CHAPTER XVII.Electrical Navigation.Strange and novel uses to which electricity was applied in 1999. Hydrophobia banished from the earth. The relations of Creditor and Debtor greatly improved. Electrical ocean, river and lake navigation. The ocean ablaze with electric lights. Ships navigated by wireless telegraphy.It has always been the conceit of every age that its own era is the most progressive and the most enlightened of all. In 1799 any man who could have stood on the deck of Nelson’s flagship “Victory” and informed that gallant sailor that in 1899 warships would navigate without sails; that powder would be used that made no smoke; that heavy rifles would hurl a ton shell fourteen miles, would have been dropped overboard as a monumental liar.The age in which we live is always a conceited one; always ready to scoff at innovations.The Bump of The Age.Every age had a bump of its own. How these precious bumps are smoothed down onebyone, is really interesting. The stage coach was king in its day. As men gazed upon the lumbering, six miles per hour coach, the bump of the period made them believe it was the swiftest and most luxurious mode of travel the world would ever see. Steam came and reduced the stagecoach bump. When men saw steam locomotives drawing fast trains and covering the country with villainous smoke, they really believed it was the swiftest mode of travel the world ever would employ. Electricity then appeared and reduced the steam bump.In 1999 electricity became a mighty monarch and an obedient slave. It ruled andA Lively Customer.it obeyed. This lively king of the twentieth century was a hustler. Sixteen distinct trips around the globe it could make in just one second’s time. Electric railroads and flying machines could not reasonably hope to make sixteen separate trips around the globe in one second’s time. The age of 1999 was a very rapid one, but its joints were too rheumatic to attempt any such gait. A traveler hustling around the world at the rate of sixteen times per second would hardly have time to visit and shake hands with friends.In the twentieth century electricity, the servant-king of the world, was harnessedAll Done by Electricity.to everything conceivable. Everything was done by merely pressing a button. Houses built in that period had no stairs. Every private house had its elevator. Press a button and up it went. Houses built in that period had no chimneys. All heating andevery bit of the cooking was done by electricity. If you wanted heat, press a button; more heat wanted, press two. Locks and keys also became relics of a past age. No one in 1999 ever locked his house. Every house was provided with an electrical outfit. Those who desired to leave the house for a few hours attached the electric gongs and alarm bells. When connection was made no one could leave or enter the house without raising a pandemonium and sending an alarm to the central police station.The uses of electricity in 1999 were carried to even absurd lengths. Man’s most faithful, but, alas, uncertain friend, the dog, was in evidence throughout the twentieth century. He wagged his tail vigorously as ever in token of kindnesses received. He was as ready as ever to sacrifice his life for that of his master, as well as to plant his teeth into the calf of his leg. The Hindoo charmer is never really safe until he has extracted the fangs of the reptile.And so it was with the twentieth century dog. Nothing can be more violent than death by hydrophobia. The bite of the dog may prove more terrible than that of the cobra. This scourge was effectually removed. In 1999 dogs over one year old had their teeth removed by electricity. Their mouths were then fitted with a false set. During dog-days, while Sirius was inthe ascendant, the false teeth were removed and all canines were kept on a vegetable diet. Hydrophobia became one of the lost arts.Another peculiar method in which electricity was utilized in 1999 tended to robElectrical Dentistry.dentistry of some of its terrors. There was one feature of dentistry in 1899 that often tested the best nerves, and that was the peculiar odor common to all dental chambers of horror. This peculiar odor settles like a cloud upon the stomach and seldom appeals in vain to one’s nerves for sympathy. For this reason an electrical machine was invented in 1999 which enabled the patient to remain at home while an offending tooth was tendering its resignation. The dentist, during the operation, remained in his den, enjoying a monopoly of its odors. If a tooth ached all one had to do was to call up a dentist, on the telephone, and ask to be placed on the line. The victim, in the seclusion of his back parlor, adjusted the electrical forceps and signalled to the dentist, five blocks away, to touch it off, then the festivities commenced. These private tooth extracting séances became very popular. No profane eyes were there to witness the agony of the victim, as in a public dental office. If he shouted loud enough to make a hole in the sky or tried to kick the plaster off the ceiling, no one was anythe wiser for it. But in a public dental office (especially with ladies in the adjoining room), while the victim is being harpooned, his eloquent groans must be stifled and no attempt must be made by the victim to kick at the chandeliers. The new system of home electrical tooth extracting proved very popular. It was one of the things that had come to stay.In 1999, through the medium of electricity, the relations existing between creditors and debtors became closer and more binding.Sure Cure for Dead Beats.In 1899, for some reason or other never fully explained, a debtor who had a long standing account, was liable to dodge into some nook, corner or side street, if he caught a glimpse of his creditor coming down the road. The relations existing between creditor and debtor in the nineteenth century were not as cordial as they should be. If the debt were of long standing there lacked a certain warmth in their greeting which was perhaps difficult to account for.In 1930 creditors and debtors adjusted themselves in better harmony, at least they kept in closer electrical touch with one another. If the sum due was $50 or over and of long standing, the law allowed the creditor to connect his debtor with an electrical battery. The object of this wise law was to keep the creditor in constant touch with his debtor. If the debt was over threemonths due, the creditor was allowed to occasionally “touch up” his debtor without having to hunt him up and dun him. The creditor always had him “on the string” so to speak. It was further specified by law that creditors must employ only as many volts as there were dollars due on account in shocking a debtor. These electrical shocks were merely reminders, intended to refresh the memory of the debtor. A man owing $200 was liable to receive two hundred volts until the debt was satisfied.This plan for the collection of bad debts worked very successfully. In 1999 noWorked Like a Charm.debtor could tell when his creditor might touch him up. The shock reminding him of his old debt might come during the night and disturb his pleasant dreams. Perhaps while seated at the family table, or perhaps even while engaged in family worship, an electric shock might come that would raise him three feet off the floor. Such little occurrences were rather embarrassing, especially if the debtor was talking at the time to some lady friend. A man owing $500 was in danger of his life. His creditor was liable to dun him by giving him a shock of five hundred volts. Such