the wall, can now be seen. The
+palace stood on elevated ground and was of majestic dimensions. A
+winding chariot road led up to it. The lower part was of stone and the
+upper of burned bricks. All around on the outside ran artistic
+sculptures of men hunting animals. The doors were massive and of bronze
+and swung inward, between colossal figures of winged bulls. From the
+hall a stairway led to the throne room of the King, which was decorated
+with gold and precious stones and finished in many colors. The hall
+in which the infamous banquet was held was 140 feet by 40 feet. For
+a ceiling it was spanned by the cedars of Lebanon which exhaled a sweet
+perfume. At night a myriad lights lent brilliancy to the scene. There
+were over 200 rooms all gorgeously furnished, most of them devoted to
+the inmates of the king's harem. The ruins as seen to-day impress the
+visitor and excite wonder and admiration.
+
+The Germans have also uncovered the great gate of Ishtar at Babylon,
+which Nebuchadnezzar erected in honor of the goddess of love and war,
+the most renowned of all the mythical deities of the Babylonian
+Pantheon. It is a double gateway with interior chambers, flanked by
+massive towers and was erected at the end of the Sacred Road at the
+northeast corner of the palace. Its most unique feature consists in
+the scheme of decoration on its walls, which are covered with row upon
+row of bulls and dragons represented in the brilliant enamelled bricks.
+Some of these creatures are flat and others raised in relief. Those
+in relief are being taken apart to be sent to Berlin, where they will
+be again put together for exhibition.
+
+The friezes on this gate of Ishtar are among the finest examples of
+enamelled brickwork that have been uncovered and take their place
+beside "the Lion Frieze" from Sargon's palace at Khorsabad and the
+still more famous "Frieze of Arches of King Darius" in the Paris Louvre.
+
+The German party have already established the claim of Herodotus as
+to the thickness of the walls of the city. Herodotus estimated them
+at two hundred royal cubits (348 feet) high and fifty royal cubits
+(86-1/2 feet) thick. At places they have been found even thicker. So
+wide were they that on the top a four-horse chariot could easily turn.
+
+The hanging gardens of Babylon, said to have been built to please
+Amytis the consort of Nebuchadnezzar, were classed as among the Seven
+Wonders of the World. Terraces were constructed 450 feet square, of
+huge stones which cost millions in that stoneless country. These were
+supported by countless columns, the tallest of which were 160 feet
+high. On top of the stones were layers of brick, cemented and covered
+with pitch, over which was poured a layer of lead to make all absolutely
+water-tight. Finally, on the top of this, earth was spread to such a
+depth that the largest trees had room for their roots. The trees were
+planted in rows forming squares and between them were flower gardens.
+In fact, these gardens constituted an Eden in the air, which has never
+since been duplicated.
+
+New discoveries have been recently made concerning the Tower of Babel,
+the construction of which, as described in the Book of Genesis, is one
+of the most remarkable occurrences of the first stage of the world's
+history. It has been found that the tower was square and not round,
+as represented by all Bible illustrators, including Dore. The ruins
+cover a space of about 50,000 square feet and are about ten miles from
+the site of Babylon.
+
+The ruins of the celebrated synagogue of Capernaum, believed to be the
+very one in which the Saviour preached, have been unearthed and many
+other Biblical sites around the ancient city have been identified.
+
+Capernaum was the home of Jesus during nearly the whole of his Galilean
+ministry and the scene of many of his most wonderful miracles. The
+site of Capernaum is now known as Tell Hum. There are ruins scattered
+about over a radius of a mile. The excavating which revealed the ruins
+of the synagogue was done under supervision of a German archaeologist
+named Kohl. This synagogue was composed of white limestone blocks
+brought from a distance and in this respect different from the others
+which were built of the local black volcanic rock. The carvings
+unearthed in the ruins are very beautiful and most of them in high
+relief work, representing trailing vines, stately palms, clusters of
+dates, roses and acanthus. Various animal designs are also shown and
+one of the famous seven-branched candlesticks which accompanied the
+Ark of the Covenant.
+
+Most of the incidents at Capernaum mentioned in the Bible were connected
+with the synagogue, the ruins of which have just been uncovered. The
+centurion who came to plead with Jesus about the servant was the man
+who built the synagogue (Luke VII:1-10). In the synagogue, Jesus healed
+the man with the unclean spirit (Mark I:21-27). In this synagogue, the
+man with the withered hand received health on the Sabbath Day (Matthew
+XII:10-13). Jairus, whose daughter was raised from the dead, was a
+ruler of the synagogue (Luke VIII:3) and it was in this same synagogue
+of Capernaum that Jesus preached the discourse on the bread of life
+(John VI:26-59). The hill near Capernaum where Jesus fed the multitude
+with five loaves and two fishes is also identified.
+
+The stoning of St. Stephen and the conversion of St. Paul are two great
+events of the New Testament which lend additional interest to the
+explorations now being carried on at the ancient City of Damascus.
+Damascus lays claim to being the most ancient city in the world and
+its appearance sustains the claim. Unlike Jerusalem and many other
+ancient cities, it has never been completely destroyed by a conqueror.
+The Assyrian monarch, Tiglath Pileser, swept down on it, 2,700 years
+ago, but he did not succeed in wiping it out. Other cities came into
+being long after Damascus, they flourished, faded and passed away; but
+Damascus still remains much the same as in the early time. Among the
+famous places which have been identified in this ancient city is the
+house of Ananias the priest and the place in the wall where Paul was
+let down by a basket is pointed out. The scene of the conversion of
+St. Paul is shown and also the "Street called Straight" referred to
+in Acts IX:II.
+
+Jerusalem, birthplace and cradle of Christianity, offers a vast and
+interesting field to the archaeologist. One of the most remarkable of
+recent discoveries relates to the building known as David's castle.
+Major Conder, a British engineer in charge of the Palestine survey,
+has proved that this building is actually a part of the palace of King
+Herod who ordered the Massacre of the Innocents in order to encompass
+the destruction of the Infant Saviour.
+
+The tomb of Hiram is another relic discovered at the village of Hunaneh
+on the road from Safed to Tyre; it recalls the days of David. Hiram
+was King of Tyre in the time of David. The tomb is a limestone structure
+of extraordinary massiveness Unfortunately the Mosque of Omar stands
+on the site of Solomon's Temple and there is no hope of digging there.
+As for the palace of Solomon, it should be easy to find the foundations,
+for Jerusalem has been rebuilt several times upon the ruins of earlier
+periods and vast ancient remains must be still buried there. The work
+is being pushed vigorously at present and the future should bring to
+light many interesting relics. At last the real site of the Crucifixion
+may be found with many mementoes of the Saviour, and the Apostles.
+
+Professor Flinders Petrie, the famous English archaeologist, has
+recently explored the Sinaitic peninsula and has found many relics of
+the Hebrews' passage through the country during the Exodus and also
+many of a still earlier period. He found a remarkable number of altars
+and tombs belonging to a very early form of religion. On the Mount
+where Moses received the tables of the law is a monastery erected by
+the Emperor Justinian 523 A.D. Although the conquering wave of Islam
+has swept over the peninsula, leaving it bare and desolate, this
+monastery still survives, the only Christian landmark, not only in
+Sinai but in all Arabia. The original tables of stone on which the
+Commandments were written, were placed in the Ark of the Covenant and
+taken all through the Wilderness to Palestine and finally placed in
+the Temple of Solomon. What became of it when the Temple was plundered
+and destroyed by the Babylonians is not known.
+
+Clay tablets have been found at Nineveh of the Creation and the Flood
+as known to the Assyrians. These tablets formed part of a great epic
+poem of which Nimrod, the mighty hunter, was the hero.
+
+Explorers are now looking for the palace of Nimrod, also that of
+Sennacherib, the Assyrian monarch who besieged Jerusalem. The latter
+despoiled the Temple of many of its treasures and it is believed that
+his palace, when found, may reveal the Tables of the Law, the Ark of
+the Covenant, the Seven-branched candlestick, and many of the golden
+vessels used in Israelitish worship.
+
+Ur of the Chaldees, birthplace of Abraham, father and founder of the
+Hebrew race, is a rich field for the archaeologist to plough. Some
+tablets have already been discovered, but they are only a mere
+suggestion as to future possibilities. It is believed by some eminent
+investigators that we owe to Abraham the early part of the Book of
+Genesis describing the Creation, the Tower of Babel and the Flood, and
+the quest of archaeologists is to find, if not the original tablets,
+at least some valuable records which may be buried in this neighborhood.
+
+Excavators connected with the American School at Jerusalem are busy
+at Samaria and they believe they have uncovered portions of the great
+temple of Baal, which King Ahab erected in honor of the wicked deity
+890 B.C. When the remains of this temple are fully uncovered it will
+be learned just how far the Israelites forsook the worship of the true
+God for that of Baal.
+
+The Germans have begun work on the site of Jericho, once the royal
+capital of Canaan, and historic chiefly from the fact that Joshua led
+the Israelites up to its walls, reported to be impregnable, but which
+"fell down at the blast of the trumpet." Great piles have been unearthed
+here which it is thought formed a part of the original masonry. One
+excavator believes he has unearthed the ruins of the house of Rahab,
+the woman who sheltered Joshua's spies. Another thinks he has discovered
+the site of the translation of Elijah, the Prophet, from whence he was
+carried up to heaven in a fiery chariot.
+
+Every Christian will be interested in learning what is to be found in
+Nazareth where Jesus spent his boyhood. Archaeologists have located
+the "Fount of the Virgin," and the rock from which the infuriated
+inhabitants attempted to hurl Christ.
+
+In the "Land of Goshen" where the Israelites in a state of servitude
+worked for the oppressing Pharaoh (Rameses II), excavators have found
+bricks made without straw as mentioned in Scripture, undoubtedly the
+work of Hebrew slaves, also glazed bead necklaces. They are looking
+for the House of Amran, the father of Moses, where the great leader
+was born.
+
+The site of Arbela, where Alexander the Great won his mightiest victory
+over Darius, has been discovered. It is a series of mounds on the
+Western bank of the Tigris river between Nineveh and Bagdad. All the
+treasures of Darius were taken and Alexander erected a great palace.
+Bronze swords, cups and pieces of sculpture have been unearthed and
+it is supposed there are vast stores of other remains awaiting the
+tool and patience of the excavator. The famous Sultan Saladin took up
+his residence here in 1184 and doubtless many relics of his royal time
+will be discovered.
+
+The remains of the city of Pumbaditha have been identified with the
+immense mound of Abnar some twenty miles from Babylon, on the banks
+of the Euphrates. This was the centre of Jewish scholarship during the
+Babylonian exile. One of the great schools in which the Talmud was
+composed was located here. The great psalm, "By the waters of Babylon,
+we sat down and wept." was also composed on this spot, and here, too,
+Jeremiah and Isaiah thundered their impassioned eloquence. Broken tombs
+and a few inscribed bowls have been brought to light. Probably the
+original scrolls of the Talmud will be found here. Several curiously
+wrought vases and ruins have been also unearthed.
+
+Several monuments bearing inscriptions which are sorely puzzling the
+archaeologists have recently been unearthed at the site of Boghaz-Keni
+which was the ancient, if not original capital, of the mysterious
+people called the Hittites who have been for so long a worry to Bible
+students. Archaeology has now revealed the secret of this people. There
+is no doubt they were of Mongolian origin, as the monuments just
+discovered represent them with slant eyes and pigtails. No one as yet
+has been able to read the inscriptions. They were great warriors, great
+builders and influenced the fate of many of the ancient nations.
+
+In many other places throughout these lands, deep students of Biblical
+lore are pushing on the work of excavation and daily adding to our
+knowledge concerning the peoples and nations in whom posterity must
+ever take a vital interest.
+
+A short time ago, Professor Doerpfeld announced to the world that he
+had discovered on the island of Ithaca, off the west coast of Greece,
+the ruins of the palace of Ulysses, Homer's half-mythical hero of the
+_Odyssey_. The German archaeologist has traced the different rooms
+of the palace and is convinced that here is the very place to which
+the hero returned after his wanderings. Near it several graves were
+found from which were exhumed silver amulets, curiously wrought
+necklaces, bronze swords and metal ornaments bearing date 2,000 B.C.,
+which is the date at which investigators lay the Siege of Troy.
+
+If the ruins be really those of the palace of Ulysses, some interesting
+things may be found to throw a light on the Homeric epic. As the
+schoolboys know, when Ulysses set sail from Troy for home, adverse
+winds wafted him to the coast of Africa and he beat around in the
+adjacent seas and visited islands and spent a considerable time meeting
+many kinds of curious and weird adventures, dallying at one time with
+the lotus-eaters, at another braving the Cyclops, the one-eyed monsters,
+until he arrived at Ithaca where "he bent his bow and slew the suitors
+of Penelope, his harassed wife."
+
+In North America are mounds, earthworks, burial sites, shell heaps,
+buildings of stone and adobe, pictographs sculptured in rocks, stone
+implements, objects made of bone, pottery and other remains which
+arouse the enthusiasm of the archaeologist. As the dead were usually
+buried in America, investigators try to locate the ancient cemeteries
+because, besides skeletons, they usually contain implements, pottery
+and ornaments which were buried with the corpses. The most
+characteristic implement of early man in America was the grooved axe,
+which is not found in any other country. Stone implements are plentiful
+everywhere. Knives, arrow-points and perforators of chipped stone are
+found in all parts of the continent. Beads and shells and pottery are
+also found in almost every State.
