266 Miracles Ahead! 



plants could go to out-of-the-way places where valuable raw 

 materials were located, instead of being tethered to the source 

 of power to run the machinery. Fantastic? Perhaps. "I don't 

 know whether we can ever learn to do this," said Charles F. 

 Kettering of General Motors. "But," he added, "all the power 

 we have here on earth came that way by radio waves from 

 the sun." 



Electricity as Cheap as Water 



Scientists believe that further advances in the generation 

 and transmission of electric power will greatly reduce its 

 cost. The late Dr. Charles P. Steinmetz went so far as to say 

 twenty-five years ago that electricity would someday be so 

 cheap that it would not pay to read meters. 



"Consider what it means," wrote Waldemar KaempfTert, 

 science editor of the New York Times, "if electricity be- 

 comes something that municipalities will furnish to manufac- 

 turers and house builders as they now furnish water. Air 

 conditioning, a flowering new industry, has been held back 

 because of the cost of electricity. 



"When energy is reduced in price to the level that Stein- 

 metz had in mind a city will be glassed over and maintained 

 at a constant temperature and humidity the year round. Every 

 country house will have its uniform indoor climate, manufac- 

 tured at a cost less than that which we now pay for electric 

 lighting. If Steinmetz's prediction is fulfilled and he was one 

 of the most distinguished electrical engineers of his time 

 even Broadway at its brightest will seem dim. We may not be 

 able to duplicate sunlight in intensity, but we shall come close 

 enough to it." 



Two other predictions of "things to come" fit in here. , 

 William F. Ogburn, Department of Sociology, University of 

 Chicago, points out that better and cheaper air conditioning 