sensations, certainly, are not as pleasant as watching a yacht race, with your boat an easy winner.A curious illustration of the operation of this new condition between creditors andbad debtors, by which the former had an electrical control of the latter, came to light in a parish church on the banks of the St. Lawrence. It appears that the village school teacher, who was also choir-master, was busy with a Saturday evening rehearsal. The members of the choir were in their places, while the professor stood near the communion-rail, facing the choir, with his back turned towards the empty pews. He was speaking, when suddenly his red hair stood on end, his whiskers straightened out at right angles, while his eyes looked big as door knobs. He then gave a leap in the air, turned a somersault backwards and cleared ten pews before landing again on his feet. It appears that he owed his landlord an old board bill of $120 and the latter had just given him an electrical dun. The choir was astounded at the professor’s performance. The latter excused himself and merely said it was a slight attack of grip.In 1942 any one who used the word “steamship” was immediately rated a back number. A few of them, it is true, still fouled the ocean with their villainous smoke, but in 1999 the electrical ship ploughed the briny waters. It was a grand sight to see a magnificent ship nine hundred feet in length propelled through the waters at aElectrical Ocean Navigation.rate of thirty-five knots per hour by an invisible power, a mighty giant encased in the interior of the ship, a power that labored silently yetswiftly, with no perceptible vibration to the vessel and without emitting volumes of black smoke. These swiftly moving electrical ships were strange and striking in their appearance. Those constructed in 1975 by the Cramps had no masts, and they, of course, had no more use for funnels than a hen has for teeth. To the people of the old school of 1899, the ocean electrical ship looked strange indeed. The spectacle of a large steamship of 28,000 tons burden cleaving the ocean waves at the rate of forty knots per hour, with no masts and no smokestacks, looked strangely to men in 1975 who had been accustomed in their youth to old fashioned steamships like the City of New York, Campagnia, Kaiser Wilhelm derGrosse, Fürst Bismarck, Teutonic and others of that class. In 1975 the hull of the electrical ship retained practically the same old lines. An electrical ship, like the Great Republic, built in the year last named, plying between Manhattan and Liverpool, was a trifle over nine hundred feet long, with onlyeighty-twofeet breadth of beam. From stem to stern was built a swell body roof which covered the entire deck of the vessel. This covering was supported by ornamental iron columns from the bulwarks and usually stood about twenty feet above the deck. The only object that arose above the deck-roof was the captain’s bridge, in which was stationed the steersman, who steered the leviathan bymerely pressing electrical buttons on a small disc in front of him. With the masts and funnels removed from an electrical ocean ship, much valuable room was thus secured, adding greatly to the comfort of the passengers.Electricity was pressed into every conceivable service. That wonderful elementLighting Up the Atlantic.was man’s best and most faithful servant. There was no duty in the twentieth century too menial for it to do. It transformed our ocean, lake and river craft into a blaze of light by night. Collisions after dark were unknown to navigation in 1975. At a distance of ten miles out at sea an electrical vessel looked like a solid mass of moving flame. Electricity drawn directly from the air and extracted from coal, costs practically nothing. The chief item of expenditure was to maintain the electrical machines in repair. In 1899 sailing ships moved along at a snail gait and during night time a small green and red lamp on the port and starboard sides of the ship was all that enabled other vessels to note their presence. It was always the marvel of that age that a hundred collisions did not take place every night on the Atlantic. But in 1999 not a sail or steamship was anywhere to be seen, on ocean, lake or river. Electricity was cheaper, swifter and more reliable.In 1899 so backward was the age thatsmall boats, called row-boats, were still propelled with oars. In that year those primitive people still employed the old methods of propelling a boat that were in vogue in the days of the Phoenicians and Vikings. They still rowed a boat in the manner of the Greek galley slaves. In 1930 seamen had no more use for oars than a sperm whale has for paddle-wheels. Everything that could float, from a wash-tub to a man-of-war, was propelled by electricity. Even toy boats, sold for $5, were propelled by electricity. The winds still raged in 1999. From zephyr to cyclone that element ruled over the surface of the globe, but man had little use for it. Even the staid Hollander harnessed the wind no more. His mills were run by electricity, while the same agency was continually at work pumping out his dykes.Through the agency of electricity navigation in the twentieth century was rendered much safer. The ocean by night was dotted with electric buoys, which tossed and bowed with every wave. On these buoys signal-lights were placed, and passing vessels could read the latitude and longitude in which they were in at any time of the day. The figures were plainly marked on each buoy. By night the Atlantic ocean between Sandy Hook and Daunt’s Rock was dotted with bright electric arc lights of 8,000 c. p. The eye never wearied gazing upon the picturesque beauty of the scene.The effect of these brilliant lights on the broad bosom of the ocean, especially duringA Scene of Thrilling Beauty.a storm, was grand beyond the power of pen to describe. A distant wave could be clearly seen approaching one of these electric, mid-ocean buoys. On it sweeps, a tremendous current that no human power could stem. The rugged blue wall of the great wave glistens in the dazzling electric light as its huge side and foaming crest reaches the electric buoy. It seems as though the light and buoy must be swept to destruction and buried from sight. As the great wave sweeps over the light, all becomes dark for a few seconds, but when the mighty billow has swept on, the electric arc again blazes forth in the trough of the sea bidding defiance to Neptune’s frowns. These mighty mid-ocean scenes, viewed from the deck of an electric ocean greyhound, were thrilling in the extreme.Along the great chain of coast-line of the United States of the Americas, from the State of Maine to the States of Venezuela, Brazil and Patagonia, also on the Pacific slope from the States of Chile, Peru and Colombia to the States of West Canada and Alaska, every rock or promontory dangerous to navigation, was ablaze with electric beacons. Electricity was common as air. Oceans and continents were made more habitable to man. It became in 1999 the world’s sun by night.The perfect and absolute control of electricity by the scientists of the twentieth century benefited both ærial and ocean navigation, in furnishing the motive power. But these were benefited in another and hardly less remarkable manner by the perfected Marconi system of wireless telegraphy, which in the nineteenth century was comparatively unknown and in its early experimental stage. In ærial and ocean navigation wireless telegraphy proved an invaluable aid. The bright, young Italian inventor became a benefactor of the human race.
