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 class 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. The electric oven, as already invented, is perhaps the nearest approach to a really economical "cooker" that has yet been proposed; but even before the general adoption of such an apparatus there will be ample room for improvement in the cooking stove, first as regards insulation, and secondly in the distribution of the fuel around the objects to be heated. One principal cause of the waste that goes on arises from the fact that the fire burns away from the place at which its heat is most beneficially applied, and no means are adopted, as in the case of the candle in a carriage lamp, for keeping it up to the required level. Additions of fuel are made from the top with the immediate effect of checking the heat.

A great advance in economy of fuel will take place when the household coal intended for cooking purposes is ground up together with the proper proportions of certain waste products of chemistry, so as to make a "smouldering mixture" which can be kept regularly supplied to a shallow or thin fire box by pressure applied from beneath or at the parts farthest away from the objects to be heated. An oven, for instance, may be surrounded by a "jacket" filled with ground smouldering mixture having a non-conducting insulator outside and a connection with a chimney. The heat from the fuel is thus kept in close proximity to the objects requiring to be cooked, and comparatively small waste results.

It is by taking advantage of their superior facilities in the same direction that gas and inflammable oils have already made their mark in the sphere of domestic cookery. Regarded as fuel their initial cost may be relatively heavy; and yet, owing to their more exact method of application, they often effect a saving in the end. Not only do they bring the fire closer to the articles to be heated or cooked, but they also make it easy for the fire to be turned off or on, and this in itself is an important source of economy. Still, with the advent of cheaper and more accessible power in every centre of population, the cost of grinding coal and of mixing it in order to form a fuel comparable in respect of convenience and economy with gas and oil will be so greatly reduced that the "black diamond" will still continue to challenge its rivals in the arena of competition presented by the demands of domestic economy.

Light, as well as heat and air, requires to be evenly and equably distributed throughout the dwelling-house before anything approaching an ideal residence can be secured. As the science of hygiene advances it is demonstrated more and more clearly that sunlight—and even diffused daylight—may be used as a most effective weapon against the spread of disease. Alternations of deep gloom in the dwelling-house with the superior light resulting from brighter weather produce many kinds of nervous derangement, not the least deleterious of which arise from the unnecessary strain to which the eyesight is subjected. The promise of the future is that, through the abundance of windows provided in the walls, roofs and porches of our dwelling-houses—but all supplemented with shutters and blinds of various kinds—there shall be a possibility of regulating, far more accurately than at present, the accessibility of light from outside according to the brightness or dulness of the day.

It is hardly to be expected that many people will build "Crystal Palaces" in which to reside; but with the immense progress that is being made in the construction of dwellings with iron or steel frames, and in the adaptation of various materials so that they may serve for building purposes in conjunction with metallic frameworks, it seems clear that many roofs, as well as large portions of walls, will in future be made on the composite principle, using steel and glass. These will, to a large extent, be permanently sheltered from the direct rays of the sun when high in the heavens, by shutters constructed on the louvre principle so that they may admit the light from the sky continually, but actual rays or beams of sunlight only for a short time after sunrise and at the close of day. The ceilings, if any are provided under the roofs, will also be glazed.

The obstacles presented in the way of such a reform in a city like London may at first sight seem so serious as to be practically insuperable. Long rows of three or four storied houses certainly offer but few facilities for the admission of light through the roofs of any but the rooms on the top floors, and yet it is in the dwelling-houses of this type that the depression caused by gloom and the absence of light during the hours of day are most severely felt as a source of nervous depression. Evolution in a matter of this sort will take place gradually and along the line of least resistance. Portions of courts, areas and yards will be glazed over in the way described; and it will be found that those rooms which are thus enclosed and sheltered from the wind and rain, but left open to the daylight, constitute the most cheerful sitting places in the houses. Then, as rebuilding and alterations proceed, many houses will gradually be remodelled—at least as regards some of their rooms—in the same direction. Physicians will become increasingly insistent on the necessity for admitting plenty of light into the abodes of the sick, more particularly of families inclined towards consumption.

A very large trade will spring up during the twentieth century in household cooling apparatus for use in hot climates. The colonial expansion towards which all European races are now tending inevitably means that very many thousands of persons whose ancestors have been accustomed to life in cold or temperate climates, will be induced to dwell in the dry and warm, or in the humid tropical regions of the earth. It will be an important task of the British, Continental and American machinists of the twentieth century to turn out convenient pieces of apparatus which shall be available for ventilating houses, especially during the night, and for reducing the temperature in them to something approaching that which is natural to the inmates. The old clumsy punkah will be replaced by circular fans keeping up a gentle current of air with a minimum of noise or annoyance of any kind.

At present it is only in specially favoured circumstances that these quiet-working circular punkahs can be actuated by mechanical force, that is to say where a prime motor, or an electric current, or a reticulated water supply for driving a suitable machine may be at hand. In other situations the use of compressed air or gas may be resorted to, and for this purpose small capsules, similar to those already introduced for making soda water by the liberation of compressed carbonic acid gas, will be found handy. For a very small sum of money the householder will be able to purchase a sufficient number of capsules to ensure motive power for his fan during a week of hot nights.

A convenient form of small motor suitable for being driven by compressed air or gases in this way is one in which a diminutive turbine or other wheel is set at the bottom of a thin tube of mercury. The capsule, being fastened to the lower end of this apparatus, liberates at very short intervals of time bubbles of air or gas, which, in the upward ascent, drive the wheel. The arrangement depends upon the fact that a stream of gas ascending in a heavy liquid behaves in the same way as a stream of water descending by its own weight and turning a water-wheel. It supplies what is perhaps the simplest and most inexpensive small motor available for the lightest domestic work to which a gentle but continuous source of power is applicable.

For actually cooling the air, as well as keeping it in motion, similar devices will be resorted to, with the addition of the circulation of the current of air through coils of pipes laid under the surface of the ground. In this way householders will have all the advantages of living in cool underground rooms without incurring the discomforts and dangers which are often inseparable from that mode of life. In the coastal regions, which usually have the most trying climates for Europeans living in tropical countries, a method of cooling the houses will be based on the fact that at moderate depths in the sea the prevailing temperature is a steady one, not much above the freezing point of water. Almost every seaport town within the tropics—where white residents in their houses swelter nightly in the greatest discomfort from the heat—is in close proximity to deep ocean water, in which, at all seasons of the year, the regular temperature is only about thirty-four degrees Fahr. The cost of steel piping strong enough to withstand the pressure of the water in places which possess absolutely the coolest temperature of the ocean would be very heavy; but, on the other hand, the actual reduction of heat demanded for the satisfactory cooling of the air in a dwelling-room is not by any means great, and at quite shallow depths the heat of the air can be satisfactorily abstracted by the sea water surrounding coils of pipes.

Even in colder climates it seems likely that similar systems will be found useful in producing a preliminary reduction in the temperature of the air employed in keeping fresh foodstuffs such as meat, fruits and vegetables. Fruits especially, when placed in suitable receptacles, and stored at temperatures quite steady at about the freezing point of water, will not only be readily kept on land from one season to another, but will be transported to markets thousands of miles distant from the growers, and sold in practically the same condition as if they had just been picked from the trees. During the twentieth century the proportion of the fruit eaters among the peoples of the great manufacturing countries will be very largely augmented, and this result will be brought about mainly through the instrumentality of methods of keeping perishable produce free from deterioration by maintaining it almost at the freezing point—a temperature at which, under suitable conditions as regards exclusion of moisture, and steadiness of hygrometric pressure, the germs of decay in food are practically prevented from coming to maturity.

For the cooling of dwelling-rooms in places distant from the sea, various systems, depending upon the supply of dry cold air from central stations through pipes to the dwellings of subscribers, will no doubt be brought into operation. This, however, will only be practicable in the more populous localities having plenty of residents ready to contribute to the expense. For more isolated houses the cooling and ventilating apparatus of the future may be a modification of the "shower-blast" which has been successfully adapted to metallurgical purposes. When downward jets of water, as in a shower-bath, are enclosed in a large pipe connected horizontally with a room but having facilities for the escape of the water underneath, a strong draught of cool air is created, and the prevailing temperature is quickly reduced. An apparatus of this kind may be intended for application either to the ventilators or to the windows of rooms.