+
+The antiquity of man in Europe has been determined in a large measure
+by archaeological remains found in caves occupied by him in different
+ages, but the exploration of caves in North America has so far failed
+to reveal traces of different degrees of civilization.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+GREAT TUNNELS OF THE WORLD
+
+  Primitive Tunneling--Hoosac Tunnel--Croton Aqueduct--Great Alpine
+  Tunnels--New York Subway--McAdoo Tunnels--How Tunnels are Built.
+
+
+The art of tunnel construction ranks among the very oldest in the
+world, if not the oldest, for almost from the beginning of his advent
+on the earth man has been tunneling and boring and making holes in the
+ground. Even in pre-historic time, the ages of which we have neither
+record nor tradition, primitive man scooped out for himself hollows
+in the sides of hills, and mountains, as is evidenced by geological
+formations and by the fossils that have been unearthed. The forming
+of these hollows and holes was no indication of a superior intelligence
+but merely manifested the instincts of nature in seeking protection
+from the fury of the elements and safety from hostile forces such as
+the onslaughts of the wild and terrible beasts that then existed on
+the earth.
+
+The Cave Dwellers were real tunnelers, inasmuch as in construction of
+their rude dwellings they divided them into several compartments and
+in most cases chose the base of hills for their operations, boring
+right through from side to side as recent discoveries have verified.
+
+The ancient Egyptians built extensive tunnels for the tombs of their
+dead as well as for the temples of the living. When a king of Thebes
+ascended the throne he immediately gave orders for his tomb to be cut
+out of the solid rock. A separate passage or gallery led to the tomb
+along which he was to be borne in death to the final resting place.
+Some of the tunnels leading to the mausoleums of the ancient Egyptian
+kings were upwards of a thousand feet in length, hewn out of the hard
+solid rock. A similar custom prevailed in Assyria, Mesopotamia, Persia
+and India.
+
+The early Assyrians built a tunnel under the Euphrates river which was
+12 feet wide by 15 high. The course of the river was diverted until
+the tunnel was built, then the waters were turned into their former
+channel, therefore it was not really a subaqueous tunnel.
+
+The sinking of tunnels under water was to be one of the triumphs of
+modern science.
+
+Unquestionably the Romans were the greatest engineers of ancient times.
+Much of their masonry work has withstood the disintegrating hand of
+time and is as solid and strong to-day as when first erected.
+
+The "Fire-setting" method of tunneling was originated by them, and
+they also developed the familiar principle of prosecuting the work at
+several points at the same time by means of vertical shafts. They
+heated the rock to be excavated by great fires built against the face
+of it. When a very high temperature was reached they turned streams
+of cold water on the heated stone with the result that great portions
+were disintegrated and fell off under the action of the water. The
+Romans being good chemists knew the effect of vinegar on lime, therefore
+when they encountered calcareous rock instead of water they used vinegar
+which very readily split up and disintegrated this kind of obstruction.
+The work of tunneling was very severe on the laborers, but the Romans
+did not care, for nearly all the workmen were slaves and regarded in
+no better light than so many cattle. One of the most notable tunnels
+constructed by the old Romans was that between Naples and Pozzuoli
+through the Posilipo Hills. It was excavated through volcanic tufa and
+was 3,000 feet long, 25 feet wide, and of the pointed arch style. The
+longest of the Roman tunnels, 3-1/2 miles, was built to drain Lake
+Fucino. It was driven through calcareous rock and is said to have cost
+the labor of 30,000 men for 11 years.
+
+Only hand labor was employed by the ancient people in their tunnel
+work. In soft ground the tools used were picks, shovels and scoops,
+but for rock work they had a greater variety. The ancient Egyptians
+besides the hammer, chisel and wedges had tube drills and saws provided
+with cutting edges of corundum or other hard gritty material.
+
+For centuries there was no progress in the art of tunneling. On the
+contrary there was a decline from the earlier construction until late
+in the 17th century when gunpowder came into use as an explosive in
+blasting rock. The first application of gunpowder was probably at
+Malpas, France, 1679-1681, in the construction of the tunnel on the
+line of the Languedoc Canal 510 feet long, 22 feet wide and 29 feet
+high.
+
+It was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that the art
+of tunnel construction, through sand, wet ground or under rivers was
+undertaken so as to come rightly under the head of practical
+engineering. In 1803 a tunnel was built through very soft soil for the
+San Quentin Canal in France. Timbering or strutting was employed to
+support the walls and roof of the excavation as fast as the earth was
+removed and the masonry lining was built closely following it. From
+the experience gained in this tunnel were developed the various systems
+of soft ground subterranean tunneling in practice at the present day.
+
+The first tunnel of any extent built in the United States was that
+known as the Auburn Tunnel near Auburn, Pa., for the water
+transportation of coal. It was several hundred feet long, 22 feet wide
+and 15 feet high. The first railroad tunnel in America was also in
+Pennsylvania on the Allegheny-Portage Railroad, built in 1818-1821.
+It was 901 feet long, 25 feet wide and 21 feet high.
+
+What may be called the epoch making tunnel, the construction of which
+first introduced high explosives and power drills in this country, was
+the Hoosac in Massachusetts commenced in 1854 and after many
+interruptions brought to completion in 1876. It is a double-track
+tunnel nearly 5 miles in length. It was quickly followed by the
+commencement of the Erie tunnel through Bergen Hill near Hoboken, N.J.
+This tunnel was commenced in 1855 and finished in 1861. It is 4,400
+feet long, 28 feet wide and 21 feet high. Other remarkable engineering
+feats of this kind in America are the Croton Aqueduct Tunnel, the
+Hudson River Tunnel, and the New York Subway.
+
+The great rock tunnels of Europe are the four Alpine cuts known as
+Mont Cenis, St. Gothard, the Arlberg and the Simplon. The Mont Cenis
+is probably the most famous because at the time of its construction
+it was regarded as the greatest engineering achievement of the modern
+world, yet it is only a simple tunnel 8 miles long, while the Simplon
+is a double tunnel, each bore of which is 12-1/4 miles. The chief
+engineer of the Mont Cenis tunnel was M. Sommeiler, the man who devised
+the first power drill ever used in such work. In addition to the power
+drill the building of this tunnel induced the invention of apparatus
+to suck up foul air, the air compressor, the turbine and several other
+contrivances and appliances in use at the present time.
+
+Great strides in modern tunneling developed the "shield" and brought
+metal lining into service. The shield was invented and first used by
+Sir M. I. Brunel, a London engineer, in excavating the tunnel under
+the River Thames, begun in 1825 and finished in 1841. In 1869 another
+English engineer, Peter Barlow, used an iron lining in connection with
+a shield in driving the second tunnel under the Thames at London. From
+a use of the shield and metal lining has grown the present system of
+tunneling which is now universally known as the shield system.
+
+Great advancement has been made in the past few years in the nature
+and composition of explosives as well as in the form of motive power
+employed in blasting. Powerful chemical compositions, such as
+nitroglycerine and its compounds, such as dynamite, etc., have
+supplanted gunpowder, and electricity, is now almost invariably the
+firing agent. It also serves many other purposes in the work,
+illumination, supplying power for hoisting and excavating machinery,
+driving rock drills, and operating ventilating fans, etc. In this
+field, in fact, as everywhere else in the mechanical arts, the electric
+current is playing a leading part.
+
+To the English engineer, Peter Barlow, above mentioned, must be given
+the credit of bringing into use the first really serviceable circular
+shield for soft ground tunneling. In 1863 he took out a patent for
+such a shield with a cylindrical cast iron lining for the completed
+tunnel. Of course James Henry Greathead very materially improved the
+shield, so much so indeed that the present system of tunneling by means
+of circular shields is called the Greathead not the Barlow system.
+Greathead and Barlow entered into a partnership in 1869. They
+constructed the tunnel under the Tower of London 1,350 feet in length
+and seven feet in diameter which penetrated compact clay and was
+completed within a period of eleven months. This was a remarkable
+record in tunnel building for the time and won for these eminent
+engineers a world wide fame. From thenceforth their system came into
+vogue in all soft soil and subaqueous tunneling. Except for the
+development in steel apparatus and the introduction of electricity as
+a motive agent, there has not been such a great improvement on the
+Greathead shield as one would naturally expect in thirty years.
+
+The method of excavating a tunnel depends altogether on the nature of
+the obstruction to be removed for the passage. In the case of solid
+rock the work is slow but simple; dry, hard, firm earth is much the
+same as rock. The difficulties of tunneling lie in the soft ground,
+subaqueous mud, silt, quicksand, or any treacherous soil of a shifting,
+unsteady composition.
+
+When the rock is to be removed it is customary to begin the work in
+sections of which there may be seven or eight. First one section is
+excavated, then another and so on to completion. The order of the
+sections depends upon the kind of rock and upon the time allotted for
+the job and several other circumstances known to the engineer. If the
+first section attacked be at the top immediately beneath the arch of
+the proposed tunnel, next to the overlying matter, it is called a
+heading, but if the first cutting takes place at the bottom of the
+rock to form the base of the tunnel it is called a drift.
+
+Driving a heading is the most difficult operation of rock tunneling.
+Sometimes a heading is driven a couple of thousand feet ahead of the
+other sections. In soft rock it is often necessary to use timber props
+as the work proceeds and follow up the excavating by lining roof and
+sides with brick, stone or concrete.
+
+The rock is dislodged by blasting, the holes being drilled with
+compressed air, water force or electricity, and, as has been said,
+powerful explosives are used, nitroglycerine or some nitro-compound
+being the most common. Many charges can be electrically fired at the
+same time. If the tunnel is to be long, shafts are sunk at intervals
+in order to attack the work at several places at once. Sometimes these
+shafts are lined and left open when the tunnel is completed for purposes
+of ventilation.
+
+In soft ground and subaqueous soil the "shield" is the chief apparatus
+used in tunneling. The most up-to-date appliance of this kind was that
+used in constructing the tunnels connecting New York City with New
+Jersey under the Hudson River. It consisted of a cylindrical shell of
+steel of the diameter of the excavation to be made. This was provided
+with a cutting edge of cast steel made up of assembled segments. Within
+the shell was arranged a vertical bulkhead provided with a number of
+doors to permit the passage of workmen, tools and explosives. The shell
+extended to the rear of the bulkhead forming what was known as the
+"tail." The lining was erected within this tail and consisted of steel
+plates lined with masonry. The whole arrangement was in effect a
+gigantic circular biscuit cutter which was forced through the earth.
+
+The tail thus continually enveloped the last constructed portion of
+this permanent lining. The actual excavation took place in advance of
+the cutting edge. The method of accomplishing this, varied with
+conditions. At times the material would be rock for a few feet from
+the bottom, overlaid with soft earth. In such case the latter would
+be first excavated and then the roof would be supported by temporary
+timbers, after which the rock portion would be attacked. When the
+workmen had excavated the material in front of the shield it was passed
+through the heavy steel plate diaphragm in center of the shell out to
+the rear and the shield was then moved forward so as to bring its front
+again up to the face of the excavation. As the shell was very unwieldy,
+weighing about eighty tons, and, moreover, as the friction or pressure
+of the surrounding material on its side had to be overcome it was a
+very difficult matter to move it forward and a great force had to be
+expended to do so. This force was exerted by means of hydraulic jacks
+so devised and placed around the circumference of the diaphragm as to
+push against the completed steel plate lining of the tunnel. There
+were sixteen of these jacks employed with cylinders eight inches in
+diameter and they exerted a pressure of from one thousand to four
+thousand pounds per square inch. By such means the shield was pushed
+ahead as soon as room was made in front for another move.
+
+The purpose of the shield is to prevent the inrush of water and soft
+material while excavating is going on; the diaphragm of the shields
+acts as a bulkhead and the openings in it are so devised as to be
+quickly closed if necessary. The extension of the shield in front of
+the diaphragm is designed to prevent the falling or flowing in of the
+exposed face of the new excavation.
+
+The extension of the shell back from the diaphragm is for the purpose
+of affording opportunity to put in place the finished tunnel lining
+whatever it may be, masonry, cast-iron, cast-iron and masonry, or steel
+plates and masonry. Where the material is saturated with water as is
+the case in all subaqueous tunneling it is necessary to use compressed
+air in connection with the shield. The intensity of air pressure is
+determined by the depth of the tunnel below the surface of the water
+above it. The tunnelers work in what are called caissons to which they
+have access through an air lock. In many cases quick transition from
+the compressed air in the caisson to the open air at the surface results
+fatally to the workers. The caisson disease is popularly called "the
+bends" a kind of paralysis which is more or less baffling to medical
+science. Some men are able to bear a greater pressure than others. It
+depends on the natural stamina of the worker and his state of health.
+The further down the greater the pressure. The normal atmospheric
+pressure at the surface is about fourteen pounds to the square inch.
+Men in normal health should be able to stand a pressure of seventy-six
+pounds to the square inch and this would call for a depth of 178 feet
+under water surface, which far exceeds any depth worked under compressed
+air. For a long time one hundred feet were regarded as a maximum depth
+and at that depth men were not permitted to work more than an hour in
+one shift. The ordinary subaqueous tunnel pressure is about forty-five
+pounds and this corresponds to a head of 104 feet. In working in the
+Hudson Tunnels the pressure was scarcely ever above thirty-three pounds,
+yet many suffered from the "bends."