CHAPTER XVII.Electrical Navigation.Strange and novel uses to which electricity was applied in 1999. Hydrophobia banished from the earth. The relations of Creditor and Debtor greatly improved. Electrical ocean, river and lake navigation. The ocean ablaze with electric lights. Ships navigated by wireless telegraphy.It has always been the conceit of every age that its own era is the most progressive and the most enlightened of all. In 1799 any man who could have stood on the deck of Nelson’s flagship “Victory” and informed that gallant sailor that in 1899 warships would navigate without sails; that powder would be used that made no smoke; that heavy rifles would hurl a ton shell fourteen miles, would have been dropped overboard as a monumental liar.The age in which we live is always a conceited one; always ready to scoff at innovations.The Bump of The Age.Every age had a bump of its own. How these precious bumps are smoothed down onebyone, is really interesting. The stage coach was king in its day. As men gazed upon the lumbering, six miles per hour coach, the bump of the period made them believe it was the swiftest and most luxurious mode of travel the world would ever see. Steam came and reduced the stagecoach bump. When men saw steam locomotives drawing fast trains and covering the country with villainous smoke, they really believed it was the swiftest mode of travel the world ever would employ. Electricity then appeared and reduced the steam bump.In 1999 electricity became a mighty monarch and an obedient slave. It ruled andA Lively Customer.it obeyed. This lively king of the twentieth century was a hustler. Sixteen distinct trips around the globe it could make in just one second’s time. Electric railroads and flying machines could not reasonably hope to make sixteen separate trips around the globe in one second’s time. The age of 1999 was a very rapid one, but its joints were too rheumatic to attempt any such gait. A traveler hustling around the world at the rate of sixteen times per second would hardly have time to visit and shake hands with friends.In the twentieth century electricity, the servant-king of the world, was harnessedAll Done by Electricity.to everything conceivable. Everything was done by merely pressing a button. Houses built in that period had no stairs. Every private house had its elevator. Press a button and up it went. Houses built in that period had no chimneys. All heating andevery bit of the cooking was done by electricity. If you wanted heat, press a button; more heat wanted, press two. Locks and keys also became relics of a past age. No one in 1999 ever locked his house. Every house was provided with an electrical outfit. Those who desired to leave the house for a few hours attached the electric gongs and alarm bells. When connection was made no one could leave or enter the house without raising a pandemonium and sending an alarm to the central police station.The uses of electricity in 1999 were carried to even absurd lengths. Man’s most faithful, but, alas, uncertain friend, the dog, was in evidence throughout the twentieth century. He wagged his tail vigorously as ever in token of kindnesses received. He was as ready as ever to sacrifice his life for that of his master, as well as to plant his teeth into the calf of his leg. The Hindoo charmer is never really safe until he has extracted the fangs of the reptile.And so it was with the twentieth century dog. Nothing can be more violent than death by hydrophobia. The bite of the dog may prove more terrible than that of the cobra. This scourge was effectually removed. In 1999 dogs over one year old had their teeth removed by electricity. Their mouths were then fitted with a false set. During dog-days, while Sirius was inthe ascendant, the false teeth were removed and all canines were kept on a vegetable diet. Hydrophobia became one of the lost arts.Another peculiar method in which electricity was utilized in 1999 tended to robElectrical Dentistry.dentistry of some of its terrors. There was one feature of dentistry in 1899 that often tested the best nerves, and that was the peculiar odor common to all dental chambers of horror. This peculiar odor settles like a cloud upon the stomach and seldom appeals in vain to one’s nerves for sympathy. For this reason an electrical machine was invented in 1999 which enabled the patient to remain at home while an offending tooth was tendering its resignation. The dentist, during the operation, remained in his den, enjoying a monopoly of its odors. If a tooth ached all one had to do was to call up a dentist, on the telephone, and ask to be placed on the line. The victim, in the seclusion of his back parlor, adjusted the electrical forceps and signalled to the dentist, five blocks away, to touch it off, then the festivities commenced. These private tooth extracting séances became very popular. No profane eyes were there to witness the agony of the victim, as in a public dental office. If he shouted loud enough to make a hole in the sky or tried to kick the plaster off the ceiling, no one was anythe wiser for it. But in a public dental office (especially with ladies in the adjoining room), while the victim is being harpooned, his eloquent groans must be stifled and no attempt must be made by the victim to kick at the chandeliers. The new system of home electrical tooth extracting proved very popular. It was one of the things that had come to stay.In 1999, through the medium of electricity, the relations existing between creditors and debtors became closer and more binding.Sure Cure for Dead Beats.In 1899, for some reason or other never fully explained, a debtor who had a long standing account, was liable to dodge into some nook, corner or side street, if he caught a glimpse of his creditor coming down the road. The relations existing between creditor and debtor in the nineteenth century were not as cordial as they should be. If the debt were of long standing there lacked a certain warmth in their greeting which was perhaps difficult to account for.In 1930 creditors and debtors adjusted themselves in better harmony, at least they kept in closer electrical touch with one another. If the sum due was $50 or over and of long standing, the law allowed the creditor to connect his debtor with an electrical battery. The object of this wise law was to keep the creditor in constant touch with his debtor. If the debt was over threemonths due, the creditor was allowed to occasionally “touch up” his debtor without having to hunt him up and dun him. The creditor always had him “on the string” so to speak. It was further specified by law that creditors must employ only as many volts as there were dollars due on account in shocking a debtor. These electrical shocks were merely reminders, intended to refresh the memory of the debtor. A man owing $200 was liable to receive two hundred volts until the debt was satisfied.This plan for the collection of bad debts worked very successfully. In 1999 noWorked Like a Charm.debtor could tell when his creditor might touch him up. The shock reminding him of his old debt might come during the night and disturb his pleasant dreams. Perhaps while seated at the family table, or perhaps even while engaged in family worship, an electric shock might come that would raise him three feet off the floor. Such little occurrences were rather embarrassing, especially if the debtor was talking at the time to some lady friend. A man owing $500 was in danger of his life. His creditor was liable to dun him by giving him a shock of five hundred volts. Such