Lifts for conveying persons from one storey of a building to another will probably undergo a considerable amount of modification during the next few years. The establishment of central electric stations and the distribution of electricity for lighting and for power will offer a very great premium upon the preference for electric motors for lifts. As soon as a maximum of efficiency, combined with the minimum of cost, has been attained, there will be a demand for the introduction of lifts in positions where the traffic is not large enough to warrant the constant presence of an attendant. In fact the desire will be for some kind of elevator which shall be just as free to the use of each individual as is the staircase of an ordinary house.

For this purpose, inclined planes having moving canvas or similar ramps will be extensively brought into use. The passenger steps upon what is practically an endless belt having suitable slats upon it to prevent his foot from slipping, and, as the hand-railing at the side of this moves concurrently, he is taken up, without any effort, to the landing on which he may alight quite steadily. When this idea, which has already been brought into operation, has been more fully developed, it will be seen that a large circular slowly-revolving disc, set at an angle and properly furnished, will supply a more convenient form of free elevator. One side will be used by those who are going up and the other by those who wish to come down. The "well" of the staircase for such a lift is made in elliptical form, like the shadow projection of a circle. Steps can be provided so that, when not in motion, the lift will be a staircase not differing much from the old style.



CHAPTER X.

ELECTRIC MESSAGES, ETC.

The telegraphic wire in the home and street will fulfil a very important part in the economy of the twentieth century. For conveying intelligence, as well as for heating, cooking and lighting, the electric current will become one of the most familiar of all the forces called in to assist in domestic arrangements. The rapidity with which the electric bell-push has taken the place of the old-fashioned knocker and the bell-hanger's system affords one indication of the readiness with which those forms of electric apparatus which are adapted to all the purposes of communicating and reminding will recommend themselves to the public during the twentieth century.

In another direction the eagerness with which every advance in the telephone is hailed by the people may well offer an augury of rapid progress in the immediate future. In this department invention will aim just as much at simplification as at elaboration; and some of the pieces of domestic electrical apparatus universally used during the twentieth century will be astonishingly cheap.

The call to awake in the morning will, in cities and towns, be made by wireless telegraphy, which will also be used for the purpose of regulating the domestic clocks, so that if desired any suitable form of clock alarm may be used with the most perfect confidence. A tentative system of this kind has been adopted in connection with certain telephone exchanges, in which special officers are told off whose duty it is to call those subscribers who have paid the small fee covering the expense. These officers are required to time their intimations according to the previously expressed wishes of subscribers. This kind of service, as well as the regulation of the household clock, is eminently a department of domestic economy in which wireless telegraphy will prove itself useful, because it does not demand that a subscriber shall have gone to the expense of installing a wire to his house and of paying a rent or fee for the use of one.

The clock controlled by wireless telegraphy will doubtless undergo a rapid development from the time when it is first introduced. Practically the same principles which enable the electrician to utilise the "Hertzian waves," or ether vibrations, for the purpose of setting a clock right once a day, or once an hour, will permit of an impulse, true to time, being sent from the central station every second, or every minute, and when this has been accomplished it will be seen that there is no more use for the maintenance of elaborate clockworks at any place excepting the central station. The domestic clock will, in fact, become mainly a "receiver" for the wireless telegraphic apparatus, and its internal mechanism will be reduced, perhaps, to a couple of wheels, which are necessary to transmit the motion of a minute-hand to that which indicates the hours.

The fire-alarm of the future must be very simple and inexpensive in order to ensure its introduction, not only into offices and warehouses but also into shops and houses. The fire-insurance companies will very shortly awake to the fact that prompt telegraphic alarm in case of fire is worth far more than the majority of the prohibitions upon which they are accustomed to insist by way of rendering fires less likely. The main principles upon which the electric fire-alarm will be operated have already been worked out and partially adopted. In the system of fuses and cut-outs used in connection with electric lighting, the methods of preventing fire due to the development of excessive heat have been well studied. But simplification is particularly required in the case of those fire-alarms which are to be useful for giving intimation of a conflagration from any cause arising.

As the telegraphic and telephonic wires are extended so as to traverse practically all the streets of every city, the fire-insurance companies will find it to their advantage to promote a simple plan, depending on the use of a combustible thread passing round little pulleys in the corners of all the rooms and finally out to the front, where an electrical "contact-maker" is fixed, so that on the thread being burnt and broken at any point in its circuit, an electric message will be at once sent along the nearest wire to the fire-brigade station and a bell set ringing both inside and outside the premises.

Somewhat similar systems will be used for checking the enterprises of the burglar. The best protected safes of the future will be enmeshed in networks of wires encased in some material which will render it impossible to determine their positions from the outside. These wires will be so related to an electric circuit that the breaking of any one of them, at any part of its course, will have the effect of ringing a bell and giving warning at the police station, as well as at other places where potential thief-catchers may be on hand. For doors and windows very simple contact devices have already been brought out, but the principal objection to their general adoption arises from the fact that so very many houses remain unconnected with any telephone system which may be made available for calling the police. Even were all houses connected it is true that in some instances attempts might be made to cut the wires when a raid was in contemplation, but the risk of discovery in any such operation would prove a very powerful deterrent. In fact the telephone wire, more than any other mechanical device, is destined to aid in "improving" the burglar out of existence.

With the indefinite multiplication of telephone subscribers at very cheap rates, there will come a powerful inducement towards the invention of new appliances for rendering the subscriber independent of the attention of officers at any central exchange. The duty of connecting an individual subscriber with any other with whom he may desire to converse is, after all, a purely mechanical one, and eminently of a kind which, by a combination of engineering and electrical skill, may be quite successfully accomplished. In the apparatus which will probably be in use during the twentieth century, each subscriber will have a dial carrying on its face the names and numbers of all those with whom he is in the habit of holding communication. This will be his "smaller dial," and beside it will be another, intended for only occasional use, through which, by exercising a little more patience, he may connect himself with any other subscriber whatever. Corresponding dials will be fixed in the central office.

Under this system, when the subscriber desires to secure a connection, he moves a handle round his dial until the pointer in its circuit comes to the desired number. An electrical impulse is thus sent along the wire to the central station for every number over which the pointer passes, and the corresponding pointer or contact-maker at the central station is moved exactly in sympathy. When the correct number is reached the subscriber is in connection with the person with whom he desires to converse. If, however, the latter should be already engaged, a return impulse causes the bell of the first subscriber to ring. Of course the prime cost of installing such a system as this will be greater than in the case of the simple hand-connected telephones; but the two systems can be used conjointly, and the immense convenience, especially to large firms, of being able to go straight to the parties with whom they wish to communicate, will induce many of them to adopt the automatic apparatus as soon as it has been perfected.

Wireless telephony must come to the front in the near future, but at first for only very special purposes. The prospect of the profits that would be attendant on working up a business unhampered by the heavy capital charges which weigh upon the owners of telephone wires must stimulate inventive enterprise to a remarkable degree in this particular line. The main difficulty, however, in the application of the system to general purposes will lie in the need for an ingenious but simple means for enabling one subscriber to call another.

For this purpose probably the synchronised clock system already referred to will be found essential, each office or house being furnished with a timekeeper of this type kept in constant agreement with a central clock, and so arranged that only when the ethereal electrical impulse is given at a certain fixed point in the minute, will any particular subscriber's bell be rung. This may be effected by some such arrangement as a revolving drum, perforated at a different part of its periphery for each individual subscriber, and capable of permitting the electrical contact which makes a magnet and rings the bell only at the fraction of a moment when the subscriber's slot passes the pointer.

