Twentieth Century Inventions Part 7

At the same time great improvements are now foreshadowed in regard to the modes of working mines by shafts and drives. Some shafts will in future be worked practically as the vertical portions of tramways, having endless wire ropes to convey the trucks direct from the face or the stope to the reduction works, and thus an immense saving will be effected in the costs incidental to mining. From the neighbourhood of the place at which it has been won, the ore will be drawn in trucks, attached to the endless wire rope, first along the drive on the horizontal, and then up an incline increasing in sharpness till the shaft is reached, where the direction of motion becomes vertical. Near the surface, again, there is an incline, gradually leading to the level of the ground, or rather of the elevated tramway from which the stuff is to be tipped into the mill, or, if it be mullock, on to the waste heap. The return of each truck is effected along the reverse side of the endless wire-rope cable.

Ventilation is an incidental work of much importance which it becomes more practicable to carry out in a satisfactory manner when an endless system of truck conveyance has been provided, reaching from the ore-face to the mill, and thence back again. The reason is mainly that the same routes which have been prepared for this traffic are available for the supply of air and for the return current which must carry off the acc.u.mulated bad gases from the underground workings.

Fans, operated by the cable at various places along the line of communication, keep up a brisk exchange of air, and the coming and going of the trucks themselves help to maintain a good, healthy atmosphere, even in the most remote parts of the mine. In very deep mines, where the heat becomes unbearable after a few minutes unless a strong wind be kept going underground, the forward and backward courses for traffic and ventilation together are specially advantageous.

Prices during the twentieth century will depend more definitely upon the cost of gold-mining than they have ever done at any former time in the world's history. In spite of all the opposition which fanaticism and ignorance could offer to the natural trend of events in the commercial and financial life of the world, the gold standard now rests on an impregnable base; and every year witnesses some new triumph for those who accept it as the foundation of the civilised monetary system. This being the case, it is obvious that the conditions affecting the production of gold must possess a very peculiar interest even for those who have never lived within hundreds of miles of any gold mine. To all intents and purposes the habit of every man is to measure daily and even hourly the value of his efforts at producing what the economist calls "utilities," against those of the gold miner.

If, therefore, the latter successfully calls to his aid mechanical giants who render his work easier and who enable him to throw into the world's markets a larger proportion of gold for a given amount of effort, the result must be that the price of gold must fall, or, in other words, the prices of general commodities must rise. If, on the other hand, all other industries have been subjected to the like improved conditions of working, the effect must be to that extent to balance the rise and keep prices comparatively steady.

From this point of view it will be seen that the interests of all those who desire to see a rise in general prices are to a large extent bound up in the improvement of methods for the extraction of gold. The question of cheap power does not by any means monopolise the data upon which such a problem can be provisionally decided; and yet it may be broadly stated that in the main the increased output of gold in the future depends upon the more economical production and application of power. Measured against other commodities which also depend mainly upon the same factor, gold will probably remain very steady; while, in contrast with those things which require for the production taste and skill rather than mere brute force or mechanical power, gold will fall in value. In other words, the cla.s.ses of articles and services depending upon the exercise of man's higher faculties of skill, taste, and mental power will rise in price.

Getting gold practically means, in modern times, crus.h.i.+ng stone. This statement is subject to fewer and fewer exceptions from one decade to another, according as the alluvial deposits in the various gold-producing countries become more or less completely worked out. A partial revival of alluvial mining has been brought about through the application of the giant dredger to cheapening the process of extracting exceedingly small quant.i.ties of gold from alluvial drift and dirt. Yet on the whole it will be found that the gold-mining industry, almost all the world over, is getting down to the bed-rock of ore-treatment by crus.h.i.+ng and by simple methods of separation. Thus practically we may say that the cost of gold is the cost of power in those usually secluded localities where the precious metal is found in quant.i.ties sufficient to tempt the investment of capital.

From this it may be inferred that the cheap transmission of power by the electric current will effect a more profound revolution in the gold-mining industry than in almost any other. The main deterrent to the investing of money in opening up a new gold mine consists in the fact that a very large and certain expense is involved in the conveyance of heavy machinery to the locality, while the results are very largely in the nature of a lottery. When, however, the power is supplied from a central station, and when economical types of crusher are more fully introduced, this deterrent will, to a large extent, disappear. The cables which radiate from the central electric power-house in all directions can be very readily devoted to the furnis.h.i.+ng of power to new mines as soon as it is found that the older ones have been proved unprofitable.