sensations, certainly, are not as pleasant as watching a yacht race, with your boat an easy winner.A curious illustration of the operation of this new condition between creditors andbad debtors, by which the former had an electrical control of the latter, came to light in a parish church on the banks of the St. Lawrence. It appears that the village school teacher, who was also choir-master, was busy with a Saturday evening rehearsal. The members of the choir were in their places, while the professor stood near the communion-rail, facing the choir, with his back turned towards the empty pews. He was speaking, when suddenly his red hair stood on end, his whiskers straightened out at right angles, while his eyes looked big as door knobs. He then gave a leap in the air, turned a somersault backwards and cleared ten pews before landing again on his feet. It appears that he owed his landlord an old board bill of $120 and the latter had just given him an electrical dun. The choir was astounded at the professor’s performance. The latter excused himself and merely said it was a slight attack of grip.In 1942 any one who used the word “steamship” was immediately rated a back number. A few of them, it is true, still fouled the ocean with their villainous smoke, but in 1999 the electrical ship ploughed the briny waters. It was a grand sight to see a magnificent ship nine hundred feet in length propelled through the waters at aElectrical Ocean Navigation.rate of thirty-five knots per hour by an invisible power, a mighty giant encased in the interior of the ship, a power that labored silently yetswiftly, with no perceptible vibration to the vessel and without emitting volumes of black smoke. These swiftly moving electrical ships were strange and striking in their appearance. Those constructed in 1975 by the Cramps had no masts, and they, of course, had no more use for funnels than a hen has for teeth. To the people of the old school of 1899, the ocean electrical ship looked strange indeed. The spectacle of a large steamship of 28,000 tons burden cleaving the ocean waves at the rate of forty knots per hour, with no masts and no smokestacks, looked strangely to men in 1975 who had been accustomed in their youth to old fashioned steamships like the City of New York, Campagnia, Kaiser Wilhelm derGrosse, Fürst Bismarck, Teutonic and others of that class. In 1975 the hull of the electrical ship retained practically the same old lines. An electrical ship, like the Great Republic, built in the year last named, plying between Manhattan and Liverpool, was a trifle over nine hundred feet long, with onlyeighty-twofeet breadth of beam. From stem to stern was built a swell body roof which covered the entire deck of the vessel. This covering was supported by ornamental iron columns from the bulwarks and usually stood about twenty feet above the deck. The only object that arose above the deck-roof was the captain’s bridge, in which was stationed the steersman, who steered the leviathan bymerely pressing electrical buttons on a small disc in front of him. With the masts and funnels removed from an electrical ocean ship, much valuable room was thus secured, adding greatly to the comfort of the passengers.Electricity was pressed into every conceivable service. That wonderful elementLighting Up the Atlantic.was man’s best and most faithful servant. There was no duty in the twentieth century too menial for it to do. It transformed our ocean, lake and river craft into a blaze of light by night. Collisions after dark were unknown to navigation in 1975. At a distance of ten miles out at sea an electrical vessel looked like a solid mass of moving flame. Electricity drawn directly from the air and extracted from coal, costs practically nothing. The chief item of expenditure was to maintain the electrical machines in repair. In 1899 sailing ships moved along at a snail gait and during night time a small green and red lamp on the port and starboard sides of the ship was all that enabled other vessels to note their presence. It was always the marvel of that age that a hundred collisions did not take place every night on the Atlantic. But in 1999 not a sail or steamship was anywhere to be seen, on ocean, lake or river. Electricity was cheaper, swifter and more reliable.In 1899 so backward was the age thatsmall boats, called row-boats, were still propelled with oars. In that year those primitive people still employed the old methods of propelling a boat that were in vogue in the days of the Phoenicians and Vikings. They still rowed a boat in the manner of the Greek galley slaves. In 1930 seamen had no more use for oars than a sperm whale has for paddle-wheels. Everything that could float, from a wash-tub to a man-of-war, was propelled by electricity. Even toy boats, sold for $5, were propelled by electricity. The winds still raged in 1999. From zephyr to cyclone that element ruled over the surface of the globe, but man had little use for it. Even the staid Hollander harnessed the wind no more. His mills were run by electricity, while the same agency was continually at work pumping out his dykes.Through the agency of electricity navigation in the twentieth century was rendered much safer. The ocean by night was dotted with electric buoys, which tossed and bowed with every wave. On these buoys signal-lights were placed, and passing vessels could read the latitude and longitude in which they were in at any time of the day. The figures were plainly marked on each buoy. By night the Atlantic ocean between Sandy Hook and Daunt’s Rock was dotted with bright electric arc lights of 8,000 c. p. The eye never wearied gazing upon the picturesque beauty of the scene.The effect of these brilliant lights on the broad bosom of the ocean, especially duringA Scene of Thrilling Beauty.a storm, was grand beyond the power of pen to describe. A distant wave could be clearly seen approaching one of these electric, mid-ocean buoys. On it sweeps, a tremendous current that no human power could stem. The rugged blue wall of the great wave glistens in the dazzling electric light as its huge side and foaming crest reaches the electric buoy. It seems as though the light and buoy must be swept to destruction and buried from sight. As the great wave sweeps over the light, all becomes dark for a few seconds, but when the mighty billow has swept on, the electric arc again blazes forth in the trough of the sea bidding defiance to Neptune’s frowns. These mighty mid-ocean scenes, viewed from the deck of an electric ocean greyhound, were thrilling in the extreme.Along the great chain of coast-line of the United States of the Americas, from the State of Maine to the States of Venezuela, Brazil and Patagonia, also on the Pacific slope from the States of Chile, Peru and Colombia to the States of West Canada and Alaska, every rock or promontory dangerous to navigation, was ablaze with electric beacons. Electricity was common as air. Oceans and continents were made more habitable to man. It became in 1999 the world’s sun by night.The perfect and absolute control of electricity by the scientists of the twentieth century benefited both ærial and ocean navigation, in furnishing the motive power. But these were benefited in another and hardly less remarkable manner by the perfected Marconi system of wireless telegraphy, which in the nineteenth century was comparatively unknown and in its early experimental stage. In ærial and ocean navigation wireless telegraphy proved an invaluable aid. The bright, young Italian inventor became a benefactor of the human race.