This will mean, of course, that only at a certain almost infinitesimally small space of time in the duration of each minute will it be possible to call any particular subscriber, or rather to release the mechanism which will set his bell ringing for perhaps a minute at a time. In the presence of unscrupulous competition, resulting in the flinging out of Hertzian wave vibrations promiscuously, for the purpose of destroying a rival's chances of obtaining satisfactory connections, it would be necessary to make rather more complicated arrangements of a nature analogous to those of the puzzle lock. Instead of one impulse during the minute, two or three would be required, in order to release the mechanism for ringing any subscriber's bell; and no ring would take place unless the time-spaces between these impulses were exactly in accordance with the agreed form, which might be varied at convenient intervals.

Yet in the cases in which wireless telephony and telegraphy are taken up by local public authorities having power to forbid any one playing "dog in the manger," by preventing useful work by others while failing to promote it himself, the simpler system of wireless telephone call will be practicable. With the advance of municipalisation, and of intelligent collectivism generally, enterprises of public utility will be guarded from mere cut-throat commercial hostility much more sedulously in the twentieth century than they have been in the past.

A great multitude of new applications of the telegraphic and telephonic systems will be introduced in the immediate future. Not only will those subscribers who are connected by wire with central stations have the advantage of being called at any hour in the morning according to their intimated wishes, but such services as lighting the fires in winter mornings, so that rooms may be fairly warmed before they are entered, will be performed by electric messages sent from a central station.

Drawings will also be despatched by telegraph. For such purposes as the transmission of sketches from the scene of any stirring event, the first really practical application of drawing by telegraph will probably depend upon the use of a large number of code words divided into two groups, each of which, on the principles of co-ordinate geometry, will indicate a different degree of distance from the base line and from the side line respectively, so that from any sketch a correct message in code may be made up and the drawing may be reconstructed at the receiving end. Illustrated newspapers will in this way obtain drawings exactly at the same time as their other messages, and distant occurrences will be brought before the public eye much more vividly and more correctly than has ever hitherto been practicable.

For special objects, also, photographs can be sent by telegraph through the use of the photo-relief in plaster of Paris, or other suitable material, which travels backwards and forwards underneath a pointer, the rising and falling of which is accurately represented by thick and thin lines—or by the darker and lighter photographic printing of a beam of light of varying intensity—at the other end, so that a shaded reproduction of the photograph is produced. Relief at the sending end is in this way translated into darkness of shade at the receiving end. Any general expansion of this system, if it comes, will necessarily be postponed till long after the full possibilities of the codeword plan have been exploited, because the latter works in exactly with the ordinary methods for sending telegraphic matter.

The keen competition between submarine and wireless telegraphy will be one of the most exciting contests furnished by electrical progress in the first quarter of the new century. Attention will be devoted to those directions on the surface of the globe in which it is possible to send messages almost entirely by land lines, and to bridge over comparatively small intervals of space from land to land by wireless telegraphy. Thus the Asiatic and Canadian route may be expected shortly to enter into competition with the Atlantic cables in telegraphic business to the United States; while Australia will be reached via Singapore and Java.

A great impetus will be given to the wireless system as a commercial undertaking when arrangements have been perfected for causing the receiver at any particular station to translate its message into a form suitable for sending automatically. When this has been done, many of the wayside stations will be almost entirely self-working, and messages, indeed, may be despatched from island to island, or from one floating station to another across the Atlantic itself.

Another requirement for really cheap telegraphy on the new system is a more rapid method of making the letters or signals. The irregular intervals at which the sparks from the coil of the transmitter fly from one terminal to the other render it impossible to split up the succession of flashes into intervals on the dot-and-dash principle, without providing for each dot a much longer period of time than is required for the transmission of messages on land lines. In fact the need for going slowly in the sending of the message is the principal stumbling-block which disconcerts ordinary telegraphic operators when they come to try wireless telegraphy. For remedying this defect the most hopeful outlook is in the direction of a multiplication of the pieces of apparatus for spark-making and the combining of pairs of them in such a way that, whenever the first one fails during an appreciable interval of time to emit a spark, the second is called into requisition. In this way a constant stream of sparks may be ensured, without incurring the risk of running faster than the coil will supply the electrical impulses necessary for the transmission of the message.

Increased rapidity in land telegraphy by the ordinary system of transmission by wire, and facility in making the records at the receiving end in easily read typewriting—these are two desiderata which at the close of the nineteenth century have been almost attained, but which will take some time to introduce to general notice. In the commercial system of the twentieth century the merchant's clerk will write his messages on a typewriter which perforates a strip of paper with holes corresponding to the various letters, while it sets down in printing, on another strip, the letters themselves. The latter will be kept as a record, but the former will be taken to the telegraph office and put through the sending machine without being read by the operator. The message will print itself at the other end and wrap itself up in secret, nothing but the address being made visible to the operator.

For the use of the general public who are not possessed of the special apparatus necessary to perforate the paper another system is available. Sets of movable type may be provided at the telegraph office in small compartments, the letters being on one side and indentations corresponding to the required perforations being cut or stamped into the other sides of the movable pieces. The sender of a message will set it up in a long shallow tray or "galley" like those used by printers, and he will then turn the faces of the letters downwards and see the whole passed through the machine without being read by the operator; after which he can distribute the letters if he chooses. In this way telegraphy will gradually become at once far more secret and far cheaper than it is at present, and a large amount of correspondence which at present passes through the post will be sent along the wire.

Many merchants will have their telephonic apparatus fitted with arrangements for setting up type or perforating strips of paper, as already described; and also with receiving apparatus for making the records in typewriting. If they fail to find a subscriber or correspondent on hand at the time when he is wanted, they can write a note to him which he will find hanging on a paper strip from his telephone when he returns. Another mode of accomplishing a somewhat similar result is to provide the telephone receiver itself with a moving strip of steel, which, in its varying degrees of magnetisation, records the spoken words so that they will, at some distance of time, actuate the diaphragm of the receiver and emit spoken words. The degree of permanency which can be attained by this system is, of course, a vital point as regards its practical merits.

Still unsolved electrical problems are the making of a satisfactory alternate current motor suitable for running with the kind of currents generally used for electric lighting purposes—the utilisation of the glow lamp having a partial vacuum or attenuated gas for giving a cheap and soft light somewhat on the principle of the Geissler tube—and last, but not least, the direct conversion of heat into electricity.

With regard to the first-mentioned, the prospects have been materially altered by a discovery announced at the New York meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science within a few weeks of the close of the nineteenth century. The handy and effective alternate current motor indeed seemed then as far distant as it had been in 1896, when Sir David Salomons remarked, in his work on Electric Light Installations (vol. ii., p. 97): "No satisfactory alternate current motor available on all circuits exists as yet, although," he added later, "the demand for such an appliance increases daily". It seems, however, that electricians have been looking in the wrong direction for the solution of using the same wire for alternate current lighting and for motive power at the same time. Professor Bedell, of Cornell University, announced at the New York meeting referred to his discovery of the important fact that when direct and alternate currents are sent over the same line each behaves as if the other were not there, and thus the same line can be used for two distinct systems of transmitting electrical energy. No time will be lost in putting this announcement to the test, not only of scientific but also of practical verification, and the probability is that all electric lighting stations in the twentieth century will contain not only dynamos of one type for the supply of light, but also direct current generators for transmitting power in all directions over the same cables.

The glow lamp having no carbon filament, but setting up a bright light with only a fraction of the resistance presented by carbon, would, if perfected, render electric lighting by far the cheapest as well as the best method of illumination. Tentative work has indicated a high degree of probability that success will be achieved, and the glowing bulb is at any rate a possibility of the future which it will be well to reckon with.

In reference to the conversion of heat into electricity without the intervention of machinery to provide motion, and thus to cause magnetic fields to cross one another, very little promise has yet been shown of any fundamental principle upon which a practical apparatus of the kind could be based. The electrician who works at this problem has to begin almost de novo, and his task is an immensely difficult one, although on every ground of analogy success certainly looks possible. In the meantime, as has already been indicated, the steam turbine and dynamo combined, working practically as a single machine for the generation of electricity, offers practically the nearest approach to direct conversion which is yet well in sight.