+
+What is called a freezing method is now proposed to overcome the water
+in soft earth tunneling. Its chief feature is the excavating first of
+a small central tunnel to be used as a refrigerating chamber or ice
+box in freezing the surrounding material solid so that it can be dug
+out or blasted out in chunks the same as rock. It is very doubtful
+however, if such a plan is feasible.
+
+The greatest partly subaqueous tunnels in the world are now to be found
+in the vicinity of New York. The first to be opened to the public is
+known as the Subway and extends from the northern limits of the City
+in Westchester County to Brooklyn. The oldest, however, of the New
+York tunnels counting from its origin is the "McAdoo" tunnel from
+Christopher Street, in Manhattan Borough, under the Hudson to Hoboken.
+This was begun in 1880 and continued at intervals as funds could be
+obtained until 1890, when the work was abandoned after about two
+thousand feet had been constructed. For a number of years the tunnel
+remained full of water until it was finally acquired by the Hudson
+Companies who completed and opened it to the public in 1908. Another
+tunnel to the foot of Cortlandt Street was constructed by the same
+concern and opened in 1909. Both tunnels consist of parallel but
+separate tubes. The railway tunnels to carry the Pennsylvania R. R.
+under the Hudson into New York and thence under the East River to Long
+Island have been finished and are great triumphs of engineering skill
+besides making New York the most perfectly equipped city in the world
+as far as transit is concerned.
+
+The greatest proposed subaqueous tunnel is that intended to connect
+England with France under the English Channel a distance of twenty-one
+miles. Time and again the British Parliament has rejected proposals
+through fear that such a tunnel would afford a ready means of invasion
+from a foreign enemy. However, it is almost sure to be built. Another
+projected British tunnel is one which will link Ireland and Scotland
+under the Irish Sea. If this is carried out then indeed the Emerald
+Isle will be one with Britain in spite of her unwillingness for such
+a close association.
+
+England already possesses a famous subaqueous tunnel in that known as
+the Severn tunnel under the river of that name. It is four and a half
+miles long, although it was built largely through rock. Water gave
+much trouble in its construction which occupied thirteen years from
+1873 to 1886. Pumps were employed to raise the water through a side
+heading connecting with a shaft twenty-nine feet in diameter. The
+greatest amount of water raised concurrently was twenty-seven million
+gallons in twenty-four hours but the pumps had a capacity of sixty-six
+million gallons for the same time.
+
+The greatest tunnel in Europe is the Simplon which connects Switzerland
+with Italy under the Simplon Pass in the Alps. It has two bores twelve
+and one-fourth miles each and at places it is one and one-half miles
+below the surface. The St. Gothard also connecting Switzerland and
+Italy under the lofty peak of the Col de St. Gothard is nine and
+one-fourth miles in length. The third great Alpine tunnel, the Arlberg,
+which is six and one-half miles long, forms a part of the Austrian
+railway between Innsbruck and Bluedenz in the Tyrol and connects
+westward with the Swiss railroads and southward with those of Italy.
+
+Two great tunnels at the present time are being constructed in the
+United States, one of these which is piercing the backbone of the
+Rockies is on the Atlantic and Pacific railway. It begins near
+Georgetown, will pass under Gray's peak and come out near Decatur,
+Colorado, in all a length of twelve miles. The other American
+undertaking is a tunnel under the famous Pike's Peak in Colorado which
+when completed will be twenty miles long.
+
+It can clearly be seen that in the way of tunnel engineering Uncle Sam
+is not a whit behind his European competitors.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+ELECTRICITY IN THE HOUSEHOLD
+
+  Electrically Equipped Houses--Cooking by Electricity--Comforts and
+  Conveniences.
+
+
+Science has now pressed the invisible wizard of electricity into doing
+almost every household duty from cleaning the windows to cooking the
+dinner. There are many houses now so thoroughly equipped with
+electricity from top to bottom that one servant is able to do what
+formerly required the service of several, and in some houses servants
+seem to be needed hardly at all, the mistresses doing their own cooking,
+ironing, and washing by means of electricity.
+
+In respect to taking advantage of electricity to perform the duties
+of the household our friends in Europe were ahead of us, though America
+is pre-eminently the land of electricity--the natal home of the science.
+We are waking up, however, to the domestic utility of this agent and
+throughout the country at present there are numbers of homes in which
+electricity is employed to perform almost every task automatically
+from feeding the baby to the crimping of my lady's hair in her scented
+boudoir.
+
+There is now no longer any use for chimneys on electrically equipped
+houses, for the fires have been eliminated and all heat and light drawn
+from the electric street mains. A description of one of these houses
+is most interesting as showing what really can be accomplished by this
+wonderful source of power.
+
+Before the visitor to such a house reaches the gate or front door his
+approach is made known by an annunciator in the hall, which is connected
+with a hidden plate in the entrance path, which when pressed by the
+feet of the visitor charges the wire of the annunciator. A voice comes
+through the horn of a phonograph asking him what he wishes and telling
+him to reply through the telephone which hangs at the side of the door.
+When he has made his wants known, if he is welcome or desired, there
+is a click and the door opens. As he enters an electrically operated
+door mat cleans his shoes and if he is aware of the equipments of the
+house, he can have his clothes brushed by an automatic brush attached
+to the hat-rack in the hall. An escalator or endless stairway brings
+him to the first floor where he is met by the host who conducts him
+to the den sacred to himself. If he wishes a preprandial cigar, the
+host touches a segment of the wall, apparently no different in
+appearance from the surrounding surface, and a complete cigar outfit
+shoots out to within reach of the guest. When the gong announces dinner
+he is conducted to the dining hall where probably the uses to which
+electricity can be put are better exemplified than in any other part
+of the house. Between this room and the kitchen there is a perfect
+electric understanding. The apartments are so arranged that electric
+dumbwaiter service is operated between the centre of the dining table
+itself and the serving table in the kitchen. The latter is equipped
+with an electric range provided with electrically heated ovens,
+broilers, vegetable cookers, saucepans, dishes, etc., sufficient for
+the preparation of the most elaborate house banquet. The chef or cook
+in charge of the kitchen prepares each dish in its proper oven and has
+it ready waiting on the electric elevator at the appointed time when
+the host and his guest or guests, or family, as the case may be, are
+seated at the dining table. The host or whoever presides at the head
+of the table merely touches a button concealed on the side of the
+mahogany and the elevator instantly appears through a trap-door in
+the table, which is ordinarily closed by two silver covers which look
+like a tray. In this way the dish seemingly miraculously appears right
+on top of the table. When each guest is served it returns to the kitchen
+by the way it came and a second course is brought on the table in a
+similar manner and so on until the dinner is fully served. Fruits and
+flowers tastefully arranged adorn the centre of the dining table and
+minute electric incandescent lamps of various colors are concealed in
+the roses and petals and these give a very pretty effect, especially
+at night.
+
+Beneath the table nothing is to be seen but two nickel-plated bars
+which serve to guide the elevators.
+
+Down in the kitchen the cooking is carried on almost mechanically by
+means of an electric clock controlling the heating circuits to the
+various utensils. The cook, knowing just how long each dish will require
+to be cooked, turns on the current at the proper time and then sets
+the clock to automatically disconnect that utensil when sufficient
+time, so many minutes to the pound, has elapsed. When this occurs a
+little electric bell rings, calling attention to the fact, that the
+heat has been shut off.
+
+Another kitchen accessory is a rotating table on which are mounted
+various household machines such as meat choppers, cream whippers, egg
+beaters and other apparatus all electrically operated.
+
+There is also an electric dishwasher and dryer and plate rack
+manipulator which places the dishes in position when clean and dried.
+
+The advantages of cooking by electricity are apparent to all who have
+tested them. Food cooked in an electric baking oven is much superior
+than when cooked by any other method because of the better heat
+regulation and the utter cleanliness, there being absolutely no dust
+whatever as in the case when coal is used. The electric oven does not
+increase the temperature nor does it exhaust the pure air in the room
+by burning up the oxygen. The time required for cooking is about the
+same as with coal.
+
+The perfect cleanliness of an electric plate warmer is sufficient to
+warrant its use. It keeps dishes at a uniform temperature and the food
+does not get scorched and become tough.
+
+Steaks prepared on electric gridirons and broilers are really delicious
+as they are evenly done throughout and retain all the natural juices
+of the meat; there is no odor of gas or of the fire and portions done
+to a crisp while others are raw on the inside. In toasting there is
+no danger of the bread burning on one side more than on the other, or
+of its burning on either side and a couple of dozen slices can be done
+together on an ordinary instrument at the same time. The electric
+diskstove, flat on the top, like a ball cut in two, can be also utilized
+as a toaster or for heating any kettles or pots or vessels with flat
+bottoms.
+
+Very appetizing waffles are made with electric waffle irons, because
+the bottom and top irons are uniformly heated, so that the irons cook
+the waffles from both sides at the same time.
+
+Electric potato peeling machines consist of a stationary cylinder
+opened at the top for the reception of the potatoes and having a
+revolving disk at the bottom. The cylinder has a rough surface or is
+coated with diamond flint, so that when the disk revolves the potatoes
+are thrown against the sides of the cylinder and the skin is scraped
+off. There is no deep cutting as when peeled by a knife, therefore,
+much waste is avoided. While the potatoes are being scraped, a stream
+of water plays upon them taking away the skins and thoroughly cleansing
+the tubers.
+
+Among other electric labor savers connected with the culinary department
+may be mentioned floor-scrubbers, dish-washers, coffee-grinders, meat
+choppers, dough-mixers and cutlery-polishers, all of which give
+complete satisfaction at a paltry cost and save much time and labor.
+A small motor can drive any of these instruments or several can be
+attached and run by the same motor. The operation of an ordinary snap
+switch will supply energy to electric water-heaters attached to the
+kitchen boiler or to the faucet. The instantaneous water heater also
+purifies the water by killing the bacteria contained in it.
+
+The electric tea kettle makes a brew to charm the heart of a
+connossieur. In fact all cooking done by electricity whether it is the
+frying of an egg or the roasting of a steak is superior in every way
+to the old methods and what accentuates its use is the cleanliness
+with which it can be performed. And it should be taken into
+consideration that in electric cooking there is no bending over hot
+stoves and ranges or a stuffy evil smelling smoky atmosphere, but on
+the contrary, fresh air, cleanliness and coolness which make cooking
+not the drudgery it has ever been, but a real pleasure.
+
+Let us take a glance at the laundry in the electrically equipped house.
+There is a large tub with a wringer attached to it and a simple
+mechanism by which a small motor can either be connected with the tub
+or the wringer as required. The washing is performed entirely by the
+motor and in a way prevents the wear and tear associated with the old
+method of scrubbing and rubbing done at the expense of much "elbow
+grease." The motor turns the tub back and forth and in this way the
+soapy water penetrates the clothes, thus removing the dirt without
+injuring or tearing the fabric. In the old way, the clothes were moved
+up and down in the water and torn and worn in the process. By the new
+way it is the water which moves while the clothes remain stationary.
+When the clothes are thoroughly washed, the motor is attached to the
+wringer and they are passed through it; they are completely dried by
+a specially constructed electric fan. Whatever garments are to be
+ironed are separated and fed to a steel roll mangle operated by a motor
+which gives them a beautiful finish. The electric flat iron plays also
+an important part in the laundry as it is clean and never gets too hot
+nor too cold and there is no rushing back to replenish the heaters.
+One is not obliged to remain in the room with a hot stove, and suffer
+the inconveniences. No heat is felt at all from the iron as it is all
+concentrated on the bottom surface. It is a regular blessing to the
+laundress especially in hot weather. There is a growing demand in all
+parts of the country for these electric flat-irons.
+
+Electricity plays an important role in the parlor and drawing-room.
+The electric fireplace throws out a ruddy glow, a perfect imitation
+of the wide-open old-fashioned fireplaces of the days of our
+grandmothers. There are small grooves at certain sections in the
+flooring over which chairs and couches can be brought to a desired
+position. When the master drops into his favorite chair by the fireplace
+if he wishes a tune to soothe his jangled nerves, there is an electric
+attachment to the piano and he can adjust it to get the air of his
+choice without having to ask any one to play for him. In the
+drawing-room an electric fountain may be playing, its jets reflecting
+the prismatic colors of the rainbow as the waters fall in iridescent
+sparkle among the lights. Such a fountain is composed of a small
+electric motor and a centrifugal pump, the latter being placed in the
+interior of a basin and connected directly to the motor shaft. The
+pump receives the water from the basin and conveys it through pipes
+and a number of small nozzles thus producing cascades. The water falling
+upon an art glass dome, beneath which are small incandescent lamps,
+returns to the basin and thence again to the pump. There is no necessity
+of filling the fountain until the water gets low through evaporation.
+When the lights are not in colored glass, the water may be colored and
+this gives the same effect. To produce the play of the fountain and
+its effects, it is only necessary to connect it to any circuit and
+turn on the switch. The dome revolves by means of a jet of water driven
+against flanges on the under side of the rim of the dome and in this
+way beautiful and prismatic effects are produced. The motor is noiseless
+in operation. In addition to the pretty effect the fountain serves to
+cool and moisten the air of the room.