CHAPTER XVII.Electrical Navigation.Strange and novel uses to which electricity was applied in 1999. Hydrophobia banished from the earth. The relations of Creditor and Debtor greatly improved. Electrical ocean, river and lake navigation. The ocean ablaze with electric lights. Ships navigated by wireless telegraphy.
Strange and novel uses to which electricity was applied in 1999. Hydrophobia banished from the earth. The relations of Creditor and Debtor greatly improved. Electrical ocean, river and lake navigation. The ocean ablaze with electric lights. Ships navigated by wireless telegraphy.
Strange and novel uses to which electricity was applied in 1999. Hydrophobia banished from the earth. The relations of Creditor and Debtor greatly improved. Electrical ocean, river and lake navigation. The ocean ablaze with electric lights. Ships navigated by wireless telegraphy.
It has always been the conceit of every age that its own era is the most progressive and the most enlightened of all. In 1799 any man who could have stood on the deck of Nelson’s flagship “Victory” and informed that gallant sailor that in 1899 warships would navigate without sails; that powder would be used that made no smoke; that heavy rifles would hurl a ton shell fourteen miles, would have been dropped overboard as a monumental liar.The age in which we live is always a conceited one; always ready to scoff at innovations.The Bump of The Age.Every age had a bump of its own. How these precious bumps are smoothed down onebyone, is really interesting. The stage coach was king in its day. As men gazed upon the lumbering, six miles per hour coach, the bump of the period made them believe it was the swiftest and most luxurious mode of travel the world would ever see. Steam came and reduced the stagecoach bump. When men saw steam locomotives drawing fast trains and covering the country with villainous smoke, they really believed it was the swiftest mode of travel the world ever would employ. Electricity then appeared and reduced the steam bump.In 1999 electricity became a mighty monarch and an obedient slave. It ruled andA Lively Customer.it obeyed. This lively king of the twentieth century was a hustler. Sixteen distinct trips around the globe it could make in just one second’s time. Electric railroads and flying machines could not reasonably hope to make sixteen separate trips around the globe in one second’s time. The age of 1999 was a very rapid one, but its joints were too rheumatic to attempt any such gait. A traveler hustling around the world at the rate of sixteen times per second would hardly have time to visit and shake hands with friends.In the twentieth century electricity, the servant-king of the world, was harnessedAll Done by Electricity.to everything conceivable. Everything was done by merely pressing a button. Houses built in that period had no stairs. Every private house had its elevator. Press a button and up it went. Houses built in that period had no chimneys. All heating andevery bit of the cooking was done by electricity. If you wanted heat, press a button; more heat wanted, press two. Locks and keys also became relics of a past age. No one in 1999 ever locked his house. Every house was provided with an electrical outfit. Those who desired to leave the house for a few hours attached the electric gongs and alarm bells. When connection was made no one could leave or enter the house without raising a pandemonium and sending an alarm to the central police station.The uses of electricity in 1999 were carried to even absurd lengths. Man’s most faithful, but, alas, uncertain friend, the dog, was in evidence throughout the twentieth century. He wagged his tail vigorously as ever in token of kindnesses received. He was as ready as ever to sacrifice his life for that of his master, as well as to plant his teeth into the calf of his leg. The Hindoo charmer is never really safe until he has extracted the fangs of the reptile.And so it was with the twentieth century dog. Nothing can be more violent than death by hydrophobia. The bite of the dog may prove more terrible than that of the cobra. This scourge was effectually removed. In 1999 dogs over one year old had their teeth removed by electricity. Their mouths were then fitted with a false set. During dog-days, while Sirius was inthe ascendant, the false teeth were removed and all canines were kept on a vegetable diet. Hydrophobia became one of the lost arts.Another peculiar method in which electricity was utilized in 1999 tended to robElectrical Dentistry.dentistry of some of its terrors. There was one feature of dentistry in 1899 that often tested the best nerves, and that was the peculiar odor common to all dental chambers of horror. This peculiar odor settles like a cloud upon the stomach and seldom appeals in vain to one’s nerves for sympathy. For this reason an electrical machine was invented in 1999 which enabled the patient to remain at home while an offending tooth was tendering its resignation. The dentist, during the operation, remained in his den, enjoying a monopoly of its odors. If a tooth ached all one had to do was to call up a dentist, on the telephone, and ask to be placed on the line. The victim, in the seclusion of his back parlor, adjusted the electrical forceps and signalled to the dentist, five blocks away, to touch it off, then the festivities commenced. These private tooth extracting séances became very popular. No profane eyes were there to witness the agony of the victim, as in a public dental office. If he shouted loud enough to make a hole in the sky or tried to kick the plaster off the ceiling, no one was anythe wiser for it. But in a public dental office (especially with ladies in the adjoining room), while the victim is being harpooned, his eloquent groans must be stifled and no attempt must be made by the victim to kick at the chandeliers. The new system of home electrical tooth extracting proved very popular. It was one of the things that had come to stay.In 1999, through the medium of electricity, the relations existing between creditors and debtors became closer and more binding.Sure Cure for Dead Beats.In 1899, for some reason or other never fully explained, a debtor who had a long standing account, was liable to dodge into some nook, corner or side street, if he caught a glimpse of his creditor coming down the road. The relations existing between creditor and debtor in the nineteenth century were not as cordial as they should be. If the debt were of long standing there lacked a certain warmth in their greeting which was perhaps difficult to account for.In 1930 creditors and debtors adjusted themselves in better harmony, at least they kept in closer electrical touch with one another. If the sum due was $50 or over and of long standing, the law allowed the creditor to connect his debtor with an electrical battery. The object of this wise law was to keep the creditor in constant touch with his debtor. If the debt was over threemonths due, the creditor was allowed to occasionally “touch up” his debtor without having to hunt him up and dun him. The creditor always had him “on the string” so to speak. It was further specified by law that creditors must employ only as many volts as there were dollars due on account in shocking a debtor. These electrical shocks were merely reminders, intended to refresh the memory of the debtor. A man owing $200 was liable to receive two hundred volts until the debt was satisfied.This plan for the collection of bad debts worked very successfully. In 1999 noWorked Like a Charm.debtor could tell when his creditor might touch him up. The shock reminding him of his old debt might come during the night and disturb his pleasant dreams. Perhaps while seated at the family table, or perhaps even while engaged in family worship, an electric shock might come that would raise