CHAPTER XI.

WARFARE.

The last notable war of the nineteenth century has falsified the anticipations of nearly all the makers of small arms. The magazine rifle was held to be so perfect in its trajectory, and in the rapidity with which it could discharge its convenient store of cartridges in succession, that the bayonet charge had been put outside of the region of possibility in warfare. Those who reasoned thus were forgetting, to a large extent, that while small arms have been improving so also has artillery, and that a bayonet charge covered by a demoralising fire of field-pieces, mortars, and quick-firing artillery is a very different thing from one in which the assailants alone are the targets exposed to fire. Given that two opposing armies are possessed of weapons of about equal capacity for striking from a distance, they may do one another a great deal of harm without coming to close quarters at all. Yet victory will rest with the men who have sufficient bravery, skill and ingenuity to cross the fire-zone and tackle their enemies hand to hand.

Smoke-producing shells and other forms of projected cover, designed to mask the advance of cavalry and infantry, will greatly assist in the work of rendering this task of crossing the fire-zone less dangerous, notwithstanding any possible improvement that may be effected in the magazine-rifle. Already it has been observed that much of the surprise and confusion which terrifies those who have no bayonets, when subjected to a cannonade and at the same time brought face to face with a bayonet charge, arises from the fact that they cannot see to shoot straight, owing to the haze produced by the smoke and its blinding effects upon the eyes.

Special smoke-producing shells, made for the express purpose of covering a charge, will soon be evolved from the laboratory of the chemist in pursuance of this clue. In addition to shells and other missiles, small pieces of steel-piping will be projected by mortars into the fire-swept zone, in order to supplement the defects of natural cover which, of course, are nearly always as great as possible, seeing that the ground has generally been selected by the side against which the attack is being directed.

The task of enabling a rifleman to shoot straight has been taken up with extraordinary zeal and ability compared with the amount of skill and effort devoted to the corresponding or opposing object of spoiling his aim and preventing him from getting a shot in. When this latter has been to some extent accomplished, mainly by the agency of artillery, the bayonet and other weapons for use at close quarters will once more be in the ascendant. Thin shields of hard steel will be affixed to the rifles of the attacking party, so as to deflect the bullets wherever possible.

This baffling of the rifleman by the artillery supporting the cavalry and bayonet charge will produce momentous changes, not only in the future of war, but also in that of international relations. Anything which tends to discount the value of personal bravery and to elevate the tactics of the ambuscade and the sharp-shooting expedition gives, pro tanto, an advantage to the meaner-spirited races of mankind, and places them more or less in a position of mastery over those who hold higher racial traditions. The man who will face the risk of being shot in the open generally belongs to a higher type of humanity than he who only shoots from behind cover.

Moreover, the nations which have the skill and ingenuity to manufacture new weapons of self-defence belong to a higher class than those which only acquire advanced warlike munitions by purchase. One of the early international movements of the twentieth century will be directed towards the prohibition of the sale of such weapons as magazine-rifles, quick-firing field guns, and torpedoes to any savage or barbarous race. It will be accounted as treason to civilisation for any member of the international family to permit its manufacturers to sell the latest patterns of weapons to races whose ascendency might possibly become a menace to civilisation. As factors in determining the survival of the fittest, the elements of high character, bravery, and intellectual development must be conserved in their maximum efficiency at all hazards.

Another potent element in the safeguards of civilisation may be seen in the increased effectiveness of weapons for coastal defence. The hideous nightmare of a barbarian irruption, such as those which almost erased culture and intellect from the face of Europe during the dark ages of the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries, may occasionally be seen exercising its influence in the pessimistic writings which are from time to time issued from the Press predicting the coming ascendency of the yellow man.

However the case may be in regard to nations which are accessible by land to the encroachments of the Asiatic, there is no doubt that those countries which are divided off by the sea have been rendered much more secure through the rapid advances which have been made in the modern appliances for defending coasts and harbours. In naval tactics, also, it will be more and more clearly seen that to possess and defend the harbours where coaling can be carried out is practically to possess and defend the trade of the high seas; and the essence of good maritime policy will be to so locate the defended harbours that they may afford the greatest amount of protection, having in view the harm that may be done by an enemy's harbours in the vicinity.

The most effective naval weapon in the future will undoubtedly be the torpedo, but, like the bayonet, it requires to be in the hands of brave men before its value as the ultimate arbiter of naval conflict can be demonstrated. Much fallacious teaching has arisen from what has been called the lessons of certain naval wars which occurred on the coasts of South America and China—international embroilments in which mercenaries, or only half-trained seamen and engineers, were engaged. On similar fallacious grounds it was argued that the magazine-rifle had put the bayonet out of the court of military arbitrament, and the South African war has proved conclusively how erroneous was that idea. The use of the torpedo-boat and of the weapons which it carries must always demand, like that of the bayonet, men of the strongest nerve, and of the greatest devotion to their duty and to their country.

Fifty miles an hour is a rate which is already in sight as the speed of the future torpedo-boat, the first turbine steamer of the British Navy having achieved forty-three miles an hour before the end of the nineteenth century. It should be distinctly understood, however, that such a speed cannot be kept up for any great length of time and that long voyages are out of the question. The role of the turbine torpedo-boat will be to "get home" with its weapon in the shortest practicable time. Hence its great value for the defence of harbours by striking at distances of perhaps two or three hours' steaming.

On the high seas the battle-ships, which will virtually be the cruisers of the future, will be provided with turbine torpedo-boats, carried slung in convenient positions and ready at short notice to be let slip like greyhounds. During the hazardous run of the torpedo-boat towards the enemy, various devices will be employed for the purpose of baffling his aim, such for instance as the emission of volumes of smoke from the bows and the erection of broad network blinds covering the sight of the little craft, but capable of being shifted from side to side, so that the enemy's marksmen may never know exactly what part of the object in sight is to be aimed at. The torpedo will be carried on a mast, which at the right moment can be lowered to form a projecting spar like a bowsprit; and the explosion that will take place on its impact with the enemy's hull will be enough to blow a fatal breach in any warship afloat.

For harbour defence and the safety of the battle-ship the wire-guided and propelled torpedo will form a second line behind the fast torpedo-boat. This type of weapon strikes with more unerring accuracy than any other yet included in the armoury of naval warfare, because it is under the control of the marksman from the time of its launching until it fulfils its deadly mission. Its range, of course, is strictly limited; but it may be worked to advantage within the distances at which the best naval artillery can be depended upon to make good practice.

The least costly and the lightest form is that in which the backward pulling of two wires, unwinding two drums on the torpedo, actuates two screws at greater or less speeds according to the rapidity of the motion imparted, any advantage of speed in one screw over the other being responded to by an alteration in the direction taken by the weapon. The torpedo may be set so as to dive from the surface at any desired interval; but, of course, an appearance in the form of at least a flash is necessary to enable the operator to judge in what direction he is sending his missile. Small torpedo-boats, not manned but sticking to the surface, may be used in the same manner. Each one no doubt runs a very great risk of being hit by shot or shell aimed at them; but out of half a dozen, discharged at short intervals, it would be practically impossible for an enemy to make certain that one at least did not find its billet.

The submarine boat will have some useful applications in peace; but its range of utility in warfare is likely to be very limited. It is hopeless to expect the eyes of sailors to see any great distance under the water; therefore the descent must be made within sight of the enemy, who has only to surround himself with placed contact-torpedoes hanging to a depth, and to pollute the water in order to render the assault an absolutely desperate enterprise.

Military aeronautics, like submarine operations in naval warfare, have been somewhat overrated. Visions of air-ships hovering over a doomed city and devastating it with missiles dropped from above are mere fairy tales. Indeed the whole subject of aeronautics as an element in future human progress has excited far more attention than its intrinsic merits deserve.

