The Popular Science Monthly, July, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900Various
Science
The Popular Science Monthly, July, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
By producing a ‘sink’ or reservoir of a low temperature, thereby
inducing the heat of the ambient medium to transform itself in part
into other forms of energy (_e.g._ electrical), Mr. Tesla hopes to “get
any amount of energy without further effort” beyond the amount needed
to create the ‘sink.’ We should thus employ “an ideal way of obtaining
motor power,” and incidentally rebuke the narrow-minded physics of
Carnot and Lord Kelvin.
By means of his electrical oscillator Mr. Tesla has satisfied himself
that he can transmit electrical energy in large quantities without
wires. He expects that this can be done to great economic advantage.
Then would come the golden age. “Men could settle down everywhere,
fertilize and irrigate the soil with little effort, and convert barren
deserts into gardens, and thus the entire globe could be transformed
and made a fitter abode for mankind.”
The golden age figures largely in Mr. Tesla’s article; he offers us all
that is entrancing and wonderful. He is generous. We ask for the bread
of definite facts of science and intelligible evidence, but he gives
us the amethyst and topaz and diamonds of an ambient medium doing all
our work and the atmosphere transporting all our motive power and the
tyrant gravity held powerless by a screen, and Mr. Tesla correcting
Lord Kelvin’s errors. Still amethyst and topaz and diamonds are only
stones. They may dazzle the magazine reader, but they do not nourish
the student of science.
The editorial department of the _Century Magazine_ perhaps felt that
these jewels were a bit too bright. We read there that “much that
must seem speculative to the layman can take its proper place only in
the purview of the scientist.” Some conservative scientists will feel
like growling, “And much that must seem bosh to the man of science can
take its proper place only in the purview of the editorial departments
of popular magazines.” Leaving aside the present case, it is a fact
that the same care which is exercised by editors to secure in their
contributions excellence of style and syntax, a proper moral tone and
freedom from advertisement of business ventures, is not exercised to
secure accuracy in statements of fact or decent credibility in matters
of theory. The editors apparently impute to their readers a desire to
be entertained at all costs. They descend to a footing with the Sunday
newspaper instead of trying to rise to the level of such scientific
literature as Huxley or Tyndall gave us. They evidently often do not
know science from rubbish and apparently seldom make any effort to
find out the difference. They should at least submit their scientific
literature to competent men for criticism and revision.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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