him three feet off the floor. Such little occurrences were rather embarrassing, especially if the debtor was talking at the time to some lady friend. A man owing $500 was in danger of his life. His creditor was liable to dun him by giving him a shock of five hundred volts. Such sensations, certainly, are not as pleasant as watching a yacht race, with your boat an easy winner.A curious illustration of the operation of this new condition between creditors andbad debtors, by which the former had an electrical control of the latter, came to light in a parish church on the banks of the St. Lawrence. It appears that the village school teacher, who was also choir-master, was busy with a Saturday evening rehearsal. The members of the choir were in their places, while the professor stood near the communion-rail, facing the choir, with his back turned towards the empty pews. He was speaking, when suddenly his red hair stood on end, his whiskers straightened out at right angles, while his eyes looked big as door knobs. He then gave a leap in the air, turned a somersault backwards and cleared ten pews before landing again on his feet. It appears that he owed his landlord an old board bill of $120 and the latter had just given him an electrical dun. The choir was astounded at the professor’s performance. The latter excused himself and merely said it was a slight attack of grip.In 1942 any one who used the word “steamship” was immediately rated a back number. A few of them, it is true, still fouled the ocean with their villainous smoke, but in 1999 the electrical ship ploughed the briny waters. It was a grand sight to see a magnificent ship nine hundred feet in length propelled through the waters at aElectrical Ocean Navigation.rate of thirty-five knots per hour by an invisible power, a mighty giant encased in the interior of the ship, a power that labored silently yetswiftly, with no perceptible vibration to the vessel and without emitting volumes of black smoke. These swiftly moving electrical ships were strange and striking in their appearance. Those constructed in 1975 by the Cramps had no masts, and they, of course, had no more use for funnels than a hen has for teeth. To the people of the old school of 1899, the ocean electrical ship looked strange indeed. The spectacle of a large steamship of 28,000 tons burden cleaving the ocean waves at the rate of forty knots per hour, with no masts and no smokestacks, looked strangely to men in 1975 who had been accustomed in their youth to old fashioned steamships like the City of New York, Campagnia, Kaiser Wilhelm derGrosse, Fürst Bismarck, Teutonic and others of that class. In 1975 the hull of the electrical ship retained practically the same old lines. An electrical ship, like the Great Republic, built in the year last named, plying between Manhattan and Liverpool, was a trifle over nine hundred feet long, with onlyeighty-twofeet breadth of beam. From stem to stern was built a swell body roof which covered the entire deck of the vessel. This covering was supported by ornamental iron columns from the bulwarks and usually stood about twenty feet above the deck. The only object that arose above the deck-roof was the captain’s bridge, in which was stationed the steersman, who steered the leviathan bymerely pressing electrical buttons on a small disc in front of him. With the masts and funnels removed from an electrical ocean ship, much valuable room was thus secured, adding greatly to the comfort of the passengers.Electricity was pressed into every conceivable service. That wonderful elementLighting Up the Atlantic.was man’s best and most faithful servant. There was no duty in the twentieth century too menial for it to do. It transformed our ocean, lake and river craft into a blaze of light by night. Collisions after dark were unknown to navigation in 1975. At a distance of ten miles out at sea an electrical vessel looked like a solid mass of moving flame. Electricity drawn directly from the air and extracted from coal, costs practically nothing. The chief item of expenditure was to maintain the electrical machines in repair. In 1899 sailing ships moved along at a snail gait and during night time a small green and red lamp on the port and starboard sides of the ship was all that enabled other vessels to note their presence. It was always the marvel of that age that a hundred collisions did not take place every night on the Atlantic. But in 1999 not a sail or steamship was anywhere to be seen, on ocean, lake or river. Electricity was cheaper, swifter and more reliable.In 1899 so backward was the age thatsmall boats, called row-boats, were still propelled with oars. In that year those primitive people still employed the old methods of propelling a boat that were in vogue in the days of the Phoenicians and Vikings. They still rowed a boat in the manner of the Greek galley slaves. In 1930 seamen had no more use for oars than a sperm whale has for paddle-wheels. Everything that could float, from a wash-tub to a man-of-war, was propelled by electricity. Even toy boats, sold for $5, were propelled by electricity. The winds still raged in 1999. From zephyr to cyclone that element ruled over the surface of the globe, but man had little use for it. Even the staid Hollander harnessed the wind no more. His mills were run by electricity, while the same agency was continually at work pumping out his dykes.Through the agency of electricity navigation in the twentieth century was rendered much safer. The ocean by night was dotted with electric buoys, which tossed and bowed with every wave. On these buoys signal-lights were placed, and passing vessels could read the latitude and longitude in which they were in at any time of the day. The figures were plainly marked on each buoy. By night the Atlantic ocean between Sandy Hook and Daunt’s Rock was dotted with bright electric arc lights of 8,000 c. p. The eye never wearied gazing upon the picturesque beauty of the scene.The effect of these brilliant lights on the broad bosom of the ocean, especially duringA Scene of Thrilling Beauty.a storm, was grand beyond the power of pen to describe. A distant wave could be clearly seen approaching one of these electric, mid-ocean buoys. On it sweeps, a tremendous current that no human power could stem. The rugged blue wall of the great wave glistens in the dazzling electric light as its huge side and foaming crest reaches the electric buoy. It seems as though the light and buoy must be swept to destruction and buried from sight. As the great wave sweeps over the light, all becomes dark for a few seconds, but when the mighty billow has swept on, the electric arc again blazes forth in the trough of the sea bidding defiance to Neptune’s frowns. These mighty mid-ocean scenes, viewed from the deck of an electric ocean greyhound, were thrilling in the extreme.Along the great chain of coast-line of the United States of the Americas, from the State of Maine to the States of Venezuela, Brazil and Patagonia, also on the Pacific slope from the States of Chile, Peru and Colombia to the States of West Canada and Alaska, every rock or promontory dangerous to navigation, was ablaze with electric beacons. Electricity was common as air. Oceans and continents were made more habitable to man. It became in 1999 the world’s sun by night.The perfect and absolute control of electricity by the scientists of the twentieth century benefited both ærial and ocean navigation, in furnishing the motive power. But these were benefited in another and hardly less remarkable manner by the perfected Marconi system of wireless telegraphy, which in the nineteenth century was comparatively unknown and in its early experimental stage. In ærial and ocean navigation wireless telegraphy proved an invaluable aid. The bright, young Italian inventor became a benefactor of the human race.