A balloon is at the mercy of the wind and must remain so, while a true flying machine, which supports itself in the air by the operation of fans or similar devices, may be interesting as a toy, but cannot have much economical importance for the future. When man has the solid earth upon which to conduct his traffic, without the necessity of overcoming the force of gravitation by costly power, he would be foolish in the extreme to attempt to abandon the advantage which this gives him, and to commit himself to such an element as the air, in which the power required to lift himself and his goods would be immeasurably greater than that needed to transport them from place to place.

The amount of misdirected ingenuity that has been expended on these two problems of submarine and aerial navigation during the nineteenth century will offer one of the most curious and interesting studies to the future historian of technological progress. Unfortunately that faculty of the constructive imagination upon which inventive talent depends may too frequently be indulged by its possessor without any serious reference to the question of utility. Fancy paints a picture in which the inventor appears disporting himself at unheard-of depths below the surface of the sea or at extraordinary heights above the level of the land, while his friends, his rivals, and all manner of men and women besides, gaze with amazement! Patent agents are only too well aware how often an inordinate desire for self-glorification goes along with real inventive talent, and how many of the brotherhood of inventors make light of the losses which may be inflicted upon trusting investors so long as they themselves may get well talked about.

Nations may at times be infected with this unpractical vainglory of inventiveness; and on these occasions there is need of all the restraining influence of the hard-headed business man to prevent the waste of enormous sums of money. The idea that military ascendency in the future is to be secured by the ability to fly through the air and to dive for long distances under the water has taken possession of certain sections in France, Germany, Russia, Great Britain and the United States. Large numbers of voluble "Boulevardiers" in Paris have, during the last years of the nineteenth century, made it an article of their patriotic faith that the future success of the French navy depends upon the submarine boat. The question as to what an enemy would do with such a boat in actual warfare seems hardly ever to occur to them; and, indeed, any one who should venture to put such a query would run the risk of being set down as a traitor to his country!

More important to the student of the practical details of naval preparation is the great question as to the point at which the contest between shot and armour will be brought to a standstill. That it cannot proceed indefinitely may be confidently taken for granted. The plate-makers thicken their armour while the gun-makers enlarge the size and increase the penetrative power of their weapons, until the weight that has to be carried on a battle-ship renders the attainment of speed practically impossible.

Meanwhile there is going forward, in the hull of the vessel itself, a gradual course of evolution which will eventually place the policy of increasing strength of armour and of guns at a discount. The division of the air-space of a warship into water-tight compartments will doubtless prove to be, in actual naval conflict, a more effectual means of keeping the vessel afloat than the indefinite increase in the thickness and consequent weight of her armour.

The most advanced naval architects of modern times are bestowing more and more attention upon this feature, as affording a prospect of rendering ships unsinkable, whether through accidents or through injury in warfare. No doubt, for merchant steamers, it will be seen that development along the lines already laid down in this department will suffice for all practical purposes. The water-tight bulkheads, with readily closed or automatically shutting doorways, ensure the maintenance of buoyancy in case of any ordinary accident from collision or grounding, while the duplication of engines, shafts and propellers—without which no steamship of the middle twentieth century will be passed by marine surveyors as fit for carrying passengers on long ocean voyages—will make provision against all excepting the most extremely improbable mishaps to the machinery.

If the numerical estimate of the chance of the disablement of a single engine and its propeller during a certain voyage be stated at one to a thousand, then the risk of helplessness through the break down of both systems in a vessel having twin screws and entirely separate engines will be represented by the proportion of one to a million. This mode of reckoning, of course, assumes that the two systems could be made absolutely independent in relation to all possible disasters; and some deduction must be made on account of the impossibility of attaining this ideal. Yet it is evident that when every practicable device has been adopted for rendering a double accident improbable the chances against such a disaster will not be far from the proportion stated.

When we come to consider the evolution of the warship as compared with that of the merchant steamer, we are at once confronted with the fact that the infliction of injury upon the boilers, the engine, or the propellers of a hostile vessel is the great object aimed at by the gunners. The evolution of the warship in the direction of ensuring safety, therefore, will not stop at the duplication of the engines, boilers and propellers. In fact it must sooner or later be apparent that the interests of a great naval power demand the working out of a type of warlike craft that shall be almost entirely destitute of armour, but constructed on such a principle—both as to hull and machinery—that she can be raked fore and aft, and shot through in all directions without becoming either water-logged or deprived of her motive power.

A torpedo-boat built on this system may consist essentially of a series of steel tubes of large section grouped longitudinally, and divided into compartments like those of a bamboo cane. Each of these has its own small but powerful boilers and engines, and each its separate propeller at the stern. Care also is taken to place the machinery of each tube in such a position that no two are abreast. In fact, the principle of construction is such as to render just as remote as may be the possibility of any shot passing through the vessel and disabling two at the same time.

If a boat of this description has each tube furnished not only with a separate screw at the stern, but also with a torpedo at the bows, it can offer a most serious menace to even the most powerful battle-ship afloat, because its power of "getting home" with a missile depends not upon its protective precautions, but upon an appeal to the law of averages, which makes it practically impossible for any gunners, however skilful, to disable all its independent sections during the run from long range to torpedo-striking distance. The attacked warship is like an animal exposed to the onslaught of one of those fabled reptiles possessing a separate life and a separate sting in each of its myriad sections; so that what would be a mortal injury to a creature having its vital organs concentrated in one spot produces only the most limited effect in diminishing its strength and powers of offence.

Or this class of naval fighter may be regarded as a combined fleet of small torpedo-boats, bound together for mutual purposes of offence and defence. Singly, they would present defects of coal-carrying capacity, sea-going qualities, and accommodation for crew which would render them comparatively helpless and innocuous; but in combination they possess all the travelling capacities of a large warship, conjoined with the deadly powers at close quarters of a number of torpedo boats, all acting closely in concert upon a single plan.

The chief naval lesson taught during the Spanish-American War was the need for improving the sea-going qualities of the torpedo-boat before it can be regarded as a truly effective weapon in naval warfare. It was announced at one stage that if the Spanish torpedo-boat fleet could have been coaled and re-coaled at the Azores, and two or three other points on the passage across to America, it might have been brought within striking distance of the United States cruisers operating against Santiago. This hypothetical statement provided but cold comfort for the Spaniards, who had been persuaded to put so much of their available naval strength into a type of craft utterly unsuited for operations complying with the first great requirement of naval warfare, namely, that the proper limit of the campaign coincides with the shores of the enemy's country.

But when the naval architect and the engineer have evolved a class of torpedo-using vessel which can both travel far and strike hard, and which, moreover, can stand a few well-directed shots penetrating her without succumbing to their effect, a new era will have been opened up in naval warfare—an era of high explosive weapons requiring to strike home with dash and bravery in spite of risk from shot and shell; but, like the bayonet on land, capable of overthrowing all war-machines which can only strike from a considerable distance.



CHAPTER XII.

MUSIC.

A perfect sostenuto piano has been the dream of many a musician whose ardent desire it was to perform his music exactly as it was written. A sustained piano note is, indeed, the great mechanical desideratum for the music of the future. In music, as at present written and published for the piano, which is, and must continue to be, the real "King of Instruments," there is a good deal of make-believe. A long note—or two notes tied in a certain method—is intended to be played as a continued sound, like the note of an organ; whereas there is no piano in existence which will produce anything even approximately approaching to that effect. The characteristic of the piano as an instrument is percussion, producing, at the moment of striking the note, a loud sound which almost immediately dies away and leaves but a faint vibration.

The phonographic record of a pianoforte solo shows this very clearly to the eye, because the impression made by a long note is a deeply-marked indentation succeeded by the merest shallow scratch—not unlike the impression made by a tadpole on mud—with a big head and an attenuated body. Every note marked long in pianoforte music is therefore essentially a sforzando followed by a rapid diminuendo. Anything in such music marked as a long note to be sustained crescendo—the most thrilling effect of orchestral, choral, and organ music—is necessarily a sham and a delusion.