No one will think of carrying ore to the power when it is far more economical and profitable to carry power to the ore. In this connection the principle of the division of labour becomes very important. In its bearing upon the mining industry generally, whether in its application to the precious metals or to those which are termed the baser, and even in the work of raising coal and other non-metalliferous minerals, the fact that nearly all mines occur in groups will greatly aid in determining the separation of the work of supplying power, as a distinct industry from that of mining.

Ore-dressing is an art which was in a very rudimentary state at the middle of the nineteenth century, when the great discoveries of gold, silver and other metals began to influence the world's markets in so striking a manner. The ancients used the jigger in the form of a wicker basket filled with crushed ore and jerked by hand up and down in water for the purpose of causing the lighter parts to rise to the top, while the more valuable portions made their way to the bottom. In this way the copper mines of Spain were worked in the days of the Roman Empire, and probably the system had existed from time immemorial.

Fifty or sixty years ago the miner had got so far as to hitch his jigging basket or sieve on to some part of his machinery, generally his pumping engine, and thus to avoid the wearing muscular effort involved in moving it in the water by hand. It was not until the obvious mistake of using a machine which permitted the finest, and sometimes the richest, parts of the ore to escape had been for many years ineffectually admitted, that the "vanner," or moving endless band with a stream of water running on it, was invented with the special object of treating the finer stuff.

Jiggers and vanners form the staple of the miner's ore-dressing machinery at the present day. The efficiency of the latter cla.s.s of separating machines, working on certain kinds of finely crushed ore, is already so great that it may be said without exaggeration that it could hardly be much improved upon, so far as percentage of extraction is concerned; and yet the waste of power which is involved is something outrageous. For the treatment of a thin layer of slimes, perhaps no thicker than a sixpence, it is necessary to violently agitate, with a reciprocating movement, a large and heavy framework.

Sometimes the quant.i.ty of stuff put through as the result of one horse-power working for an hour is not more than about a hundredweight. The consequence is that in large mines the nests of vanners comprise scores or even hundreds of machines. When shaking tables are used, without the addition of the endless moving bands, good work can also be done; but the waste of power is still excessive.

The vanning spade and shallow was.h.i.+ng dish are the prototypes of this kind of ore-dressing machinery. Let any one place a line of finely-crushed wet ore on a flat spade and draw the latter quickly through still water, at the same time shaking it, and the result on inspection, if the speed has not been so great as to sweep all the fine grains off the surface, will be that the heavier parts of the ore will be found to have ranged themselves on the side towards which the spade was propelled in its progress through the water. A sheet of gla.s.s serves for the purpose of this experiment even better than a metal implement; but the spade is the time-honoured appliance among miners for testing some kinds of finely crushed ore by mechanical separation.

It is to be observed that, besides the shaking motion imparted to the apparatus, the only active agency in the distribution of the particles is the sidelong movement of the spade relatively to the water. But it makes little or no difference whether the water moves sidelong on the spade or the latter progresses through the liquid; the ore will range itself accurately all the same. Consequently, if a circular tank be used, and if the water be set in rotary motion, the ore on a sheet of gla.s.s, held steady, will arrange itself in the same way. If the ore be fed in small streams of water down the inclined surfaces of sloping gla.s.s, or other smooth shelves set close to and parallel with one another near the periphery of such a vessel of moving water, the resultant motions of the heavy and of the light particles respectively, in pa.s.sing down these shelves, will be found to be so different that the good stuff can be caught by a receptacle placed at one part, while the tailings fall into another receiver which is differently situated at the place where the lighter grains fall.

The main essential in this particular application of the art of vanning is simply that the water should move or drift transversely to lines of ore pa.s.sing, while held in suspension with water, down a smooth sloping surface. In dealing with some very light cla.s.ses of ore, and especially such as may naturally crush very fine--that is to say, with a large proportion of impalpable "slimes"--there is a decided advantage in causing the water to drift sidelong on the smooth shelf by other means than the motion in a circular tank.

Adopting nearly the form of the "side delivery manner," in which the moving band is canted to the side and the stuff runs off sideways, the sloping smooth shelf can be worked for ore separation with merely the streams of water holding the fine sand in suspension running down at fixed intervals. A gla.s.s covering is placed very close to this surface on which the streams run; and between the two is driven laterally a strong current of wind by means of a blast-fan, which causes each stream of water to drift a little sidewards, carrying with it the lighter particles, but leaving on its windward side a line of nearly pure ore. These small runlets can be multiplied, on a shelf measuring six or eight feet in length, to such an extent that the machine can put through as much ore as a dozen vanners, consuming only a mere fraction of the power necessary to drive one machine of the older type.