+
+The sleeping chambers are thoroughly equipped. Not only the rooms may
+be heated by electricity but the beds themselves. An electric pad
+consisting of a flexible resistance covered with soft felt is connected
+by a conductor cord to a plug and is used for heating beds or if the
+occupant is suffering from rheumatism or indigestion or any intestinal
+pain this pad can be used in the place of the hot water bottle and
+gives greater satisfaction. There is a heat controlling device and the
+circuit can be turned on or off at will.
+
+There are many more curious devices in the electrically equipped house
+which could they have been exhibited a generation or so ago, would
+have condemned the owner as a sorcerer and necromancer of the dark
+ages, but which now only place him in the category of the smart ones
+who are up to date and take advantage of the science and progress of
+the time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+HARNESSING THE WATER-FALL
+
+  Electric Energy--High Pressure--Transformers--Development of
+  Water-power.
+
+
+The electrical transmission of power is exemplified in everything which
+is based on the generation of electricity. The ordinary electric light
+is power coming from a generator in the building or a public
+street-dynamo.
+
+However, when we talk in general terms of electric transmission we
+mean the transmission of energy on a large scale by means of overhead
+or underground conductors to a considerable distance and the
+transformation of this energy into light and heat and chemical or
+mechanical power to carry on the processes of work and industry. When
+the power or energy is conveyed a long distance from the generator,
+say over 30 miles or more, we usually speak of the system of supply
+as long distance transmission of electric energy. In many cases power
+is conveyed over distances of 200 miles and more. When water power is
+available as at Niagara, the distance to which electric energy can be
+transmitted is considerably increased.
+
+The distance to a great extent depends on the cost of coal required
+for generation at the distributing point and on the amount of energy
+demanded at the receiving point. Of course the farther the distance
+the higher must be the voltage pressure.
+
+Electrical engineers say that under proper conditions electric energy
+may be transmitted in large quantity to a distance of 500 miles and
+more at a pressure of about 170,000 volts. If such right conditions
+be established then New York, Chicago and several other of our large
+cities can get their power from Niagara.
+
+In our cities and towns where the current has only to go a short
+distance from the power house, the conductors are generally placed in
+cables underground and the maximum electro-motive force scarcely ever
+exceeds 11,000 volts. This pressure is generated by a steam-driven
+alternating-current generator and is transmitted over the conductors
+to sub-stations, where by means of step-down transformers, the pressure
+is dropped to, say, 600 volts alternating current which by rotary
+converters is turned into direct current for the street mains, for
+feeders of railways and for charging storage batteries which in turn
+give out direct current at times of heavy demand.
+
+That electric transmission of energy to long distances may be
+successfully carried out transformers are necessary for raising the
+pressure on the transmission line and for reducing it at the points
+of distribution. The transformer consists of a magnetic circuit of
+laminated iron or mild steel interlinked with two electric circuits,
+one, the primary, receiving electrical energy and the other the
+secondary, delivering it to the consumer. The effect of the iron is
+to make as many as possible of the lines of force set up by the primary
+current, cut the secondary winding and there set up an electromotive
+force of the same frequency but different voltage.
+
+The transformer has made long distance the actual achievement that it
+is. It is this apparatus that brought the mountain to Mohammed. Without
+it high pressure would be impossible and it is on high pressure that
+success of long distance transmission depends.
+
+To convey electricity to distant centres at a low pressure would require
+thousands of dollars in copper cables alone as conductors. To illustrate
+the service of the transformer in electricity it is only necessary to
+consider water power at a low pressure. In such a case the water can
+only be transmitted at slow speed and through great openings, like
+dams or large canals, and withal the force is weak and of little
+practical efficiency, whereas under high pressure a small quantity can
+be forced through a small pipe and create an energy beyond comparison
+to that developed when under low pressure.
+
+The transformer raises the voltage and sends the electrical current
+under high pressure over a small wire and so great is this pressure
+that thousands of horse-power can be sent to great distances over small
+wires with very little loss.
+
+Water power is now changed to electrical power and transmitted over
+slender copper wires to the great manufacturing centres of our country
+to turn the wheels of industry and give employment to thousands.
+
+Nearly one hundred cities in the United States alone are today using
+electricity supplied by transmitted water-power. Ten years ago Niagara
+Falls were regarded only as a great natural curiosity of interest only
+to the sightseer, today those Falls distribute over 100,000 horse-power
+to Buffalo, Syracuse, Rochester, Toronto and several smaller cities
+and towns. Wild Niagara has at last indeed been harnessed to the
+servitude of man. Spier Falls north of Saratoga, practically unheard
+of before, is now supplying electricity to the industrial communities
+of Schenectady, Troy, Amsterdam, Albany and half a dozen or so smaller
+towns.
+
+Rivers and dams, lakes and falls in all parts of the country are being
+utilized to supply energy, though at the present time only about
+one-fortieth of the horse-power available through this agent is being
+made productive. The water conditions of the United States are so
+favorable that 200,000,000 horse-power could be easily developed, but
+as it is we have barely enough harnessed to supply 5 million
+horse-power.
+
+Eighty per cent. of the power used at the present time is produced
+from fuel. This percentage is sure to decrease in the future for fuel
+will become scarcer and the high cost will drive fuel power altogether
+out of the market.
+
+New York State has the largest water power development in the Union,
+the total being 885,862 horsepower; this fact is chiefly owing to
+the energy developed by Niagara.
+
+The second State in water-power development is California, the total
+development being 466,774 horsepower over 1,070 wheels or a unit
+installation of about 436 H.P.
+
+The third State is Maine with 343,096 horse-power, over 2,707 wheels
+or an average of about 123 horse-power per wheel.
+
+Lack of space makes it impossible to enter upon a detailed description
+of the structural and mechanical features of the various plants and
+how they were operated for the purpose of turning water into an electric
+current. The best that can be done is to outline the most noteworthy
+features which typify the various situations under which power plants
+are developed and operated.
+
+The water power available under any condition depends principally upon
+two factors: First, the amount of fall or hydrostatic head on the
+wheels; second, the amount of water that can be turned over the wheels.
+The conditions vary according to place, there are all kinds of fall
+and flow. To develop a high power it is necessary to discharge a large
+volume of water upon properly designed wheels. In many of the western
+plants where only a small amount of water is available there is a great
+fall to make up for the larger volume in force coming down upon the
+wheels. So far as actual energy is concerned it makes no difference
+whether we develop a certain amount of power by allowing twenty cubic
+feet of water per second to fall a distance of one foot or allow one
+cubic foot of water per second to fall a distance of twenty feet.
+
+In one place we may have a plant developing say 10,000 horse-power
+with a fall of anywhere from twenty to forty feet and in another place
+a plant of the same capacity with a fall of 1,000, 1,500 or 2,000 feet.
+In the former case the short fall is compensated by a great volume of
+water to produce such a horse-power, while in the latter converse
+conditions prevail. In many cases the power house is located some
+distance from the source of supply and from the point where the water
+is diverted from its course by artificial means.
+
+The Shawinigan Falls of St. Maurice river in Canada occur at two points
+a short distance apart, the fall at one point being about 50 and at
+the other 100 feet high. A canal 1,000 feet long takes water from the
+river above the upper of these falls and delivers it near to the
+electric power house on the river bank below the lower falls. In this
+way a hydrostatic head of 125 feet is obtained at the power house. The
+canal in this case ends on high ground 130 feet from the power house
+and the water passes down to the wheels through steel penstocks 9 feet
+in diameter.
+
+In a great many cases in level country the water power can only be
+developed by means of such canals or pipe lines and the generating
+stations must be situated away from the points where the water is
+diverted from its course.
+
+In mountainous country where rivers are comparatively small and their
+courses are marked by numerous falls and rapids, it is generally
+necessary to utilize the fall of a stream through some miles of its
+length in order to get a satisfactory development of power. To reach
+this result rather long canals, flumes, or pipe lines must be laid to
+convey the water to the power stations and deliver it at high pressure.
+
+California offers numerous examples of electric power development with
+the water that has been carried several miles through artificial
+channels. An illustration of this class of work exists at the electric
+power house on the bank of the Mokelumne river in the Sierra Nevada
+mountains. Water is supplied to the wheels in this station under a
+head of 1,450 feet through pipes 3,600 feet long leading to the top
+of a near-by hill. To reach this hill the water after its diversion
+from the Mokelumne river at the dam, flows twenty miles through a canal
+or ditch and then through 3,000 feet of wooden stave pipe. Although
+California ranks second in water-power development it is easily the
+first in the number of its stations, and also be it said, California
+was the first to realize the possibilities of long distance electrical
+energy. The line from the 15,000 horsepower plant at Colgate in this
+State to San Francisco by way of Mission San Jose, where it is supplied
+with additional power, has a length of 232 miles and is the longest
+transmission of electrical energy in the world. The power house at
+Colgate has a capacity of 11,250 kilowatts in generators, but it is
+uncertain what part of the output is transmitted to San Francisco, as
+there are more than 100 substations on the 1,375 miles of circuit in
+this system.
+
+Another system, even greater than the foregoing which has just been
+completed is that of the Stanislaus plant in Tuolumme County,
+California, from which a transmission line on steel towers has been
+run in Tuolumme, Calaveras, San Joaquin, Alameda and Contra Costa
+Counties for the delivery of power to mines and to the towns lying
+about San Francisco Bay. The rushing riotous waters of the Stanislaus
+wasted for so many centuries have been saved by the steel paddles of
+gigantic turbine water wheels and converted into electricity which
+carries with the swiftness of thought thousands of horse power energy
+to the far away cities and towns to be transformed into light and heat
+and power to run street cars and trains and set in motion the mechanism
+of mills and factories and make the looms of industry hum with the
+bustle and activity of life.
+
+It is said that the greatest long distance transmission yet attempted
+will shortly be undertaken in South Africa where it is proposed to
+draw power from the famous Victoria Falls. The line from the Falls
+will run to Johannesburg and through the Rand, a length of 700 miles.
+It is claimed the Falls are capable of developing 300,000 electric
+horse power at all times.
+
+Should this undertaking be accomplished it will be a crowning
+achievement in electrical science.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+WONDERFUL WARSHIPS
+
+  Dimensions, Displacements, Cost and Description of Battleships--
+  Capacity and Speed--Preparing for the Future.
+
+
+All modern battleships are of steel construction. The basis of all
+protection on these vessels is the protective deck, which is also
+common to the armored cruiser and many varieties of gunboats. This
+deck is of heavy steel covering the whole of the vessel a little above
+the water-line in the centre; it slopes down from the centre until it
+meets the sides of the vessel about three feet below the water; it
+extends the entire length of the ship and is firmly secured at the
+ends to the heavy stem and stern posts. Underneath this deck are the
+essentials of the vessel, the boilers and machinery, the magazines and
+shell rooms, the ammunition cells and all the explosive paraphernalia
+which must be vigilantly safe-guarded against the attacks of the
+enemy. Every precaution is taken to insure safety. All openings in the
+protective deck above are covered with heavy steel gratings to prevent
+fragments of shell or other combustible substances from getting through
+to the magazine or powder cells.
+
+The heaviest armor is usually placed at the water line because it is
+this part of the ship which is the most vulnerable and open to attack
+and where a shell or projectile would do the most harm. If a hole were
+torn in the side at this place the vessel would quickly take in water
+and sink. On this account the armor is made thick and is known as the
+water-line belt. At the point where the protective deck and the ship's
+side meet, there is a projection or ledge on which this armor belt
+rests. Thus it goes down about three feet below the water and it extends
+to the same distance above.
+
+The barbettes, that is, the parapets supporting the gun turrets, are
+one forward and one aft. They rest upon the protective deck at the
+bottom and extend up about four feet above the upper deck. At the top
+of the barbettes, revolving on rollers, are the turrets, sometimes
+called the hoods, containing the guns and the leading mechanism and
+all of the machinery in connection with the same. The turret ammunition
+hoists lead up from the magazine below, delivering the charges and
+projectiles for the guns at the very breach so that they can be loaded
+immediately.
+
+An athwartship line of armor runs from the water line to the barbettes,
+resting upon the protective deck. In fact, the space between the
+protective and upper deck is so closed in with armor, with a barbette
+at each end, that it is like a citadel or fort or some redoubt
+well-guarded from the enemy. Resting upon the water-belt and the
+athwartship or diagonal armor, and following the same direction is a
+layer of armor usually somewhat thinner which is called the lower
+case-mate armor; it extends up to the lower edge of the broadside gun
+ports, and resting upon it in turn is the upper case-mate armor,
+following the same direction, and forming the protection for the
+broadside battery. The explosive effect of the modern shell is so
+tremendous that were one to get through the upper case-mate and explode
+immediately after entering, it would undoubtedly disable several guns
+and kill their entire crews; it is, therefore, usual to isolate each
+broadside gun from its neighbors by light nickel steel bulkheads a
+couple of inches or so thick, and to prevent the same disastrous result
+among the guns on the opposite side, a fore-and-aft bulkhead of about
+the same thickness is placed on the centre line of the ship. Each gun
+of the broadside battery is thus mounted in a space by itself somewhat
+similar to a stall. Abaft the forward turret there is a vertical armored
+tube resting on the protective deck and at its upper end is the conning
+tower, from which the ship is worked when in action and which is well
+safe-guarded.