The genius and skill which have enabled the masters of pianoforte composition not only to cover up this defect in their instrument, but even to make amends for it, by working out effects only suitable for a percussion note, present one of the most remarkable features of musical progress in the nineteenth century. So notable is that fact in its relation to the pianoforte accompaniments of vocal music, that it seems open to question whether, even in the presence of a thoroughly satisfactory sostenuto piano, much use would for many years be made of it for this particular purpose. The effects of repeated notes succeeding one another with increasing or decreasing force, and of arpeggio passages, have been so fully explored and made available in standard music of every grade, that necessarily the public taste has set itself to appreciate the pianoforte solo and the accompanied song exactly as they are written and performed. These are, after all, the highest forms of music which civilisation has yet enabled one or two performers to produce.

Yet, in regard to solo instrumentalisation, there is no doubt that a general hope exists for the discovery of a compromise between the piano and the organ or between the piano and the string band. Some inventors have aimed in the latter direction and others in the former; but no one has succeeded in really recommending his ideas to the public. Combined piano-violins and piano-organs have been shown at each of the great Exhibitions from the middle of the nineteenth century to its close. Several of these instruments have been devised and constructed with great ingenuity; and yet practically all of them have been received by the musical profession either with indifference or with positive ridicule.

The fact is that revolutionary sudden changes in musical instruments are rendered impossible owing to the near relationship which exists between each instrument and the general body of the music that is written for it. No one can divorce the two, which, as a factor in aesthetic progress, are really one and indivisible. Therefore, if any man invents a musical instrument which requires for its success the sudden evolution of a new race of composers writing for it, and a new type of educated public taste to hail these composers with delight, he is asking for a miracle and he will be disappointed.

What is wanted is not a new instrument, but an improved piano that shall at one and the same time correct, to some extent, the defects of the existing instrument, and leave still available all the brilliant effects which have been invented for it by a generation of musical geniuses. We want the sustained note, and yet we do not wish to lose the pretty turns and graceful devices by which the lack of it has been hidden, or atoned for, in the works of the masters. Therefore our sustained note must not be too aggressive. For a long time, indeed, it must partake of the very defects which it is intended ultimately to abolish.

In other words, we want to retain the percussion note with the dampers and with the loud and soft pedals, in fact, all the existing inventions for coaxing some of the notes to sustain themselves while others are cut short, as may be desired, and at the same time we have to add other and more effective means to assist the performer in achieving the same object.

The more or less complicated methods aiming at the prolongation of the residual effect of the percussion have apparently been very nearly exhausted. Some of the most modern pianos are really marvels of mechanical ingenuity applied to this purpose. We have now to look to something slightly resembling the principle of the violin or of the organ, in order to secure the additional sostenuto effect for which we are searching. Having to deal with a piano in practically its existing form, we obviously require to take special account of the fact that the note is begun by percussion, and that any attempt to bring a solid substance into contact with the wire while still vibrating, with the object of continuing its motion, is likely to produce more or less of a jarring effect.

The air-blast type of note-continuer for sostenuto effect therefore offers the most promising outlook for the improvement of the modern piano in the direction indicated. By directing a blast of air from a very thin nozzle on to the vibrating wire of a piano, the sound emitted may be very greatly intensified; and although naturally the decreasing amplitude of the vibration may in itself tend to create a diminuendo, yet it is possible to make up for this in some degree by causing the air-blast to increase in force, through the use of any suitable means, modified by an extra pedal as may be desired.

Delicate pianissimo effects, somewhat resembling those of the Eolian lyre, are produced by playing the notes with the air-blast alone, without the aid of percussion. But the louder sostenuto notes depend upon the added atmospheric resistance offered by a strong current of air to those movements of the wire which have been originally set up by percussion, and the fact that this resistance gives rise to a corresponding continuance of the motion. The prolongation of a note in this way is analogous to the continual swinging of an elastic switch in a stream of water, the current by its force producing a rhythmic movement.

When these Eolian effects, as applied to the pianoforte, have been carefully studied, many devices for controlling them will be brought forward. The main purpose, however, must be to connect the air-blast with the percussion apparatus in such a manner that, as soon as a key is depressed, the nozzle of that particular note in the air-blast is opened exactly at the same time that the wire is struck by the hammer, and it remains open as long as the note is held down. The movement of an extra pedal, however, has the effect of throwing the whole of the air-blast apparatus out of gear and reducing the piano to a percussion instrument, pure and simple.

It will be on the concert platform, no doubt, that this kind of improvement will find its first field of usefulness. Performers will require, in addition to their grand pianos, reservoirs of compressed air attachable by tubes to their instruments. In private houses hydraulic air-compressors will be found more convenient. When the piano has by some such means acquired the faculty of singing its notes, as well as of ringing them, its ascendency, as the finest instrument adapted to solo instrumentalism, will be assured.

The common domestic piano is rightly regarded by many people as being little better than an instrument of torture. One reason for this aversion is that, in the great majority of cases, the household instrument is not kept in tune. Probably it is not too much to say that the man who would invent a sound cottage piano which would remain in tune would do more for the improvement of the national taste in music than the largest and finest orchestra ever assembled. The constantly vitiated sense of hearing, which is brought about by the continual jangle of notes just a fractional part of a tone out of tune, is responsible for much of the distaste for good music which prevails among the people. When the domestic instrument is but imperfectly tuned, it is natural that those pieces should be preferred which suffer least by reason of the imperfection, and these, it need hardly be remarked, generally belong to the class of music which must be rated as essentially inferior, if not vulgar.

The device of winding a string round a peg and twisting it up on the latter in order to obtain tension for a vibrating note is thousands of years old. It was the method by which tension was imparted to some of the earliest harps and lyres of which history is cognisant; and it is still to be found to-day in the most elaborate and costly grand piano, with but few alterations affecting its principle of action. The pianoforte of the future will be kept in tune by more exact and scientific methods, attaining a certain balance between the thickness of the wire and the tension placed upon it by means of springs and weights.

Besides the ravages of the badly-tuned piano, much suffering is inflicted by the barbarous habit of permitting a sounding instrument to be used for mere mechanical exercises. The taste of the pupil is vitiated, and the nerves of other inmates of the house are subjected to a source of constant irritation when long series of notes, arranged merely as muscular exercises, and some of them violating almost every rule of musical form, are ground out hour after hour like coffee from a coffee-mill. The inconsistency of subjecting the musical ear and taste of a boy or girl to this process, and then expecting the child to develop an innate taste for the delicacies of form in melody and of the beauty of harmony, is almost as bad as would be that of asking a Chinese victim of foot-binding to walk easily and gracefully.

The use of the digitorium for promoting the mechanical portion of a musical education by the training of the fingers has already, to some slight extent, obviated the evils complained of. But this instrument is, as yet, only in its rudimentary stage of development. The dumb notes of the keyboard ought to be capable of emitting sounds by way of notice to the operator, in order to show when the rules have been broken. Thus, for instance, the impact caused by putting a key down should have the effect of driving a small weight upwards in the direction of a metal bar, the distance of which can be adjusted. Another bar, at a lower level, is also approached by a second weight, and the perfect degree of evenness in the touch is indicated by the fact that the lower bar should be made to emit a faint sound with every note, but the higher one not at all. The closer the bars the more difficult is the exercise, and remarkable evenness of touch can be acquired by a progressive training with such an instrument.

The organ has been wonderfully improved during the nineteenth century. Yet the decline of its popularity in comparison with the pianoforte may be accounted for on very rational grounds. While ardent organists still claim that the organ is the "King of Instruments" the public generally entertain a feeling that it is a deposed king. It remains for the organ-builders of the twentieth century to attack the problem of curing its defects by methods going more directly to the root of the difficulty than any hitherto attempted.

