MARVELS OF THE YEAR 1909 303 



028, belonging to the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad and 

 known as the Jamestown Exposition engine. 



It has been demonstrated that trains can be run with safety at a speed of 

 ninety miles an hour, although it takes three or four times longer to stop a 

 train going at that speed than one going sixty miles an hour. 



A new record was made in August, 1909, in pulling heavy loads by rail. 

 An engine on the Virginia Railroad pulled ninety cars, each laden with fifty 

 tons of coal, a distance of 2^.3 miles, breaking all previous records for heavy 

 hauls. 



World's records went to smash in August at the new motor speedway at 

 Indianapolis. Lewis Strang won the fastest 100-mile race ever held, in i hour 

 38 minutes 48 4-10 seconds. Strang made a new twenty-five-mile record, going 

 that distance in 23 minutes 20 seconds. A new ten-mile record was made by 

 Zengell in 8 minutes 56;^ seconds. 



Ever since the opening of this century scientists have been indulging in most 

 hopeful "peeps ahead" at probable future achievements. 



William Marconi, the inventor of wireless telegraphy, predicts that all rapid 

 transit will be made by airships within the next fifty years, and that the storage 

 battery will take the place of coal and fire and water. 



"Within the next fifty years," he declares, "coal will cease to be our only 

 source of energy. It may be that helium, which Prof. Onnes has succeeded in 

 liquefying at the incredible temperature of 455 degrees below zero, may lead 

 the way to an unsuspected source of energy and heat. 



"Personally, I believe the harnessing of the sun's rays will be the next big 

 scientific achievement. In every land men of science are patiently studying the 

 problem of utilizing the energy of the sun — storing it, in fact — so that the 

 generation of electric force may be cheapened by its use to a point where the 

 storage battery on a large scale will be an economic as well as an academic 

 possibility. The wasted energy in coal, as now used, may in the interval, be 

 brought to do its work and so bring about the monster storage battery sooner 

 than we now expect. But sooner or later we shall enslave the sun's rays to 

 our uses." 



Thomas A. Edison shares Marconi's belief that scientists will some day con- 

 trol the energy stored in coal without waste. 



"Ninety per cent of the energy stored in coal is now lost," he said recently. 

 "It goes off in heat from the chimneys, and is especially wasted in the process of 

 converting water into steam. However, I predict that means will be devised 