+
+The tube protects all the mechanical signalling gear running into the
+conning tower from which communication can be had instantly with any
+part of the vessel.
+
+To build a battleship that will be practically unsinkable by the gun
+fire of an enemy it is only necessary to make the water belt armor
+thick enough to resist the shells, missiles and projectiles aimed at
+it. There is another essential that is equally important, and that is
+the protection of the batteries. The experience of modern battles has
+made it manifest, that it is impossible for the crew to do their work
+when exposed to a hail of shot and shell from a modern battery of rapid
+fire and automatic guns. And so in all more recently built battleships
+and armored cruisers and gunboats, the protection of broadside batteries
+and exposed positions has been increased even at the expense of the
+water-line belt.
+
+Armor plate has been much improved in recent years. During the Civil
+War the armor on our monitors was only an inch thick. Through such an
+armor the projectiles of our time would penetrate as easily as a bullet
+through a pine board. It was the development of gun power and
+projectiles that called forth the thick armor, but it was soon found
+that it was impossible for the armor to keep pace with the deadliness
+of the guns as it was utterly impossible to carry the weight necessary
+to resist the force of impact. Then came the use of special plates,
+the compound armor where a hard face to break up the projectile was
+welded to a softer back to give the necessary strength. This was
+followed by the steel armor treated by the Harvey process; it was like
+the compound armor in having a hard face and a soft back, but the
+plates were made from a single ingot without any welding.
+
+The Harvey process enabled an enormously greater resistance to be
+obtained with a given weight of armor, but even it has been surpassed
+by the Krupp process which enables twelve inches of thickness to give
+the same resistance as fifteen of Harveyized plates.
+
+The armament or battery of warships is divided into two classes, viz.,
+the main and the second batteries. The main battery comprises the
+heaviest guns on the ship, those firing large shell and armor-piercing
+projectiles, while the second battery consists of small rapid fire and
+machine guns for use against torpedo boats or to attack the unprotected
+or lightly protected gun positions of an enemy. The main battery of
+our modern battleships consists usually of ten twelve-inch guns, mounted
+in pairs on turrets in the centre of the ship. In addition to these
+heavy guns it is usual to mount a number of smaller ones of from five
+to eight inches diameter of bore on each broadside, although sometimes
+they are mounted on turrets like the larger guns.
+
+A twelve-inch breech-loading gun, fifty calibers long and weighing
+eighty-three tons, will propel a shell weighing eight hundred and
+eighty pounds, by a powder charge of six hundred and twenty-four pounds,
+at a velocity of over two thousand six hundred and twenty feet per
+second, giving an energy at the muzzle of over forty thousand foot-tons
+and is capable of penetrating at the muzzle, forty-five inches of
+iron.
+
+During the last few years, very large increases have been made in the
+dimensions, displacements and costs of battleships and armored cruisers
+as compared with vessels of similar classes previously constructed.
+Both England and the United States have constructed enormous war vessels
+within the past decade. The British _Dreadnought_ built in nineteen
+hundred and five has a draft of thirty-one feet six inches and a
+displacement of twenty-two thousand and two hundred tons. Later, vessels
+of the _Dreadnought_ type have a normal draft of twenty-seven
+feet and a naval displacement of eighteen thousand and six hundred
+tons. Armored cruisers of the British _Invincible_ class have a
+draft of twenty-six feet and a displacement of seventeen thousand two
+hundred and fifty tons with a thousand tons of coal on board. These
+cruisers have engines developing forty-one thousand horse-power.
+
+Within the past two years the United States has turned out a few
+formidable battleships, which it is claimed surpass the best of those
+of any other navy in the world. The _Delaware_ and _North Dakota_ each
+have a draft of twenty-six feet, eleven inches and a displacement of
+twenty thousand tons. Great interest attached to the trials of these
+vessels because they were sister ships fitted with different machinery
+and it was a matter of much speculation which would develop the greater
+speed. In addition to the consideration of the battleship as a fighting
+machine at close quarters, Uncle Sam is trying to have her as fleet as
+an ocean greyhound should an enemy heave in sight so that the latter
+would not have much opportunity to show his heels to a broadside. The
+_Delaware_, which has reciprocating engines, exceeded her contract speed
+of twenty-one knots on her runs over a measured mile course in Penobscot
+Bay on October 22 and 23, 1909. Three runs were made at the rate of
+nineteen knots, three at 20.50 knots, and five at 21.98 knots.
+
+The _North Dakota_ is furnished with Curtis turbine engines. Here is a
+comparison of the two ships:
+
+                                                     North
+                                          Delaware    Dakota
+  Fastest run over measured mile......... 21.98      22.25
+  Average of five high runs.............. 21.44      21.83
+  Full power trial speed................. 21.56      21.64
+  Full power trial horsepower............ 28,600.    31,400.
+  Full power trial, coal
+    consumption, tons per day............ 578.       583.
+  Nineteen-knot trial
+    coal consumption, tons per day....... 315.       295.
+  Twelve-knot trial coal
+    consumption, tons per day.............111.       105.
+
+The _Florida_, a 21,825 ton boat, was launched from the Brooklyn Navy
+Yard last May 12. Her sister ship, the _Utah_, took water the previous
+December at Camden.
+
+Here is a comparison of the _North Dakota_ of 1908 and the _Florida_ of
+1910:
+
+                          N. Dakota         Florida
+  Length                 518 ft. 9 in.     521 ft. 6 in.
+  Beam                   85 ft. 2-1/2 in.  88 ft. 2-1/2 in.
+  Draft, Mean            26 ft. 11 in.     28 ft. 6 in.
+  Displacement           20,000 tons       21,825 tons
+  Coal Supply            2,500 tons        2,500 tons
+  Oil                    400 tons          400 tons
+  Belt Armor             12 in. to 8 in.   12 in. to 8 in.
+  Turret Armor           12 inches         12 inches
+  Battery armor          6 in.             6-1/2 in.
+  Smoke stack protection 6 inches          9-1/2 inches
+    l2-inch guns         Ten               Ten
+    5-inch guns          Fourteen          Sixteen
+  Speed                  21 knots          20.75 knots
+
+The _Florida_ has Parsons turbines working on four shafts and generates
+28,000 horse-power.
+
+The United States Navy has planned to lay down next year (1911) two
+ships of 32,000 tons armed with l4-inch guns, each to cost eighteen
+million dollars as compared with the $11,000,000 ships of 1910.
+
+The following are to be some of the features of the projected ships,
+which are to be named the _Arkansas_ and _Wyoming_.
+
+554 ft. long, 93 ft. 3 in. beam, 28 ft. 6 in. draft, 26,000 tons
+displacement, 28,000 horse-power, 30 1/2 knots speed, 1,650 to 2,500
+tons coal supply, armament of twelve l2-inch guns, twenty-one 5-inch,
+four 3-pounders and two torpedo tubes.
+
+Fittings in recent United States battleships are for 21-inch torpedoes.
+The armor is to be 11 inch on belt and barbettes and on sides 8 inches,
+and each ship is to carry a complement of 1,115 officers and men. Two
+of the turrets will be set forward on the forecastle deck, which will
+have 28 feet, freeboard, the guns in the first turret being 34 feet
+above the water and those of the second about 40 feet. Aft of the
+second turret will be the conning tower, and then will come the fore
+fire-control tower or lattice mast, with searchlight towers carried
+on it. Next will come the forward funnel, on each side of which will
+be two small open rod towers with strong searchlights. Then will come
+the main fire-control tower and the after funnel and another open
+tower with searchlight. The two lattice steel towers are to be 120
+feet high and 40 feet apart. The four remaining turrets will be abaft
+the main funnel, the third turret having its guns 32 feet above water;
+those in the other turrets about 25 feet above the water. The guns
+will be the new 50-calibre type. All twelve will have broadside fire
+over a wide arc and four can be fired right ahead and four right astern.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+A TALK ON BIG GUNS
+
+  The First Projectiles--Introduction of Cannon--High Pressure
+  Guns--Machine Guns--Dimensions and Cost of Big Guns.
+
+
+The first arms and machines employing gunpowder as the propelling
+agency, came into use in the fourteenth century. Prior to this time
+there were machines and instruments which threw stones and catapults
+and large arrows by means of the reaction of a tightly twisted rope
+made up of hemp, catgut or hair. Slings were also much employed for
+hurling missiles.
+
+The first cannons were used by the English against the Scots in 1327.
+They were short and thick and wide in the bore and resembled bowls or
+mortars; in fact this name is still applied to this kind of ordnance.
+By the end of the fifteenth century a great advancement was shown in
+the make of these implements of warfare. Bronze and brass as materials
+came into general use and cannon were turned out with twenty to
+twenty-five inch bore weighing twenty tons and capable of hurling to
+a considerable distance projectiles weighing from two hundred pounds
+to one thousand pounds with powder as the propelling force. In a short
+time these large guns were mounted and carriages were introduced to
+facilitate transportation with troops. Meantime stone projectiles were
+replaced by cast iron shot, which, owing to its greater density,
+necessitated a reduction in calibre, that is a narrowing of the bore,
+consequently lighter and smaller guns came into the field, but with
+a greater propelling force. When the cast iron balls first came into
+use as projectiles, they weighed about twelve pounds, hence the cannons
+shooting them were known as twelve-pounders. It was soon found, however,
+that twelve pounds was too great a weight for long distances, so a
+reduction took place until the missiles were cut down to four pounds
+and the cannon discharging these, four pounders as they were called,
+weighed about one-quarter of a ton. They were very effective and handy
+for light field work.
+
+The eighteenth century witnessed rapid progress in gun and ammunition
+manufacture. "Grape" and "canister" were introduced and the names still
+cling to the present day. Grape consisted of a number of tarred lead
+balls, held together in a net. Canister consisted of a number of small
+shot in a tin can, the shots being dispersed by the breaking of the
+can on discharge. Grape now consists of cast iron balls arranged in
+three tiers by means of circular plates, the whole secured by a pin
+which passes through the centre. The number of shot in each tier varies
+from three to five. Grape is very destructive up to three hundred yards
+and effective up to six hundred yards. Canister shot as we know it at
+present, is made up of a number of iron balls, placed in a tin cylinder
+with a wooden bottom, the size of the piece of ordnance for which it
+is intended.
+
+Towards the close of the eighteenth century, short cast-iron guns
+called "carronades" were introduced by Gascoigne of the Cannon Iron
+Works, Scotland. They threw heavy shots at low velocity with great
+battery effect. They were for a long time in use in the British navy.
+The sailors called them "smashers."
+
+The entire battery of the Victory, Nelson's famous flag-ship at the
+battle of Trafalgar, amounting to a total of 102 guns, was composed
+of "carronades" varying in size from thirty-two to sixty-eight
+pounders. They were mounted on wooden truck carriages and were given
+elevation by handspikes applied under the breech, a quoin or a wedge
+shaped piece of wood being pushed in to hold the breech up in position.
+They were trained by handspikes with the aid of side-tackle and their
+recoil was limited by a stout rope, called the breeching, the ends of
+which were secured to the sides of the ship. The slow match was used
+for firing, the flint lock not being applied to naval guns until 1780.
+
+About the middle of the nineteenth century, the design of guns began
+to receive much scientific thought and consideration. The question of
+high velocities and flat trajectories without lightening the weight
+of the projectile was the desideratum; the minimum of weight in the
+cannon itself with the maximum in the projectile and the force with
+which it could be propelled were the ends to be attained.
+
+In 1856 Admiral Dahlgren of the United States Navy designed the
+_Dahlgren_ gun with shape proportioned to the "curve of pressure,"
+which is to say that the gun was heavy at the breech and light at the
+muzzle. This gun was well adapted to naval use at the time. From this,
+onward, guns of high pressure were manufactured until the pressure
+grew to such proportions that it exceeded the resisting power,
+represented by the tensile strength of cast iron. When cast, the gun
+cooled from the outside inwardly, thus placing the inside metal in a
+state of tension and the outside in a state of compression. General
+Rodman, Chief of Ordnance of the United States Army, came forward with
+a remedy for this. He suggested the casting of guns hollow and the
+cooling of them from the inside outwardly by circulating a stream of
+cold water in the bore while the outside surface was kept at a high
+temperature. This method placed the metal inside in a state of
+compression and that on the outside in a state of tension, the right
+condition to withstand successfully the pressure of the powder gas,
+which tended to expand the inner portions beyond the normal diameter
+and throw the strain of the supporting outer layers.
+
+This system was universally employed and gave the best results
+obtainable from cast iron for many years and was only superseded by
+that of "built up" guns, when iron and steel were made available by
+improved processes of production.
+
+The great strides made in the manufacture and forging of steel during
+the past quarter of a century, the improved tempering and annealing
+processes have resulted in the turning out of big guns solely composed
+of steel.
+
+The various forms of modern ordnance are classified and named according
+to size and weight, kind of projectiles used and their velocities;
+angle of elevation at which they are fired; use; and mode of operation.
+
+The guns known as breechloading rifles are from three inches to fourteen
+inches in calibre, that is, across the bore, and in length from twelve
+to over sixty feet. They weigh from one ton to fifty tons.
+
+They fire solid shot or shells weighing up to eleven hundred pounds
+at high velocities, from twenty-three to twenty-five hundred feet per
+second. They can penetrate steel armor to a depth of fifteen to twenty
+inches at 2,000 yards distance.
