142 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



two hundred millions of dollars' worth of grain and flour, a surplus left 

 us after feeding our own population as the people of no other country 

 are, or ever were, fed. Farms of tens of thousands of acres in area can 

 now be thus cheaply cultivated. 



Electrical engineering is to-day one of the most impressive of all 

 modern developments in mechanical engineering, and the whole world 

 is coming to be served by the installation of the machinery of our light 

 and power distribution 'plants.' While it is true, as often remarked, 

 that electrical engineering is not only a department of mechanical en- 

 gineering, but one which involves, in large proportion, design, con- 

 struction and operation in the more familiar departments of mechanical 

 engineering as fundamental bases, it is none the less true that electrical 

 engineering is most closely approximate to pure science and most dis- 

 tinctive in its own character among all specialties taken up by the en- 

 gineer as individual vocations. The machinery of the business involves 

 all the principles of design and construction taught the mechanical 

 engineer, and the scientific side, once almost purely such, now attaches 

 itself to the mechanical as a lesser to a greater. The whole of this enor- 

 mous accession to the world's industries has come in within the last half- 

 eentury, practically, and the telegraph, the telephone, the electric light 

 and the electric railway have succeeded one another since that date. 

 The last is the outcome of the last quarter-centur}'. 



The energy which carries the telegram along the wires to-day comes 

 from the steam-engine, which is now a principal and most absolutely 

 essential element; telephones, like telegraph instruments, are the output 

 of most extensive and important manufacturing establishments; electric 

 light and power distributions are all systems of distribution of the power 

 of the steam-engine. To-day there are probably $3,000,000,000 in- 

 vested, in our country alone, in telegraphs, telephones and electric dis- 

 tributions, of which the larger part by far is invested in the latter. In 

 fact, Mr. T. C. Martin reckons a still larger total, and computes these 

 figures: telegraph, $250,000,000; telephones, $300,000,000; electric 

 lighting, $1,300,000,000; electric railways, $1,800,000,000; other uses 

 of electric power, $250,000,000; manufacturing, $150,000,000; storage 

 batteries, etc., $25,000,000; total, $3,975,000,000, about four thousand 

 millions, nearly four hillions, of dollars. 



More seductive even than the problems of the electrical engineer, 

 more deceitfully promising than any one of the great problems of the 

 age, seemingly more completely solved in its subsidiary elements and 

 almost on the very verge of solution, completely and perfectly, is the 

 task assigned the inventor from the earliest days of the world, from the 

 day when the first man saw the first bird rise from under his feet and 

 wing its way toward the heavens, safe, free and joyous: the problem of 

 aerodromies, of aviation and aeronautics. Inventors attacked this prob- 