As contrasted with the pianoforte, the organ is extremely deficient in that power which the conductor of an orchestra loves to exercise—facility in accentuating and in subduing at will the work of each individual performer. For all practical purposes the ten fingers of a piano-player are the ten players in an orchestra; and, according to the force with which each finger strikes the note, is the prominence given to its effects. An air or a motif may be brought out with emphasis by one set of fingers, while the others are playing an accompaniment with all sorts of delicate gradations of softness and emphasis.

By multiplying the manuals, the organ-builder has endeavoured, with a certain degree of success, to make up for the unfortunate fact that the performer on his instrument possesses no similar facility in making it speak louder when he submits the note to extra pressure. One hand may be playing an air on one manual, while the second is engaged in the accompaniment on another; and the former may be connected with a louder stop, or with one of a more penetrating quality than the latter.

This device, together with an elaborate arrangement of swells and pedal-notes, has greatly enlarged the capacity of the organ for producing those choral effects which mainly depend upon gradations of volume. Yet the whole system, elaborate as it is, offers but a poor substitute for the marvellous range of individuality that may be expressed on the notes of the piano by instantaneous changes in the values ascribed to single notes. By the same action of his finger the pianist not only makes the note, but also gives its value; while the method of the organist is to neglect the element of finger-pressure and to rely upon other methods for imparting emphasis or softness to his work.

An organ that shall emit a louder or softer note, according to the force with which the key on the manual is depressed, will no doubt be one of the musical instruments of the twentieth century. Whether each key will be fitted with a resisting spring, or whether the lever will be constructed in such a way as to throw a weight to a higher or lower grade of position, according to the force with which it is struck, is a question which will depend upon the results of experiment. But the latter method is more in consonance with the conditions which have given to the piano its wonderful versatility, and it therefore seems the more probable solution of the two. Upon the vigour of the finger's impact will depend the height to which a valve is thrown, and this will determine the speed and volume of the air which is liberated to rush into the pipe and make the note.

The nineteenth century orchestra is a fearfully and wonderfully constructed agglomeration of ancient and modern instruments. Its merits are attested by the fine musical sense of the most experienced conductors, whose aim it has been so to balance the different instruments as to produce a tastefully-blended effect, while at the same time providing for solos and also for the rendering of parts in which a small number of performers may contribute to the unfolding of the composer's ideas. The orchestra cannot therefore be examined or discussed from a mechanical point of view, however much some of the instruments of which it is composed may be thought capable of improvement.

But the position of the conductor himself in the front of an orchestra is, from a purely artistic standpoint, highly anomalous. It is as if the prompter at the performance of a drama were to be seen taking the most conspicuous part and mixing among the actors upon the stage. If an orchestral piece be well played without the visible presence of a conductor, the sense of correct time reaches the audience naturally through the music itself; and any sort of gesticulations intended to mark it are under these conditions regarded as being out of place.

The foremost orchestral conductors of the day are evidently impressed with this unfitness of the mechanical marking of time by the wild waving of a stick or swaying of the body; and accordingly, however much they exert themselves at the rehearsal, they purposely subdue their motions during a public performance. The time is not far distant when the object of the conductor will be to guide his band without permitting his promptings to be perceived in any way by the audience.

For this purpose an "electric beat-indicator" will prove useful. Various proposals for its application have been put forward, and for different purposes several of them are obviously feasible. For instance, in one system the conductor sits in a place hidden from the audience and beats time on an electric contact-maker, which admits of his sending a special message to any particular performer whenever he desires to do so. The signal which marks the time may be given to each performer, either visually by a beater concealed within a small bell-shaped cavity affixed to his desk or to his electric light; or it may be conveyed by the sense of touch through a mechanical beater within a small metal weight placed on the floor and upon which he sets one of his feet.

The electric time-beater in the latter system thus taps the measure gently on the sole of the performer's foot, and special signals, as may be arranged, are sent to him by preconcerted combinations of taps. The absence of any distraction from the music itself will soon be gratefully felt by audiences, and the playing of a symphony in the twentieth century, in which the whole orchestra moves sympathetically in obedience to the "nerve-waves" of the electric current, will be the highest possible presentment of the musical art.



CHAPTER XIII.

ART AND NEWS.

The production of pictures for the million will be practically the highest achievement of the graphic art in the twentieth century. Many eminent painters do not at all relish the prospect, being strongly of opinion that when every branch of art becomes popular it will be vulgarised. This notion arises from a fallacy which has affected ideas during the nineteenth century in many matters besides art, the mistake of supposing that vulgar people all belong to one grade of society.

Yet every one who knows modern England, for instance, is perfectly aware that the highest standard of taste is only to be found in the elect of all classes of society. After the experience of the eighteenth century, surely it ought to have been recognised that the "upper ten thousand," when left to develop vulgarity in its true essence, can attain to a degree of perfection hardly possible in any other social grade. Is there in the whole range of pictorial art anything more irredeemably vulgar than a "State Portrait" by Sir Thomas Lawrence or one of his imitators?

It was under the prompting of a dread of the process of popularising art that so many eminent painters of the nineteenth century protested against the fashion set by Sir J. E. Millais when he sold such pictures as "Cherry Ripe" and "Bubbles," knowing they were intended for reproduction in very large numbers by mechanical means. From a somewhat similar motive a few of the leading artists of the nineteenth century for a time stood aloof from the movement for familiarising the people with at least the form, if not the colouring, of each notable picture of the year. From small and very unpretentious beginnings, the published pictorial notes of the Royal Academy and other exhibitions of the year have risen to most imposing proportions; and already there is some talk of attempting a few of the best from each year's production in colours.

Half-tone zinco and similar processes have brought down the expenses entailed by reproductions in colour-work, so as to render an undertaking of this kind much more feasible than it was in the middle of the last half-century. "Cherry Ripe" cost five thousand pounds to reproduce, by the laborious processes of printing not only each colour, but almost every different shade of each colour from a different surface.

In the "three-colour-zinco" process of reproduction only three printings are required, each colour with all its delicate gradations of shade being fully provided for by a single engraved block. When machines of great precision have been finally perfected for admitting of the successive blocks being printed from on paper run from the reel without any handling, a revolution will be brought about not only in artistic printing, but even in the conditions of studio work upon which the artist depends for success.

First, the pictorial notes of the year will be brought out in colour; and as competition for the right of reproduction increases, the artists who have painted the most suitable and most popular pictures will find that they can get more remuneration for copyright than they can for the pictures themselves. This has already been the case in regard to a very limited number of pictures; but the exception of the past will be the rule of the future, at least as regards those pictures which possess any special merits at all.

More thought will therefore be required as the motive or basis of each subject; and historical pictures will come more into favour, the affected simplicity and mental emptiness of the plein air school being discarded in favour of a style which shall speak more directly to the people, and stir more deeply both their mental and their emotional natures.

The artist and the printer must then confer. They can no longer afford to work in the future with such disregard of each other's ideas and methods as they have done in the past. It was at one time the custom among painters almost to despise the "black-and-white man" who drew for the Press in any shape or form; but that piece of affectation has nearly been destroyed by the general ridicule with which it is now received, and by the knowledge that there are already, at the end of the nineteenth century, just as many men of talent working by methods suitable for reproduction, as there are painters who confine their attention to palette, canvas and brush.

The printer will now advance a step further, and will invoke the services of the painter himself, even prescribing certain methods by which the Press may be enabled to reproduce the work of the artist more faithfully than would otherwise be possible.

Transparency painting will no doubt be one of these methods. The artist will paint on a set of sheets of transparent celluloid or glass, mounted in frames of wood and hinged so that they can, for purposes of observation, be put aside and yet brought back to their original positions quite accurately. Each different transparent sheet will be intended for one pure colour, the only pigments used being of the most transparent description obtainable.

The picture may thus be built up by successive additions and alterations, not all put upon one surface, but constituting a number of "monochromes," superimposed one upon the other. When finished, each of these one-colour transparencies can then be reproduced by photo-mechanical means for multi-colour printing in the press.