+
+Rapid fire guns are those in which the operation of opening and closing
+the breech is performed by a single motion of a lever actuated by the
+hand, and in which the explosive used is closed in a metallic case.
+These guns are made in various forms and are operated by several
+different systems of breech mechanism generally named after their
+respective inventors. The Vickers-Maxim and the Nordenfeldt are the
+best known in America. A new type of the Vickers-Maxim was introduced
+in 1897 in which a quick working breech mechanism automatically ejects
+the primer and draws up the loading tray into position as the breech
+is opened. This type was quickly adopted by the United States Navy and
+materially increased the speed of fire in all calibres.
+
+What are known as machine guns are rapid fire guns in which the speed
+of firing is such that it is practically continuous. The best known
+make is the famous Gatling gun invented by Dr. R. J. Gatling of
+Indianapolis in 1860. This gun consists of ten parallel barrels grouped
+around and secured firmly to a main central shaft to which is also
+attached the grooved cartridge carrier and the lock cylinder. Each
+barrel is provided with its own lock or firing mechanism, independent
+of the other, but all of them revolve simultaneously with the barrels,
+carrier and inner breech when the gun is in operation. In firing, one
+end of the feed case containing the cartridges is placed in the hopper
+on top and the operating crank is turned. The cartridges drop one by
+one into the grooves of the carrier and are loaded and fired by the
+forward motion of the locks, which also closes the breech while the
+backward motion extracts and expels the empty shells. In its present
+state of efficiency the Gatling gun fires at the rate of 1,200 shots
+per minute, a speed, by separate discharges, not equaled by any other
+gun.
+
+Much larger guns were constructed in times past than are being built
+now. In 1880 the English made guns weighing from 100 to 120 tons, from
+18 to 20 inches bore and which fired projectiles weighing over 2,000
+pounds at a velocity of almost 1,700 feet per second. At the same time
+the United States fashioned a monster rifle of 127 tons which had a
+bore of sixteen inches and fired a projectile of 2,400 pounds with a
+velocity of 2,300 feet per second.
+
+The largest guns ever placed on board ship were the Armstrong one-
+hundred-and-ten-ton guns of the English battleships, _Sanspareil_,
+_Benbow_ and _Victoria_. They were sixteen and one-fourth inch calibre.
+The newest battleships of England, the _Dreadnought_ and the
+_Temeraire_, are equipped with fourteen-inch guns, but they are not one-
+half so heavy as the old guns. Many experts in naval ordnance think it a
+mistake to have guns over twelve inch bore, basing their belief on the
+experience of the past which showed that guns of a less calibre carrying
+smaller shells did more effective work than the big bore guns with
+larger projectiles.
+
+The two titanic war-vessels now in course of construction for the
+United States Navy will each carry a battery of ten fourteen-inch
+rifles, which will be the most powerful weapons ever constructed and
+will greatly exceed in range and hitting power the twelve-inch guns
+of the _Delaware_ or _North Dakota_. Each of the new rifles will weigh
+over sixty-three tons, the projectiles will each weigh 1,400 pounds and
+the powder charge will be 450 pounds. At the moment of discharge each of
+these guns will exert a muzzle energy of 65,600 foot tons, which simply
+means that the energy will be so great that it could raise 65,600 tons a
+foot from the ground. The fourteen-hundred-pound projectiles shall be
+propelled through the air at the rate of half a mile a second. It will
+be plainly seen that the metal of the guns must be of enormous
+resistance to withstand such a force. The designers have taken this into
+full consideration and will see to it that the powder chamber in which
+the explosion takes place as well as the breech lock on which the shock
+is exerted is of steel so wrought and tempered as to withstand the
+terrific strain. At the moment of detonation the shock will be about
+equal to that of a heavy engine and a train of Pullman coaches running
+at seventy miles an hour, smashing into a stone wall. On leaving the
+muzzle of the gun the shell will have an energy equivalent to that of a
+train of cars weighing 580 tons and running at sixty miles an hour. Such
+energy will be sufficient to send the projectile through twenty-two and
+a half inches of the hardest of steel armour at the muzzle, while at a
+range of 3,000 yards, the projectile moving at the rate of 2,235 feet
+per second will pierce eighteen and a half inches of steel armor at
+normal impact. The velocity of the projectile leaving the gun will be
+2,600 feet per second, a speed which if maintained would carry it around
+the world in less than fifteen hours.
+
+Each of the mammoth guns will be a trifle over fifty-three feet in
+length and the estimated cost of each will be $85,000. Judging from
+the performance of the twelve-inch guns it is figured that these greater
+weapons should be able to deliver three shots a minute. If all ten
+guns of either of the projected _Dreadnoughts_ should be brought
+into action at one time and maintain the three shot rapidity for one
+hour, the cost of the ammunition expended in that hour would reach the
+enormous sum of $2,520,000.
+
+Very few, however, of the big guns are called upon for the three shots
+a minute rate, for the metal would not stand the heating strain.
+
+The big guns are expensive and even when only moderately used their
+"life" is short, therefore, care is taken not to put them to too great
+a strain. With the smaller guns it is different. Some of six-inch
+bore fire as high as eight aimed shots a minute, but this is only under
+ideal conditions.
+
+Great care is being taken now to prolong the "life" of the big guns
+by using non-corrosive material for the charges. The United States has
+adopted a pure gun-cotton smokeless powder in which the temperature
+of combustion is not only lower than that of nitro-glycerine, but
+even lower than that of ordinary gunpowder. With the use of this there
+has been a very material decrease in the corrosion of the big guns.
+The former smokeless powder, containing a large percentage of
+nitro-glycerine such as "cordite," produced such an effect that the
+guns were used up and practically worthless, after firing fifty to
+sixty rounds.
+
+Now it is possible for a gun to be as good after two or even three
+hundred rounds as at the beginning, but certainly not if a three minute
+rate is maintained. At such a rate the "life" of the best gun made
+would be short indeed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+MYSTERY OF THE STARS
+
+Wonders of the Universe--Star Photography--The Infinity of Space.
+
+
+In another chapter we have lightly touched upon the greatness of the
+Universe, in the cosmos of which our earth is but an infinitesimal
+speck. Even our sun, round which a system of worlds revolve and which
+appears so mighty and majestic to us, is but an atom, a very small
+one, in the infinitude of matter and as a cog, would not be missed in
+the ratchet wheel which fits into the grand machinery of Nature.
+
+If our entire solar system were wiped out of being, there would be
+left no noticeable void among the countless systems of worlds and suns
+and stars; in the immensity of space the sun with all his revolving
+planets is not even as a drop to the ocean or a grain of sand to the
+composition of the earth. There are millions of other suns of larger
+dimensions with larger attendants wheeling around them in the
+illimitable fields of space. Those stars which we erroneously call
+"fixed" stars are the centers of other systems vastly greater, vastly
+grander than the one of which our earth forms so insignificant a part.
+Of course to us numbers of them appear, even when viewed through the
+most powerful telescopes, only as mere luminous points, but that is
+owing to the immensity of distance between them and ourselves. But the
+number that is visible to us even with instrumental assistance can
+have no comparison with the number that we cannot see; there is no
+limit to that number; away in what to us may be called the background
+of space are millions, billions, uncountable myriads of invisible suns
+regulating and illuminating countless systems of invisible worlds. And
+beyond those invisible suns and worlds is a region which thought cannot
+measure and numbers cannot span. The finite mind of man becomes dazed,
+dumbfounded in contemplation of magnitude so great and distance so
+amazing. We stand not bewildered but lost before the problem of
+interstellar space. Its length, breadth, height and circumference are
+illimitable, boundless; the great eternal cosmos without beginning and
+without end.
+
+In order to get some idea of the vastness of interstellar space we may
+consider a few distances within the limits of human conception. We
+know that light travels at the rate of 186,000 miles a second, yet it
+requires light over four years to reach us from the nearest of the
+fixed stars, travelling at this almost inconceivable rate, and so far
+away are some that their light travelling at the same rate from the
+dawn of creation has never reached us yet or never will until our
+little globule of matter disintegrates and its particles, its molecules
+and corpuscles, float away in the boundless ether to amalgamate with
+the matter of other flying worlds and suns and stars.
+
+The nearest to us of all the stars is that known as _Alpha Centauri_.
+Its distance is computed at 25,000,000,000,000 miles, which in our
+notation reads twenty-five trillion miles. It takes light over four
+years to traverse this distance. It would take the "Empire State
+Express," never stopping night or day and going at the rate of
+a mile a minute, almost 50,000,000 years to travel from the earth to
+this star. The next of the fixed stars and the brightest in all the
+heavens is that which we call _Sirius_ or the Dog Star. It is
+double the distance of Alpha Centauri, that is, it is eight "light
+years" away. The distances of about seventy other stars have been
+ascertained ranging up to seventy or eighty "light years" away, but
+of the others visible to the naked eye they are too far distant to
+come within the range of trigonometrical calculation. They are out of
+reach of the mathematical eye in the depth of space. But we know for
+certain that the distance of none of these visible stars, without a
+measurable parallax, is less than four million times the distance of
+our sun from the earth. It would be useless to express this in figures
+as it would be altogether incomprehensible. What then can be said of
+the telescopic stars, not to speak at all of those beyond the power
+of instruments to determine.
+
+If a railroad could be constructed to the nearest star and the fare
+made one cent a mile, a single passage would cost $250,000,000,000,
+that is two hundred and fifty billion dollars, which would make a
+94-foot cube of pure gold. All of the coined gold in the world amounts
+to but $4,000,000,000 (four billion dollars), equal to a gold cube of
+24 feet. Therefore it would take sixty times the world's stock of gold
+to pay the fare of one passenger, at a cent a mile from the earth to
+Alpha Centauri.
+
+The light from numbers, probably countless numbers, of stars is so
+long in coming to us that they could be blotted out of existence and
+we would remain unconscious of the fact for years, for hundreds of
+years, for thousands of years, nay to infinity. Thus if _Sirius_
+were to collide with some other space traveler and be knocked into
+smithereens as an Irishman would say, we would not know about it for
+eight years. In fact if all the stars were blotted out and only the
+sun left we should still behold their light in the heavens and be
+unconscious of the extinction of even some of the naked-eye stars for
+sixty or seventy years.
+
+It is vain to pursue farther the unthinkable vastness of the visible
+Universe; as for the invisible it is equally useless for even
+imagination to try to grapple with its never-ending immensity, to
+endeavor to penetrate its awful clouded mystery forever veiled from
+human view.
+
+In all there are about 3,000 stars visible to the naked eye in each
+hemisphere. A three-inch pocket telescope brings about one million
+into view. The grand and scientifically perfected instruments of our
+great observatories show incalculable multitudes. Every improvement
+in light-grasping power brings millions of new stars into the range
+of instrumental vision and shows the "background" of the sky blazing
+with the light of eye-invisible suns too far away to be separately
+distinguished.
+
+Great strides are daily being made in stellar photography. Plates are
+now being attached to the telescopic apparatus whereby luminous heavenly
+bodies are able to impress their own pictures. Groups of stars are
+being photographed on one plate. Complete sets of these star photographs
+are being taken every year, embracing every nook and corner of the
+celestial sphere and these are carefully compared with one another to
+find out what changes are going on in the heavens. It will not be long
+before every star photographically visible to the most powerful
+telescope will have its present position accurately defined on these
+photographic charts.
+
+When, the sensitized plate is exposed for a considerable time even
+invisible stars photograph themselves, and in this way a great number
+of stars have been discovered which no telescope, however powerful,
+can bring within the range of vision. Tens of thousands of stars have
+registered themselves thus on a single plate, and on one occasion an
+impression was obtained on one plate of more than 400,000.
+
+Astronomers are of the opinion that for every star visible to the naked
+eye there are more than 50,000 visible to the camera of the telescope.
+If this is so, then the number of visible stars exceeds 300,000,000
+(three hundred millions).
+
+But the picture taking power of the finest photographic lens has a
+limit; no matter how long the exposure, it cannot penetrate beyond a
+certain boundary into the vastness of space, and beyond its limits as
+George Sterling, the Californian poet, says are--
+
+    "fires of unrecorded suns
+    That light a heaven not our own."
+
+What is the limit? Answer philosopher, answer sage, answer astronomer,
+and we have the solution of "the riddle of the Universe."
+
+As yet the riddle still remains, the veil still hangs between the
+knowable and the unknowable, between the finite and the infinite.
+Science stands baffled like a wailing creature outside the walls of
+knowledge importuning for admission. There is little, in truth no hope
+at all, that she will ever be allowed to enter, survey all the fields
+of space and set a limit to their boundaries.
+
+Although the riddle of the universe still remains unsolved because
+unsolvable, no one can deny that Astronomy has made mighty strides
+forward during the past few years. What has been termed the "Old
+Astronomy," which concerns itself with the determination of the
+positions and motions of the heavenly bodies, has been rejuvenated and
+an immense amount of work has been accomplished by concerted effort,
+as well as by individual exertions.
+
+The greatest achievements have been the accurate determination of the
+positions of the fixed stars visible to the eye. Their situation is
+now estimated with as unerring precision as is that of the planets of
+our own system. Millions upon millions of stars have been photographed
+and these photographs will be invaluable in determining the future
+changes and motions of these giant suns of interstellar space.
