The Free lance., May 01, 1887, Image 4

changes, energy may be liberated and applied to
producing the motions of other portions of matter
required in doing work.
From the earliest times, and in the rudest
conditions, men have used the liberated energy
of changing molar systems to do their work ; and
centuries of slow experience had led to considera
ble skill in using it, before scientific knowledge
conferred the power of most efficient utilization.
Along with this was used, in total ignorance of its
source and laws, the energy of changing molecu
lar systems in animal mechanisms. And as early,
certainly, as 130 B. C„ the energy of these began
to be used independently of living organisms, as
in the eolipile and other machines of Hiero of
Alexandria. Yet, more than eighteen centuries
passed before such use was made to really contrib
ute to the world’s work, in Savarv’s apparatus,
1698, “for raising water and occasioning motion
to all kinds of mill work by the impellent force
of fire.” It took the larger part of another cen
tury to develop the engine of Watt, 1769,0011-
laining all the essential features of the present
steam engine.
To-day, in civilized nations, nearly all work
is obtained from the change of molecular dynamic
systems in (1) living organisms and (2) thermic
engines. The first of these mechanisms has a
very high “efficiency” ; that is, a large percent
age (fifty) of the power of action of the material
systems used in it can be drawn off as energy
available for doing work. The efficiency of the
second is very small, and can never be otherwise.
After many centuries of developing from a
toy to a first rude useful form, and nearly another
from that stage to its perfection, the steam
engine has been for a little over a century the
work agent of the world. Inefficient as it is and
must be, it has been the instrument of converting
so much of the energy of molecular dynamic
systems of the cruder, more abundant, and
cheaper formj of nutter into useful work that in
its one.century it has advanced civilization, in
THE FREE LANCE.
telligence, and all the material comforts of life
by many centuries.
Our debt to the steam-engine is very great:
let it have high honor and esteem. But we are
compelled to bring an arraignment against it.
Its efficiency, (percentage of energy delivered in
work from a given amount in the system used,) is
too low to be endured much longer in a scientific
age. This fact is the doom of the steam-engine,
at an early date. It must soon give way to a
more efficient agent of work. From radiation
and conduction from the furnace and boiler,
from absorption of heat in the nitrogen and
products of combustion, from further consump
tion in internal work in the substance used to
transmit the energy to the engine, from heat
thrown out in the exhaust of this, and from other
losses, practically the steam engine wastes about
ninety per cent of the energy of the systems sup
plied to it, and utilizes but nine or ten per cent.
[The latest invention, the Triple Thermic Motor,
will, possibly, deliver seventeen per cent; but it
remains yet to be proved how practical the appa
ratus is.] The steam engine must go,
Little more than a quarter of a century has
passed since electric motors were but playthings
like the apparatus of Hiero, 130 B. C. Indeed,
they were little more than this ten years ago.
To-day electric motors arc practically perfect.
They will deliver in work over ninety per cent of
the energy supplied to them. They are coming
rapidly into use.
One discovery, now, will relegate the steam
engine to a place among the crude and disbsed
instruments of the world’s barbarous ages. That
discovery is to find how, from changes of molecu
lar dynamic systems, to liberate cheaply and in
unlimited quantity energy in the form of electri
cal currents. The engine, electric motor, is
ready and perfect for the conversion of these into
work. This discovery will reduce by hundreds
of millions of dollars the value of coal lands,
mining plants, and carrying roads, will render