Cyanide solution, instead of water, is very advantageously employed for this kind of operation in the case of extracting gold from crushed ore. The method is to pump the liquid from the tanks in which it is stored and to allow it to flow back by way of the vanning apparatus, thus providing not only for catching the grains of gold by the concentrating machine, but also for the dissolving of the fine impalpable gold dust, or natural precipitate, by the action of the cyanide of pota.s.sium.

Upon the use of this latter chemical will be based the main improvements in the gold-mining industry during the twentieth century; and, conversely, the applications of the old system of amalgamating with mercury, in order to catch the golden particles, will be gradually restricted. Fine concentrators, worked with cyanide solution, perform three operations at once, namely, first, the catching of the free gold grains; second, the production of a rich concentrate of minerals having gold in a.s.sociation and intended for smelting; and, third, the dissolving of the finest particles by the continual action of the chemical.

In fact it is in the treatment of complex and very refractory ores generally, whether of the precious or of the baser metals, that the finer applications of the art of the ore-dresser will receive their first great impetus. The vanner, as well as the jigger, will become an instrument of precision; and in combination with rus.h.i.+ng appliances operated by cheap power in almost unlimited quant.i.ties it will materially a.s.sist in multiplying the world's supply of metals. This again will aid in promoting the further extension of machinery. Gold will be produced in greater abundance for what is called the machinery of commerce; and the base metals, particularly the new alloys of steel and also copper and aluminium, will be more largely produced for engineering and electrical purposes.

The importation--particularly to England and Scotland--of large quant.i.ties of highly-concentrated iron ore will cause one of the first notable developments in the mining and ore-treatment of the twentieth century so far as the United Kingdom is concerned. The urgent necessity for an extension in the manufacture of Bessemer steel, and of the new and remarkable alloys in which very small quant.i.ties of other metals are employed in order to impart altogether exceptional qualities to iron, must accentuate the demand for those kinds of ore which lend themselves most readily to the special requirements of the works on hand. Hence the question of the transport of special kinds of iron ore over longer distances will have to be faced (as it has been already to a limited degree), and not only in reference to ores containing a low percentage of phosphorus and therefore exceptionally suitable for the Bessemerising process, but also in regard to ores which are amenable to magnetic separation.

Magnet.i.te, indeed, must bulk more largely in the future as a source of iron, particularly because it is susceptible of magnetic separation, a process which as yet is only in its infancy. Containing, as it does, a larger percentage of iron than any other source from which the metal is commercially extracted, its employment as an ore results in great economy of fuel, as well as a reduction in the proportionate costs of transport. When ores of iron require to be brought from oversea places, it is obvious that those which will concentrate to the purest product possible, and which are in other respects specially applicable to the production of grades of steel of exceptional tensile strength, will have the preference.

Magnetic concentration, or the separation of an ore from the waste gangue by the attraction of powerful electro-magnets, must therefore occupy a much more prominent place in the metallurgy of the future than it has in that of the past. Not only may ironstone containing magnet.i.te be separated from other material, but several important minerals acquire the property of becoming magnetic when subjected to the operation of roasting, sometimes through a sulphide being converted into a magnetic oxide.

By the use of powerful electro-magnets, the poles of which are brought to a point or to a nearly sharp knife-edge, the intensity of the magnetic field can be so enormously increased that even minerals which are only feebly magnetic can readily be separated by being lifted away from the non-magnetic material. In some systems the crushed ore is simply permitted to fall in a continuous stream through a strong magnetic field, and the magnetic particles are diverted out of the vertical in their descent by the operation of the magnets.

Nor is it only those minerals that actually become themselves magnetic on being roasted which can be so differentiated from the material with which they are a.s.sociated as to be amenable to magnetic separation.

Even differences in hygroscopic properties--that is to say, in the degree of avidity with which a mineral takes up moisture from the atmosphere--may be made available for the purpose of effecting a commercially valuable separation. This is especially the case with some complex ores in which one const.i.tuent, on being roasted, acquires a much greater hygroscopic power than the others, the grains of the crushed and roasted ore becoming damp and sticky while those of the other minerals remain comparatively dry. By mixing with an ore of this kind--after it has been allowed to "weather" for a short time--some finely-powdered magnet.i.te the strongly hygroscopic const.i.tuents can be made practically magnetic, because the magnetic impalpable dust adheres to them, while it remains separate from the grains of the other minerals.