+
+Of our own system we now know definitely the laws governing it. Fifty
+years ago much of our solar machinery was misunderstood and many things
+were enveloped in mystery which since has been made very plain. The
+spectroscope has had a wonderful part in astronomical research. It
+first revealed the nature of the gases existing in the sun. It next
+enabled us to study the prominences on any clear day. Then by using
+it in the spectro-heliograph we have been enabled to photograph the
+entire visible surface of the sun, together with the prominences at
+one time. Through the spectro-heliograph we know much more about what
+the central body of our system is doing than our theories can explain.
+Fresh observations are continually bringing to light new facts which
+must soon be accounted for by laws at present unknown.
+
+Spectroscopic observations are by no means confined to the sun. By
+them we now study the composition of the atmospheres of the other
+planets; through them the presence of chemical elements known on the
+earth is detected in vagrant comets, far-distant stars and dimly-shining
+nebulae. The spectroscope also makes it possible to measure the
+velocities of objects which are approaching or receding from us. For
+instance we know positively that the bright star called Aldebaran near
+the constellation of the Pleiades is retreating from us at a rate of
+almost two thousand miles a minute. The greatest telescopes in the
+world are now being trained on stars that are rushing away towards the
+"furthermost" of space and in this way astronomers are trying to get
+definite knowledge as to the actual velocity with which the celestial
+bodies are speeding.
+
+It is only within the past few years that photography has been applied
+to astronomical development. In this connection, more accurate results
+are obtained by measuring the photographs of stellar spectra than by
+measuring the spectra themselves. Photography with modern rapid plates
+gives us, with a given telescope, pictures of objects so faint that
+no visual telescope of the same size will reveal them. It is in this
+way that many of the invisible stars have impressed themselves upon
+exposed plates and given us a vague idea of the immensity in number
+of those stars which we cannot view with eye or instrument.
+
+Though we have made great advancement, there are many problems yet
+even in regard to our own little system of sun worlds which clamor
+loudly for solution. The sun himself represents a crowd of pending
+problems. His peculiar mode of rotation; the level of sunspots; the
+constitution of the photospheric cloud-shell, its relation to faculae
+which rise from it, and to the surmounting vaporous strata; the nature
+of the prominences; the alternations of coronal types; the affinities
+of the zodiacal light--all await investigation.
+
+A great telescope has recently shown that one star in eighteen on the
+average is a visual double--is composed of two suns in slow revolution
+around their common center of mass. The spectroscope using the
+photographic plate, has established within the last decade that one
+star in every five or six on the average is attended by a companion
+so near to it as to remain invisible in the most powerful telescopes,
+and so massive as to swing the visible star around in an elliptic
+orbit.
+
+The photography of comets, nebulae and solar coronas has made the study
+of these phenomena incomparably more effective than the old visual
+methods. There is no longer any necessity to make "drawings" of them.
+The old dread of comets has been relegated into the shade of ignorance.
+The long switching tails regarded so ominously and from which were
+anticipated such dire calamities as the destruction of worlds into
+chaos have been proven to be composed of gaseous vapors of no more
+solidity than the "airy nothingness of dreams."
+
+The earth in the circle of its orbit passed through the tail of Halley's
+comet in May, 1910, and we hadn't even a pyrotechnical display of fire
+rockets to celebrate the occasion. In fact there was not a single
+celestial indication of the passage and we would not have known only
+for the calculations of the astronomer. The passing of a comet now,
+as far as fear is concerned, means no more, in fact not as much, as
+the passing of an automobile.
+
+Science no doubt has made wonderful strides in our time, but far as
+it has gone, it has but opened for us the first few pages of the book
+of the heavens--the last pages of which no man shall ever read. For
+aeons upon aeons of time, worlds and suns, and systems of worlds and
+suns, revolved through the infinity of space, before man made his
+appearance on the tiny molecule of matter we call the earth, and for
+aeons upon aeons, for eternity upon eternity, worlds and suns shall
+continue to roll and revolve after the last vestige of man shall have
+disappeared, nay after the atoms of earth and sun and all his attending
+planets of our system shall have amalgamated themselves with other
+systems in the boundlessness of space; destroyed, obliterated,
+annihilated, they shall never be, for matter is indestructible. When
+it passes from one form it enters another; the dead animal that is
+cast into the earth lives again in the trees and shrubs and flowers
+and grasses that grow in the earth above where its body was cast. Our
+earth shall die in course of time, that is, its particles will pass
+into other compositions and it will be so of the other planets, of the
+suns, of the stars themselves, for as soon as the old ones die there
+will ever be new forms to which to attach themselves and thus the
+process of world development shall go on forever.
+
+The nebulae which astronomers discover throughout the stellar space
+are extended masses of glowing gases of different forms and are worlds
+in process of formation. Such was the earth once. These gases solidify
+and contract and cool off until finally an inhabited world, inhabited
+by some kind of creatures, takes its place in the whirling galaxy of
+systems.
+
+The stars which appear to us in a yellow or whitish yellow light are
+in the heyday of their existence, while those that present a red haze
+are almost burnt out and will soon become blackened, dead things
+disintegrating and crumbling and spreading their particles throughout
+space. It is supposed this little earth of ours has a few more million
+years to live, so we need not fear for our personal safety while in
+mortal form.
+
+To us ordinary mortals the mystery as well as the majesty of the heavens
+have the same wonderful attraction as they had for the first of our
+race. Thousands of years ago the black-bearded shepherds of Eastern
+lands gazed nightly into the vaulted dome and were struck with awe as
+well as wonder in the contemplation of the glittering specks which
+appeared no larger than the pebbles beneath their feet.
+
+We in our time as we gaze with unaided eye up at the mighty disk of
+the so called Milky Way, no longer regard the scintillating points
+glittering like diamonds in a jeweler's show-case, with feelings of
+awe, but the wonder is still upon us, wonder at the immensity of the
+works of Him who built the earth and sky, who, "throned in height
+sublime, sits amid the cherubim," King of the Universe, King of kings
+and Lord of lords. With a deep faith we look up and adore, then
+reverently exclaim,--"Lord, God! wonderful are the works of Thy Hands."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+CAN WE COMMUNICATE WITH OTHER WORLDS?
+
+  Vastness of Nature--Star Distances--Problem of Communicating with
+  Mars--The Great Beyond.
+
+
+A story is told of a young lady who had just graduated from boarding
+school with high honors. Coming home in great glee, she cast her books
+aside as she announced to her friends;--"Thank goodness it is all over,
+I have nothing more to learn. I know Latin and Greek, French and German,
+Spanish and Italian; I have gone through Algebra, Geometry,
+Trigonometry, Conic Sections and the Calculus; I can interpret Beethoven
+and Wagner, and--but why enumerate?--in short, '_I know everything_.'"
+
+As she was thus proclaiming her knowledge her hoary-headed grandfather,
+a man whom the Universities of the world had honored by affixing a
+score of alphabetical letters to his name, was experimenting in his
+laboratory. The lines of long and deep study had corrugated his brow
+and furrowed his face. Wearily he bent over his retorts and test tubes.
+At length he turned away with a heavy sigh, threw up his hands and
+despairingly exclaimed,--"Alas, alas! after fifty years of study and
+investigation, I find _I know nothing_."
+
+There is a moral in this story that he who runs may read. Most of us
+are like the young lady,--in the pride of our ignorance, we fancy we
+know almost everything. We boast of the progress of our time, of what
+has been accomplished in our modern world, we proclaim our triumphs
+from the hilltops,--"Ha!" we shout, "we have annihilated time and
+distance; we have conquered the forces of nature and made them
+subservient to our will; we have chained the lightning and imprisoned
+the thunder; we have wandered through the fields of space and measured
+the dimensions and revolutions of stars and suns and planets and
+systems. We have opened the eternal gates of knowledge for all to enter
+and crowned man king of the universe."
+
+Vain boasting! The gates of knowledge have been opened, but we have
+merely got a peep at what lies within. And man, so far from being king
+of the universe, is but as a speck on the fly-wheel that controls the
+mighty machinery of creation. What we know is infinitesimal to what
+we do not know. We have delved in the fields of science, but as yet
+our ploughshares have merely scratched the tiniest portion of the
+surface,--the furrow that lies in the distance is unending. In the
+infinite book of knowledge we have just turned over a few of the first
+pages; but as it is infinite, alas! we can never hope to reach the
+final page, for there is no final page. What we have accomplished is
+but as a mere drop in the ocean, whose waves wash the continents of
+eternity. No scholar, no scientist can bound those continents, can
+tell the limits to which they stretch, inasmuch as they are illimitable.
+
+Ask the most learned _savant_ if he can fix the boundaries of space, and
+he will answer,--No! Ask him if he can define _mind_ and _matter_, and
+you will receive the same answer.
+
+"What is mind? It is no matter."
+
+ "What is matter? Never mind."
+
+The atom formerly thought to be indivisible and the smallest particle
+of matter has been reduced to molecules, corpuscles, ions, and
+electrons; but the nature, the primal cause of these, the greatest
+scientists on earth are unable to determine. Learning is as helpless
+as ignorance when brought up against this stone-wall of mystery.
+_The effect_ is seen, but the _cause_ remains indeterminable. The
+scientist, gray-haired in experience and experiment, knows no more
+in this regard than the prattling child at its mother's knee. The child
+asks,--"Who made the world?" and the mother answers, "God made the
+world." The infant mind, suggestive of the future craving for knowledge,
+immediately asks,--"Who is God?" Question of questions to which the
+philosopher and the peasant must give the same answer,--"God is the
+infinite, the eternal, the source of all things, the _alpha_ and
+_omega_ of creation, from Him all came, to Him all must return."
+He is the beginning of Science, the foundation on which our edifice
+of knowledge rests.
+
+We hear of the conflict between Science and Religion. There is no
+conflict, can be none, for all Science must be based on faith,--faith
+in Him who holds worlds and suns "in the hollow of His hand." All our
+great scientists have been deeply religious men, acknowledging their
+own insignificance before Him who fills the universe with His presence.
+
+What is the universe and what place do we hold in it? The mind of man
+becomes appalled in consideration of the question. The orb we know as
+the sun is centre of a system of worlds of which our earth is almost
+the most insignificant; yet great as is the sun when compared to the
+little bit of matter on which we dwell and have our being, it is itself
+but a mote, as it were, in the beam of the Universe. Formerly this sun
+was thought to be fixed and immovable, but the progress of science
+demonstrated that while the earth moves around this luminary, the
+latter is moving with mighty velocity in an orbit of its own. Tis the
+same with all the other bodies which we erroneously call "fixed stars."
+These stars are the suns of other systems of worlds, countless systems,
+all rushing through the immensity of space, for there is nothing fixed
+or stationary in creation,--all is movement, constant, unvarying. Suns
+and stars and systems perform their revolutions with unerring precision,
+each unit-world true to its own course, thus proving to the soul of
+reason and the consciousness of faith that there must needs be an
+omnipotent hand at the lever of this grand machinery of the universe,
+the hand that fashioned it, that of God. Addison beautifully expresses
+the idea in referring to the revolutions of the stars:
+
+    "In reason's ear they all rejoice,
+    And utter forth one glorious voice,
+    Forever singing as they shine-
+    'The Hand that made us is Divine.'"
+
+Our sun, the centre of the small system of worlds of which the earth
+is one, is distant from us about ninety-three million miles. In winter
+it is nearer; in summer farther off. Light travels this distance in
+about eight minutes, to be exact, the rate is 186,400 miles per second.
+To get an idea of the immensity of the distance of the so-called fixed
+stars, let us take this as a base of comparison. The nearest fixed
+star to us is _Alpha Centauri_, which is one of the brightest as
+seen in the southern heavens. It requires four and one-quarter years
+for a beam of light to travel from this star to earth at the rate of
+186,000 miles a second, thus showing that Alpha Centauri is about two
+hundred and seventy-five thousand times as far from us as is the sun,
+in other words, more than 25,575,000,000,000 miles, which, expressed
+in our notation, reads twenty-five trillion, five hundred and seventy-
+five billion miles, a number which the mind of man is incapable of
+grasping. To use the old familiar illustration of the express train,
+it would take the "Twentieth Century Limited," which does the thousand
+mile trip between New York and Chicago in less than twenty-four hours,
+some one million two hundred and fifty thousand years at the same speed
+to travel from the earth to _Alpha Centauri_. _Sirius_, the Dog-Star, is
+twice as far away, something like eight or nine "light" years from our
+solar system; the Pole-Star is forty-eight "light" years removed from
+us, and so on with the rest, to an infinity of numbers. From the dawn of
+creation in the eternal cosmos of matter, light has been travelling from
+some stars in the infinitude of space at the rate of 186,000 miles per
+second, but so remote are they from our system that it has not reached
+us as yet. The contemplation is bewildering; the mind sinks into
+nothingness in consideration of a magnitude so great and distance so
+confusing. What lies beyond?--a region which numbers cannot measure and
+thought cannot span, and beyond that?--the eternal answer,--GOD.
+
+In face of the contemplation of the vastness of creation, of its
+boundlessness the question ever obtrudes itself,--What place have we
+mortals in the universal cosmos? What place have we finite creatures,
+who inhabit this speck of matter we call the earth, in this mighty
+scheme of suns and systems and never-ending space. Does the Creator
+of all think us the most important of his works, that we should be the
+particular objects of revelation, that for us especially heaven was
+built, and a God-man, the Son of the Eternal, came down to take flesh
+of our flesh and live among us, to show us the way, and finally to
+offer himself as a victim to the Father to expiate our transgressions.