It has always been the conceit of every age that its own era is the most progressive and the most enlightened of all. In 1799 any man who could have stood on the deck of Nelson’s flagship “Victory” and informed that gallant sailor that in 1899 warships would navigate without sails; that powder would be used that made no smoke; that heavy rifles would hurl a ton shell fourteen miles, would have been dropped overboard as a monumental liar.
The age in which we live is always a conceited one; always ready to scoff at innovations.The Bump of The Age.Every age had a bump of its own. How these precious bumps are smoothed down onebyone, is really interesting. The stage coach was king in its day. As men gazed upon the lumbering, six miles per hour coach, the bump of the period made them believe it was the swiftest and most luxurious mode of travel the world would ever see. Steam came and reduced the stagecoach bump. When men saw steam locomotives drawing fast trains and covering the country with villainous smoke, they really believed it was the swiftest mode of travel the world ever would employ. Electricity then appeared and reduced the steam bump.
In 1999 electricity became a mighty monarch and an obedient slave. It ruled andA Lively Customer.it obeyed. This lively king of the twentieth century was a hustler. Sixteen distinct trips around the globe it could make in just one second’s time. Electric railroads and flying machines could not reasonably hope to make sixteen separate trips around the globe in one second’s time. The age of 1999 was a very rapid one, but its joints were too rheumatic to attempt any such gait. A traveler hustling around the world at the rate of sixteen times per second would hardly have time to visit and shake hands with friends.
In the twentieth century electricity, the servant-king of the world, was harnessedAll Done by Electricity.to everything conceivable. Everything was done by merely pressing a button. Houses built in that period had no stairs. Every private house had its elevator. Press a button and up it went. Houses built in that period had no chimneys. All heating andevery bit of the cooking was done by electricity. If you wanted heat, press a button; more heat wanted, press two. Locks and keys also became relics of a past age. No one in 1999 ever locked his house. Every house was provided with an electrical outfit. Those who desired to leave the house for a few hours attached the electric gongs and alarm bells. When connection was made no one could leave or enter the house without raising a pandemonium and sending an alarm to the central police station.
The uses of electricity in 1999 were carried to even absurd lengths. Man’s most faithful, but, alas, uncertain friend, the dog, was in evidence throughout the twentieth century. He wagged his tail vigorously as ever in token of kindnesses received. He was as ready as ever to sacrifice his life for that of his master, as well as to plant his teeth into the calf of his leg. The Hindoo charmer is never really safe until he has extracted the fangs of the reptile.
And so it was with the twentieth century dog. Nothing can be more violent than death by hydrophobia. The bite of the dog may prove more terrible than that of the cobra. This scourge was effectually removed. In 1999 dogs over one year old had their teeth removed by electricity. Their mouths were then fitted with a false set. During dog-days, while Sirius was inthe ascendant, the false teeth were removed and all canines were kept on a vegetable diet. Hydrophobia became one of the lost arts.
Another peculiar method in which electricity was utilized in 1999 tended to robElectrical Dentistry.dentistry of some of its terrors. There was one feature of dentistry in 1899 that often tested the best nerves, and that was the peculiar odor common to all dental chambers of horror. This peculiar odor settles like a cloud upon the stomach and seldom appeals in vain to one’s nerves for sympathy. For this reason an electrical machine was invented in 1999 which enabled the patient to remain at home while an offending tooth was tendering its resignation. The dentist, during the operation, remained in his den, enjoying a monopoly of its odors. If a tooth ached all one had to do was to call up a dentist, on the telephone, and ask to be placed on the line. The victim, in the seclusion of his back parlor, adjusted the electrical forceps and signalled to the dentist, five blocks away, to touch it off, then the festivities commenced. These private tooth extracting séances became very popular. No profane eyes were there to witness the agony of the victim, as in a public dental office. If he shouted loud enough to make a hole in the sky or tried to kick the plaster off the ceiling, no one was anythe wiser for it. But in a public dental office (especially with ladies in the adjoining room), while the victim is being harpooned, his eloquent groans must be stifled and no attempt must be made by the victim to kick at the chandeliers. The new system of home electrical tooth extracting proved very popular. It was one of the things that had come to stay.
In 1999, through the medium of electricity, the relations existing between creditors and debtors became closer and more binding.Sure Cure for Dead Beats.In 1899, for some reason or other never fully explained, a debtor who had a long standing account, was liable to dodge into some nook, corner or side street, if he caught a glimpse of his creditor coming down the road. The relations existing between creditor and debtor in the nineteenth century were not as cordial as they should be. If the debt were of long standing there lacked a certain warmth in their greeting which was perhaps difficult to account for.
In 1930 creditors and debtors adjusted themselves in better harmony, at least they kept in closer electrical touch with one another. If the sum due was $50 or over and of long standing, the law allowed the creditor to connect his debtor with an electrical battery. The object of this wise law was to keep the creditor in constant touch with his debtor. If the debt was over threemonths due, the creditor was allowed to occasionally “touch up” his debtor without having to hunt him up and dun him. The creditor always had him “on the string” so to speak. It was further specified by law that creditors must employ only as many volts as there were dollars due on account in shocking a debtor. These electrical shocks were merely reminders, intended to refresh the memory of the debtor. A man owing $200 was liable to receive two hundred volts until the debt was satisfied.
This plan for the collection of bad debts worked very successfully. In 1999 noWorked Like a Charm.debtor could tell when his creditor might touch him up. The shock reminding him of his old debt might come during the night and disturb his pleasant dreams. Perhaps while seated at the family table, or perhaps even while engaged in family worship, an electric shock might come that would raise him three feet off the floor. Such little occurrences were rather embarrassing, especially if the debtor was talking at the time to some lady friend. A man owing $500 was in danger of his life. His creditor was liable to dun him by giving him a shock of five hundred volts. Such sensations, certainly, are not as pleasant as watching a yacht race, with your boat an easy winner.