Hardness--as well as magnetic attraction--is a property of ore which has as yet been made available to only a very slight extent as the basis of a system of separation. If a quant.i.ty of mixed fragments of gla.s.s and plumbago be pounded together in a mortar with only a moderate degree of pressure, so as to avoid, as far as possible, the breaking of the gla.s.s, there will soon come a stage at which the softer material can be separated from the harder simply by means of a fine sieve. There are many naturally-existing mineral mixtures in the crus.h.i.+ng of which a similar result occurs in a very marked degree; and, indeed, there are none which do not show the peculiarity more or less, because the const.i.tuents of an ore are never of exactly the same degree of hardness. When the worthless parts are the softer and therefore have the greater tendency to "slime," the ore is very readily dressed to a high percentage by means of water.

But when the reverse is the case, and the valuable const.i.tuents through their softness get reduced to a fine pulp long before the other parts, the ordinary operations of the ore-dresser become much more difficult to carry out. Most elaborate ore-reduction plants are constructed with the view to causing the crus.h.i.+ng surfaces, whether of rolls or of jaws, to merely tap each piece of stone so as to break it in bits without creating much dust. This operation is repeated over and over again; but the stuff which is fine enough to go to the concentrator is removed by sieving after each operation of the kind; and the successive rolls or other crushers are set to a finer and finer gauge, so that there is a progressive approach to the conditions of coa.r.s.e sand, which is that specially desired by the ore-dresser.

Much of this elaboration will be seen to be needless, and, moreover, better commercial results will be obtained when it is more clearly perceived that the recovery of a valuable ore in the form of a fine slime may be economically effected by the action of grinders specially constructed for the purpose of permitting the hard const.i.tuents of the ore to remain in comparatively large grains, while the other and softer minerals are reduced to fine slimes or dust. In other words, a grinding plant, purposely designed to carry out its work in exactly the opposite way to that which has been described as the system aimed at in ordinary crus.h.i.+ng machinery, has its place in the future of metallurgy. Light mullers are employed to pound, or to press together, the crushed grains for a given length of time, and then sieving machinery completes the operation by taking out the dust from the more palpable grains.

In some cases it will be found that an improvement can be effected by bringing about the separation of a finer grade of dust than could be taken out by any kind of sieve which is commercially practicable on the large scale. This is more particularly the case in regard to sulphide ores containing very friable const.i.tuents carrying silver. A fine dry dust-separator may then be employed constructed on the principle of a vibrating sloping shelf which moves rhythmically, either in a horizontal circle or with a reciprocal motion, and which at the same time alters its degree of inclination to the horizontal.

When the shelf is nearly level its vibration drives the coa.r.s.er particles off; but the very finest dust does not leave it until it a.s.sumes nearly a vertical position. A large nest of similar shelves, set close to, and parallel with, one another, can separate out a great quant.i.ty of well-dried slimes in a very short s.p.a.ce of time.

CHAPTER IX.

DOMESTIC.

The enormous waste involved in the common methods of heating is one of the princ.i.p.al defects of household economy which will be corrected during the twentieth century. Different authorities have made varying estimates of the proportion between the heat which goes up the chimney of an ordinary grate, and that which actually pa.s.ses out into the room fulfilling its purpose of maintaining an equable temperature; but it cannot be denied that, at the very least, something like three-fourths of the heat generated by the domestic fires of even the most advanced and civilised nations goes absolutely to waste--or rather to worse than waste--because the extra smoke produced in creating it only serves to pollute the atmosphere. In the cities some degree of progress has been made in the introduction of heating appliances which really give warmth to a room without losing at least seventy-five per cent. of their heat; but in the country districts, where open fireplaces are the rule, it is not unusual to find that more than ninety per cent. of the heat produced behind the domestic hearth goes up the chimney.

Sentiment has had a great deal to do with r.e.t.a.r.ding progress in the direction of improved house-heating appliances. For countless ages "the hearth" has been, so to speak, the domestic altar, around which some of the most sacred a.s.sociations of mankind have gathered, and popular sentiment has declared that it is not for the iconoclastic inventor or architect to improve it out of existence, or even to interfere seriously with either its shape or the position in the living room from which it sheds its genial warmth and cheerfulness around the family circle. A recognition of this ineradicable popular feeling was involved in the adoption of the grate, filled with glowing b.a.l.l.s of asbestos composition, by the makers of gas-heating apparatus.