+Mystery of mysteries before which we stand appalled and lost in wonder.
+Self-styled rationalists love to point out the irrationality and
+absurdity of supposing that the Creator of all the unimaginable vastness
+of suns and systems, filling for all we know endless space, should
+take any special interest in so mean and pitiful a creature as man,
+inhabiting such an infinitesimal speck of matter as the earth, which
+depends for its very life and light upon a second or third-rate or
+hundred-rate Sun.
+
+From the earliest times of our era, the sneers and taunts of atheism
+and agnosticism have been directed at the humble believer, who bows
+down in submission and questions not. The fathers of the Church, such
+as Augustine and Chrysostom and Thomas of Aquinas and, at a later time,
+Luther, and Calvin, and Knox, and Newman, despite the war of creeds,
+have attacked the citadel of the scoffers; but still the latter hurl
+their javelins from the ramparts, battlements and parapets and refuse
+to be repulsed. If there are myriads of other worlds, thousands,
+millions of them in point of magnitude greater than ours, what concern
+say they has the Creator with our little atom of matter? Are other
+worlds inhabited besides our own. This is the question that will not
+down--that is always begging for an answer. The most learned savants
+of modern time, scholars, sages, philosophers and scientists have given
+it their attention, but as yet no one has been able to conclusively
+decide whether a race of intelligent beings exists in any sphere other
+than our own. All efforts to determine the matter result in mere
+surmise, conjecture and guesswork. The best of scientists can only put
+forward an opinion.
+
+Professor Simon Newcomb, one of the most brilliant minds our country
+has produced, says: "It is perfectly reasonable to suppose that beings,
+not only animated but endowed with reason, inhabit countless worlds
+in space." Professor Mitchell of the Cincinnati Observatory, in his
+work, "Popular Astronomy," says,--"It is most incredible to assert,
+as so many do, that our planet, so small and insignificant in its
+proportions when compared with the planets with which it is allied,
+is the only world in the whole universe filled with sentient, rational,
+and intelligent beings capable of comprehending the grand mysteries
+of the physical universe." Camille Flammarion, in referring to the
+utter insignificance of the earth in the immensity of space, puts
+forward his view thus: "If advancing with the velocity of light we
+could traverse from century to century the unlimited number of suns
+and spheres without ever meeting any limit to the prodigious immensity
+where God brings forth his worlds, and looking behind, knowing not in
+what part of the infinite was the little grain of dust called the
+earth, we would be compelled to unite our voices with that universal
+nature and exclaim--'Almighty God, how senseless were we to believe
+that there was nothing beyond the earth and that our abode alone
+possessed the privilege of reflecting Thy greatness and honor.'"
+
+The most distinguished astronomers and scientists of a past time, as
+well as many of the most famous divines, supported the contention of
+world life beyond the earth. Among these may be mentioned Kepler and
+Tycho, Giordano Bruno and Cardinal Cusa, Sir William and Sir John
+Herschel, Dr. Bentley and Dr. Chalmers, and even Newton himself
+subscribed in great measure to the belief that the planets and stars
+are inhabited by intelligent beings.
+
+Those who deny the possibility of other worlds being inhabited, endeavor
+to show that our position in the universe is unique, that our solar
+system is quite different from all others, and, to crown the argument,
+they assert that our little world has just the right amount of water,
+air, and gravitational force to enable it to be the abode of intelligent
+life, whereas elsewhere, such conditions do not prevail, and that on
+no other sphere can such physical habitudes be found as will enable
+life to originate or to exist. It can be easily shown that such
+reasoning is based on untenable foundations. Other worlds have to go
+through processes of evolution, and there can be no doubt that many
+are in a state similar to our own. It required hundreds of thousands,
+perhaps hundreds of millions of years, before this earth was fit to
+sustain human life. The same transitions which took place on earth are
+taking place in other planets of our system, and other systems, and
+it is but reasonable to assume that in other systems there are much
+older worlds than the earth, and that these have arrived at a more
+developed state of existence, and therefore have a life much higher
+than our own. As far as physical conditions are concerned, there are
+suns similar to our own, as revealed by the spectroscope, and which
+have the same eruptive energy. Astronomical Science has incontrovertibly
+demonstrated, and evidence is continually increasing to show that dark,
+opaque worlds like ours exist and revolve around their primaries. Why
+should not these worlds be inhabited by a race equal or even superior
+in intelligence to ourselves, according to their place in the cosmos
+of creation?
+
+Leaving out of the question the outlying worlds of space, let us come
+to a consideration of the nearest celestial neighbor we have in our
+own system, the planet Mars: Is there rational life on Mars and if so
+can we communicate with the inhabitants?
+
+Though little more than half the earth's size, Mars has a significance
+in the public eye which places it first in importance among the planets.
+It is our nearest neighbor on the outer side of the earth's path around
+the Sun and, viewed through a telescope of good magnifying power, shows
+surface markings, suggestive of continents, mountains, valleys, oceans,
+seas and rivers, and all the varying phenomena which the mind associates
+with a world like unto our own. Indeed, it possesses so many features
+in common with the earth, that it is impossible to resist the conception
+of its being inhabitated. This, however, is not tantamount to saying
+that if there is a race of beings on Mars they are the same as we on
+Earth. By no means. Whatever atmosphere exists on Mars must be much
+thinner than ours and far too rare to sustain the life of a people
+with our limited lung capacity. A race with immense chests could live
+under such conditions, and folk with gills like fish could pass a
+comfortable existence in the rarefied air. Besides the tenuity of the
+atmosphere, there are other conditions which would cause life to be
+much different on Mars. Attraction and gravitation are altogether
+different. The force with which a substance is attracted to the surface
+of Mars is only a little more than one-third as strong as on the earth.
+For instance one hundred pounds on Earth would weigh only about
+thirty-eight pounds on Mars. A man who could jump five feet here could
+clear fifteen feet on Mars. Paradoxical as it may seem, the smaller
+a planet, in comparison with ours and consequently the less the pull
+of gravity at its centre, the greater is the probability that its
+inhabitants, if any, are giants when compared with us. Professor Lowell
+has pointed out that to place the Martians (if there are such beings)
+under the same conditions as those in which we exist, the average
+inhabitant must be considered to be three times as large and three
+times as heavy as the average human being; and the strength of the
+Martians must exceed ours to even a greater extent than the bulk and
+weight; for their muscles would be twenty-seven times more effective.
+In fact, one Martian could do the work of fifty or sixty men.
+
+It is idle, however, to speculate as to what the forms of life are
+like on Mars, for if there are any such forms our ideas and conceptions
+of them must be imaginary, as we cannot see them on Mars we do not
+know. There is yet no possibility of seeing anything on the planet
+less than thirty miles across, and even a city of that size, viewed
+through the most powerful telescope, would only be visible as a minute
+speck. Great as is the perfection to which our optical instruments
+have been brought, they have revealed nothing on the planet save the
+so-called canals, to indicate the presence of sentient rational beings.
+The canals discovered by Schiaparelli of the Milan Observatory in 1877
+are so regular, outlined with such remarkable geometrical precision,
+that it is claimed they must be artificial and the work of a high order
+of intelligence. "The evidence of such work," says Professor Lowell,
+"points to a highly intelligent mind behind it."
+
+Can this intelligence in any way reach us, or can we express ourselves
+to it? Can the chasm of space which lies between the Earth and Mars
+be bridged--a chasm which, at the shortest, is more than thirty-five
+million miles across or one hundred and fifty times greater than the
+distance between the earth and the moon? Can the inhabitants of the
+Earth and Mars exchange signals? To answer the question, let us
+institute some comparisons. Suppose the fabled "Man in the Moon" were
+a real personage, we would require a telescope 800 times more powerful
+than the finest instrument we now have to see him, for the space
+penetrating power of the best telescope is not more than 300 miles and
+the moon is 240,000 miles distant. An object to be visible on the moon
+would require to be as large as the Metropolitan Insurance Building
+in New York, which is over 700 feet high. To see, therefore, an object
+on Mars by means of the telescope the object would need to have
+dimensions one hundred and fifty times as great as the object on the
+moon; in other words, before we could see a building on Mars, it would
+have to be one hundred and fifty times the size of the Metropolitan
+Building. Even if there are inhabitants there, it is not likely they
+have such large buildings.
+
+Assuming that there _are_ Martians, and that they are desirous
+of communicating with the earth by waving a flag, such a flag in order
+to be seen through the most powerful telescopes and when Mars is
+nearest, would have to be 300 miles long and 200 miles wide and be
+flung from a flagpole 500 miles high. The consideration of such a
+signal only belongs to the domain of the imagination. As an
+illustration, it should conclusively settle the question of the
+possibility or rather impossibility of signalling between the two
+planets.
+
+Let us suppose that the signalling power of wireless telegraphy had
+been advanced to such perfection that it was possible to transmit a
+signal across a distance of 8,000 miles, equal to the diameter of the
+earth, or 1-30 the distance to the moon. Now, in order to be appreciable
+at the moon it would require the intensity of the 8,000 mile ether
+waves to be raised not merely 30 times, but 30 times 30, for to use
+the ordinary expression, the intensity of an effect spreading in all
+directions like the ether waves, decreases inversely as the square of
+the distance. If the whole earth were brought within the domain of
+wireless telegraphy, the system would still have to be improved 900
+times as much again before the moon could be brought within the sphere
+of its influence. A wireless telegraphic signal, transmitted across
+a distance equal to the diameter of the earth, would be reduced to a
+mere sixteen-millionth part if it had to travel over the distance to
+Mars; in other words, if wireless telegraphy attained the utmost
+excellence now hoped for it--that is, of being able to girdle the
+earth--it would have to be increased a thousandfold and then a
+thousandfold again, and finally multiplied by 16, before an appreciable
+_signal_ could be transmitted to Mars. This seems like drawing
+the long bow, but it is a scientific truth. There is no doubt that
+ether waves can and do traverse the distance between the Earth and
+Mars, for the fact that sunlight reaches Mars and is reflected back
+to us proves this; but the source of waves adequate to accomplish such
+a feat must be on such a scale as to be hopelessly beyond the power
+of man to initiate or control. Electrical signalling to Mars is much
+more out of the question than wireless. Even though electrical phenomena
+produced in any one place were sufficiently intense to be appreciable
+by suitable instruments all over the earth, that intensity would have
+to be enhanced another sixteen million-fold before they would be
+appreciable on the planet Mars.
+
+It is absolutely hopeless to try to span the bridge that lies between
+us and Mars by any methods known to present day science. Yet men styling
+themselves scientists say it can be done and will be done. This is a
+prophecy, however, which must lie in the future.
+
+As has been pointed out, we have as yet but scratched the outer surface
+in the fields of knowledge. What visions may not be opened to the eyes
+of men, as they go down deeper and deeper into the soil. Secrets will
+be exhumed undreamt of now, mysteries will be laid bare to the light
+of day, and perhaps the psychic riddle of life itself may be solved.
+Then indeed, Mars may come to be looked on as a next-door neighbor,
+with whose life and actions we are as well acquainted as with our own.
+The thirty-five million miles that separate him from us may be regarded
+as a mere step in space and the most distant planets of our system as
+but a little journey afield. Distant Uranus may be looked upon as no
+farther away than is, say, Australia from America at the present time.
+
+It is vain, however, to indulge in these premises. The veil of mystery
+still hangs between us and suns and stars and systems. One fact lies
+before us of which there is no uncertainty--_we die_ and pass away from
+our present state into some other. We are not annihilated into
+nothingness. Suns and worlds also die, after performing their
+allotted revolutions in the cycle of the universe. Suns glow for a
+time, and planets bear their fruitage of plants and animals and men,
+then turn for aeons into a dreary, icy listlessness and finally crumble
+to dust, their atoms joining other worlds in the indestructibility of
+matter.
+
+After all, there really is no death, simply change--change from one
+state to another. When we say we die, we simply mean that we change
+our state. There is a life beyond the grave. As Longfellow beautifully
+expresses it:
+
+    "Life is real, life is earnest,
+    And the grave is not its goal,
+    Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
+    Was not spoken of the soul."
+
+But whither do we go when we pass on? Where is the soul when it leaves
+the earthly tenement called the body? We, Christians, in the light of
+revelation and of faith, believe in a heaven for the good; but it is
+not a material place, only a state of being. Where and under what
+conditions is that state? This leads us to the consideration of another
+question which is engrossing the minds of many thinkers and reasoners
+of the present day. Can we communicate with the Spirit world? Despite
+the tenets and beliefs and experiences of learned and sincere
+investigators, we are constrained, thus far, to answer in the negative.
+
+Yet, though we cannot communicate with it, we know there is a spirit
+world; the inner consciousness of our being apprises us of that fact,
+we know our loved ones who have passed on are not dead but gone before,
+just a little space, and that soon we shall follow them into a higher
+existence. As Talmage said, the tombstone is not the terminus, but the
+starting post, the door to the higher life, the entrance to the state
+of endless labor, grand possibilities, and eternal progression.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Marvels of Modern Science, by Paul Severing
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARVELS OF MODERN SCIENCE ***
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