A curious illustration of the operation of this new condition between creditors andbad debtors, by which the former had an electrical control of the latter, came to light in a parish church on the banks of the St. Lawrence. It appears that the village school teacher, who was also choir-master, was busy with a Saturday evening rehearsal. The members of the choir were in their places, while the professor stood near the communion-rail, facing the choir, with his back turned towards the empty pews. He was speaking, when suddenly his red hair stood on end, his whiskers straightened out at right angles, while his eyes looked big as door knobs. He then gave a leap in the air, turned a somersault backwards and cleared ten pews before landing again on his feet. It appears that he owed his landlord an old board bill of $120 and the latter had just given him an electrical dun. The choir was astounded at the professor’s performance. The latter excused himself and merely said it was a slight attack of grip.
In 1942 any one who used the word “steamship” was immediately rated a back number. A few of them, it is true, still fouled the ocean with their villainous smoke, but in 1999 the electrical ship ploughed the briny waters. It was a grand sight to see a magnificent ship nine hundred feet in length propelled through the waters at aElectrical Ocean Navigation.rate of thirty-five knots per hour by an invisible power, a mighty giant encased in the interior of the ship, a power that labored silently yetswiftly, with no perceptible vibration to the vessel and without emitting volumes of black smoke. These swiftly moving electrical ships were strange and striking in their appearance. Those constructed in 1975 by the Cramps had no masts, and they, of course, had no more use for funnels than a hen has for teeth. To the people of the old school of 1899, the ocean electrical ship looked strange indeed. The spectacle of a large steamship of 28,000 tons burden cleaving the ocean waves at the rate of forty knots per hour, with no masts and no smokestacks, looked strangely to men in 1975 who had been accustomed in their youth to old fashioned steamships like the City of New York, Campagnia, Kaiser Wilhelm derGrosse, Fürst Bismarck, Teutonic and others of that class. In 1975 the hull of the electrical ship retained practically the same old lines. An electrical ship, like the Great Republic, built in the year last named, plying between Manhattan and Liverpool, was a trifle over nine hundred feet long, with onlyeighty-twofeet breadth of beam. From stem to stern was built a swell body roof which covered the entire deck of the vessel. This covering was supported by ornamental iron columns from the bulwarks and usually stood about twenty feet above the deck. The only object that arose above the deck-roof was the captain’s bridge, in which was stationed the steersman, who steered the leviathan bymerely pressing electrical buttons on a small disc in front of him. With the masts and funnels removed from an electrical ocean ship, much valuable room was thus secured, adding greatly to the comfort of the passengers.
Electricity was pressed into every conceivable service. That wonderful elementLighting Up the Atlantic.was man’s best and most faithful servant. There was no duty in the twentieth century too menial for it to do. It transformed our ocean, lake and river craft into a blaze of light by night. Collisions after dark were unknown to navigation in 1975. At a distance of ten miles out at sea an electrical vessel looked like a solid mass of moving flame. Electricity drawn directly from the air and extracted from coal, costs practically nothing. The chief item of expenditure was to maintain the electrical machines in repair. In 1899 sailing ships moved along at a snail gait and during night time a small green and red lamp on the port and starboard sides of the ship was all that enabled other vessels to note their presence. It was always the marvel of that age that a hundred collisions did not take place every night on the Atlantic. But in 1999 not a sail or steamship was anywhere to be seen, on ocean, lake or river. Electricity was cheaper, swifter and more reliable.
In 1899 so backward was the age thatsmall boats, called row-boats, were still propelled with oars. In that year those primitive people still employed the old methods of propelling a boat that were in vogue in the days of the Phoenicians and Vikings. They still rowed a boat in the manner of the Greek galley slaves. In 1930 seamen had no more use for oars than a sperm whale has for paddle-wheels. Everything that could float, from a wash-tub to a man-of-war, was propelled by electricity. Even toy boats, sold for $5, were propelled by electricity. The winds still raged in 1999. From zephyr to cyclone that element ruled over the surface of the globe, but man had little use for it. Even the staid Hollander harnessed the wind no more. His mills were run by electricity, while the same agency was continually at work pumping out his dykes.
Through the agency of electricity navigation in the twentieth century was rendered much safer. The ocean by night was dotted with electric buoys, which tossed and bowed with every wave. On these buoys signal-lights were placed, and passing vessels could read the latitude and longitude in which they were in at any time of the day. The figures were plainly marked on each buoy. By night the Atlantic ocean between Sandy Hook and Daunt’s Rock was dotted with bright electric arc lights of 8,000 c. p. The eye never wearied gazing upon the picturesque beauty of the scene.
The effect of these brilliant lights on the broad bosom of the ocean, especially duringA Scene of Thrilling Beauty.a storm, was grand beyond the power of pen to describe. A distant wave could be clearly seen approaching one of these electric, mid-ocean buoys. On it sweeps, a tremendous current that no human power could stem. The rugged blue wall of the great wave glistens in the dazzling electric light as its huge side and foaming crest reaches the electric buoy. It seems as though the light and buoy must be swept to destruction and buried from sight. As the great wave sweeps over the light, all becomes dark for a few seconds, but when the mighty billow has swept on, the electric arc again blazes forth in the trough of the sea bidding defiance to Neptune’s frowns. These mighty mid-ocean scenes, viewed from the deck of an electric ocean greyhound, were thrilling in the extreme.
Along the great chain of coast-line of the United States of the Americas, from the State of Maine to the States of Venezuela, Brazil and Patagonia, also on the Pacific slope from the States of Chile, Peru and Colombia to the States of West Canada and Alaska, every rock or promontory dangerous to navigation, was ablaze with electric beacons. Electricity was common as air. Oceans and continents were made more habitable to man. It became in 1999 the world’s sun by night.
The perfect and absolute control of electricity by the scientists of the twentieth century benefited both ærial and ocean navigation, in furnishing the motive power. But these were benefited in another and hardly less remarkable manner by the perfected Marconi system of wireless telegraphy, which in the nineteenth century was comparatively unknown and in its early experimental stage. In ærial and ocean navigation wireless telegraphy proved an invaluable aid. The bright, young Italian inventor became a benefactor of the human race.