The imitation of the coal-filled grate is in some cases almost perfect; and yet it is in this close approximation to the real article that some lovers of the domestic fuel-fire find their chief objection, just as the tricks of anthropoid animals--so strongly reminiscent of human beings and yet distinct--have the effect of repelling some people far more than the ways of creatures utterly unlike man in form and feature.

Taking count of the domestic attachment to a real fuel-filled fireplace or grate as one of the princ.i.p.al factors in the problem of domestic heating, it is plain that one way of obviating the waste of heat which is at present incurred, without doing violence to that sentiment, is by making better use of the chimney. The hot-air pipes and coils which are already so largely used for indoor heating offer in themselves a hint in this direction. Long pipes or coils inserted in the course taken by the heated air in ascending a chimney become warm, and it is possible, by taking such a pipe from one part of the room up the pa.s.sage and back again, to cause, by means of a small rotating fan or other ventilating apparatus, the whole of the air in the chamber to circulate up the chimney and back again every few minutes, gathering warmth as it goes. In this way, and by exposing as much heating surface to the warm air in the chimney as possible, the warmth derived by an ordinary room from a fuel fire can be more than doubled.

At the same time the risk of spreading "s.m.u.ts" over the room can be entirely avoided first by keeping the whole length of pipe perfectly air-tight, and attaching it in such a way as to be readily removed for inspection; and, secondly, by placing the outward vent in such a position that the gentle current must mount upwards, and any dust must fall back again into a wide funnel-shaped orifice, and by covering the latter with fine wire gauze. An apparatus of this kind acts as a remover of dust from the room instead of adding any to it. One necessity, however, is the provision of motive power, very small though it be, to work the fan or otherwise promote a draught.

Electric heating is, however, the method which will probably take precedence over others in all those cases where systems are tried on their actual merits apart from sentiment or usage. The wonderful facility afforded by the electric heating wire for the distribution of a moderate degree of warmth, in exactly the proportions in which it may be needed, gives the electric method an enormous advantage over its rivals. The fundamental principle upon which heating by electricity is generally arranged depends upon the fact that a thin wire offers more electrical resistance to the pa.s.sage of a current than a thick one, and therefore becomes heated. In the case of the incandescent lamp, in which the carbon filament requires to be raised to a white heat and must be free to emit its light without interference from opaque matter, it is necessary to protect the resisting and glowing material by nearly exhausting the air from the hermetically sealed globe or bulb in which it is enclosed.

But in electrical house-warming, for which a white heat is not required and in which the necessary protection from the air can be secured by embedding the conveying medium in opaque solid material, the problem becomes much simpler, because strong metallic wires can be used, and they may be enclosed in any kind of cement which does not corrode them and which distributes the heat while refusing to conduct the electric current. A network of wire, crossing and recrossing but always carrying the same current, may be embedded in plaster and a gentle heat may be imparted to the whole ma.s.s through the resistance of the wires to the electricity and their contact with the non-conducting material.

Concurrently with this method of heating there is gradually being introduced a practice of using metallic lathing for the plastering of dwelling-rooms in place of the old wooden battens generally employed for lath-and-plaster work. The solution of the practical problem which has to be faced seems to depend upon the prospect of effecting a compromise between the two systems, introducing thin resisting wire as the metallic element in such work, but making all other components from non-conducting material. In the event of any "cut-out" or "short-circuiting" occurring through accidental injury to the wall, it would be very inconvenient to be compelled to knock away the plaster.

Moreover, it is not necessary for ordinary warming purposes that the whole of the wall, up to the ceiling, should be heated.

Accordingly the system which is likely to commend itself is that of constructing panels on some such principle as the one already described, and affixing them to the wall, forming a kind of solid dado from three to four feet from the floor. These can be fastened so as to facilitate removal for examination and repairs. When the current is switched on they are slowly warmed up by the heat generated through the resistance of the wires, and the air in the room is gently heated without being vitiated or deprived of its oxygen as it is by the presence of flames, whether of fuel or of gas. Warming footstools will also be provided, and a room heated in this way will be found eminently comfortable to live in.

This method of house-warming having once obtained a decided lead within the cities and other localities where a cheap electric current is available, somewhat similar systems, adapted for the heating of walls by hot air in tubes, instead of by resistant wires, will be largely adopted in the rural districts, more particularly in churches and other places of public a.s.semblage. The progress made in this direction during the last few years of the nineteenth century is already noteworthy, but when electric-heating really gets a good chance to force the pace of improvement, the day will soon arrive when it will be regarded as nothing less than barbarous to ask people to sit during the winter months in places not evenly warmed all through by methods which result in the distribution of the heat exactly as it is wanted.

Ventilation is another household reform which will be very greatly accelerated by the presence of electric power of low cost. The great majority of civilised people, as yet, have no idea of ventilation excepting that highly unreasonable kind which depends upon leaving their houses and other buildings partly open to the outside weather.

One man is sitting in church under a down draught from an open window above him, while others, in different parts of the same building, may be weltering in the heat and feeling stifled through the vitiated air.

In dwelling-houses the great majority of living rooms really have no other effective form of ventilation than the draught from the fireplace. The strength of this draught, again, is regulated to a very large extent by the speed and direction of the outside wind.

In calm and sultry weather, when ventilation is most needed, the current of air from the fireplace may be very slight indeed; while in the wild and boisterous days succeeding a sudden change of weather, the living rooms are subjected to such a drop in temperature and are swept by such draughts of cold air that the inmates are very liable to catch colds and influenza. Hence has arisen in the British Islands, and in the colder countries of Europe and America, the very general desire among the poorer cla.s.ses to suppress all ventilation. Rooms are closed at the commencement of winter and practically remain so until the summer season. Many people whose circ.u.mstances have improved, and who pa.s.s suddenly from ill-ventilated houses to those which have better access to the outside air, find the change so severe upon their const.i.tutions and habits that they give a bad name to everything in the shape of ventilation. Meanwhile the dread of draughts causes people to exclude the fresh air to such an extent that consumption and many other diseases are fostered and engendered.

All this arises mainly from the very serious mistake of imagining that it is possible to move air without the exercise of force. In the case of the draught caused by a fire no doubt an active force is employed in the energy of the heated air ascending the chimney, and in the corresponding inrush. This latter is usually drawn from below the door--the very worst place from which it can be taken, seeing that in the experience of most people it is by getting the feet chilled, through draughts along the floor, that the worst colds are generally contracted. Fireplaces are not unusually regarded as a direct means for ventilation, and with regard to nearly all the devices commonly adopted in houses and public buildings, it may be said that they lack the first requisite for a scientific system of renewing the air, namely a source of power by means of which to s.h.i.+ft it from outside to inside, and _vice versa_. There is no direction in which a more pressing need exists for the distribution of power in small quant.i.ties than in regard to the ventilation of private and public edifices.

The circular fan, placed in the centre piece of the ceiling and controlled by an electric switch on the wall, is the princ.i.p.al type of apparatus applicable to the purposes of ventilation. As electric lighting of dwelling-houses becomes more common, and ultimately almost universal within cities, the practice will be to arrange for lighting and for ventilation at the same time. But, unfortunately, the current now princ.i.p.ally employed for electric lighting and consisting of a series of impulses, first in one direction and then in the opposite, "alternating" with wonderful rapidity, is not well adapted for driving small motors of the types now in use. One improvement in domestic economy greatly needed in the twentieth century consists in the invention of a really effective simple and economical "alternate-current" motor. This is a matter which will be referred to in dealing with electrical machines. That the problem will be solved before many years have pa.s.sed there is no good reason to doubt.

In the meantime many laudable endeavours are being made towards the application of the pressure from water pipes to the purpose of driving ventilating fans. The extreme wastefulness of power and of water involved in this method of dealing with the difficulty may be partially overlooked on account of the very small amounts required to produce an effect in the desired direction; and yet there is no doubt that a recognition of the wastefulness acts to some extent as a deterrent to artificial ventilation. The benefits of the system are not sufficiently obvious or showy to induce any cla.s.s of people, excepting physicians and persons fully acquainted with the principles of hygiene, to sanction a material outlay upon the object. When an exactly suitable alternate-current motor has been invented the standard electric light installation will be practically one apparatus with the ventilating fan, and the cost of the latter will hardly be felt as a separate item.

In cooking there is in existing ordinary methods the same enormous waste of heat as there is in the warming of rooms. Something, no doubt, has been done in the direction of economy by the invention of new and improved forms of stoves, but a great preponderance of the heat generated in the fire of even the best stove goes up the chimney.