By what are known as the photographic "interruption" processes, a kind of converse method has achieved a certain degree of success. A landscape or a picture is photographed several times from exactly the same position, but on each occasion it is taken through a screen of a different coloured glass, which is intended for the purpose of intercepting all the rays of light, except those of one particular tint. Coloured prints in transparent gelatine or other suitable medium are then made from the various negatives, each in its appropriate tint; and when all are placed together and viewed through transmitted light, the effect of the picture, with all its colours combined, is fairly well produced. More serviceable from the artistic point of view will be the method according to which the artist makes his picture by transmitted light, but the finished printed product is seen on paper, because this latter lends itself to the finest work of the artistic printer.

The principal branch of the work of the photographer must continue to be portraiture. He cannot greatly reduce the cost of getting a really good negative, because so much hand-labour is required for the task of "retouching"; but he can give, perhaps, a hundred prints for the price which he now charges for a dozen, and make money by the enterprise. It has already been proved that there is no necessity for using expensive salts of gold, silver or platinum in order to secure the most artistic prints; and, as a matter of fact, some of the finest art work in the photography of the past quarter of a century has been accomplished with the cheapest of materials, such as gelatine, glue and lampblack.

Pigmented gelatine is, without doubt, the coming medium for photographic prints, and the methods of making them must approximate more and more closely to those of the typographic printer. By producing a "photo-relief" in gelatine—sensitised with bichromate of potash, and afterwards exposed first to the sun and then to the action of water—an impression in plastic material can be secured, from which, with the use of warm, thin, pigmented gelatine, a hundred copies or more can be printed off in a few minutes.

The very general introduction of such a process has naturally been delayed owing to the extra trouble involved in the first methods which were suggested for applying it, and also, no doubt, on account of the recent fashion for platinotype and bromide of silver prints. But as soon as more convenient details for the making of pigmented gelatine prints have been elaborated, the cheapness of the material and the wonderful variety of the art shades and tints in which photographs can be executed will give the gelatine processes an advantage in the competition which it will be hopeless for other methods to challenge.

The daily newspapers of a few years hence will be vividly illustrated with photographic pictures of the personages and the events of the day. The gelatine photo-relief, already alluded to, will no doubt afford the basis of the principal processes by which this will be effected. Hitherto the chief drawback has been the difficulty of imparting a suitable grain to the printing blocks made from these reliefs; but this has been practically overcome by the use of sheets of metallic foil previously impressed with the form of a finely-engraved tint-block. The actual printing surface, of course, consists of an electrotype or stereotype taken from this metallic-grained photographic face.

For "high-art" printing on fine paper with the more expensive kinds of ink, the half-tone zinco processes will doubtless maintain their supremacy and gradually diminish the area within which lithographic printing is required. In the case of newspaper work, however, where haste in getting ready for the press is necessarily the prime consideration, the flat and very slightly-indented surface of the zinco block is found to be unsuited to the requirements. Flat blocks, which require careful "overlaying" on the machine, waste too much time for daily news work. Without going into technical details it may be surmised in general terms that in the near future almost every newspaper will contain, each day, one or more photo-illustrations of events of the previous day or of the news which has come to hand from a distance.

Type-setting by hand is, for newspaper purposes, being so rapidly superseded, that only in the smaller towns and villages can it remain for even a few years longer. But in the machines by which this revolution has been effected, finality has been by no means reached. Every line of matter which appears in any modern daily newspaper has to pass through two processes of stereotyping before it makes a beginning to effect its final work of printing upon paper.

First, there is the stereotyping or casting of the line in its position in the type-setting machine after the matrices have been ranged in position by the application of the fingers to the various keys; and, secondly, when all the lines have been placed together to make a page, it is necessary to take an impression of them upon papier mache, or what is technically called "flong," and then to dry it and make the full cast from it curved and ready for placing on the cylinder of the printing machine. The delay occasioned by the need for drying the wet flong is such a serious matter—particularly to evening newspapers requiring many editions during the afternoon—that several dry methods have been tried with greater or less success.

But there is really no need for more than one casting process. In the twentieth century machine the matrices will be replaced by permanent type from which, when ranged in the line, an impression will be made by hard pressure on a small bar of soft metal or plastic material. All the impressed bars having been set together in a casting box having the necessary curvature, the final stereo plate for printing from will be taken at once by pouring melted metal on the combined bars.

An appreciable saving, both in time and in money, will also be effected by applying the principle of the perforated strip of paper or cardboard to the purpose of operating the machine by which the necessary letters are caused to range themselves in the required order. Machines similar to typewriters will be employed for perforating the strips of paper and for printing, at the same time, in ordinary letters the matter just as if it were being typewritten.

The corrections can then be made by cutting off those pieces of the strips which are wrong and inserting corrected pieces in their places. No initial "justification" to the space required to make a line is needed in this system. The strips, however, are put through the setting machine, and, as they make the reading matter by the impression of bars as already described, they are divided into lines automatically.

Large numbers of newspapers will in future be sold from "penny-in-the-slot" machines. The system to be adopted for this particular purpose will doubtless differ in some important respects from that which has been successful in the vending of small articles such as sweetmeats and cigarettes. The newspapers may be hung on light bars within the machine, these being supported at the end by a carefully-adjusted cross piece, which, on the insertion of a penny in the slot, moves just sufficiently to permit the end of one bar with its newspaper to drop, and to precipitate the latter on to a table forming the front of the machine. When the full complement of newspapers has been exhausted the slot is automatically closed.

Some of the newspapers of the twentieth century will be given away gratis, and will be, for the most part, owned by the principal advertisers. This is the direction in which journalistic property is now tending, and at any juncture steps might be taken, in one or other of the great centres of newspaper enterprise, which would precipitate the ultimate movement. Hardly any one who buys a half-penny paper to-day imagines for a moment that there is any actual profit on the article.

It is understood on all hands that the advertisers keep the newspapers going and that the arrangement is mutually beneficial. Not that either party can dictate to the other in matters outside of its own province. The effect is simply to permit the great public to purchase its news practically for the price of the paper and ink on which it is conveyed; the condition being that the said public will permit its eyes to be greeted with certain announcements placed in juxtaposition to the news and comments.

Sooner or later, therefore, the idea will occur to some of the leading advertisers to form a syndicate and give to the people a small broadsheet containing briefly the daily narrative. The ponderous newspapers of the latter end of the nineteenth century—filled full of enough of linotype matter to occupy more than the whole day of the subscriber in their perusal—will be to a large extent dispensed with; and the new art of journalism will consist in saying things as briefly—not as lengthily—as possible.



CHAPTER XIV.

INVENTION AND COLLECTIVISM.

The ownership of machinery and of all the varied appliances in the evolution of which inventive genius is exercised is a matter which, strictly speaking, does not belong to the domain of this work. Nevertheless, in endeavouring to forecast the progress of invention during the twentieth century, it is necessary to take count of the risks involved in the inauguration of any public and social economical systems which might tend to stifle freedom of thought and to discourage the efforts of those who have suggestions of industrial improvements to make.

It is plain that those economic forces which prevent the inventor from having his ideas tested must to that extent retard the progress of industrial improvement. Thousands of men, who imagine that they possess the inventive talent in a highly developed degree, are either crack-brained enthusiasts or else utterly unpractical men whose services would never be worth anything at all in the work of attacking difficult mechanical problems. It is in the task of discriminating between this class and the true inventors that many industrial organizers fail. Any economic system which offers inducements to the directors of industrial enterprises to shirk the onerous, and at times very irksome, duty of sifting out the good from the bad must stand condemned not only on account of its wastefulness, but by reason of its baneful effects in the discouragement of inventive genius.

Considerations of this kind lead to the conclusion that during the twentieth century the spread of collectivist or socialistic ideas, and the adoption of methods of State and municipal control of production and transport may have an important bearing upon the progress of civilisation through the adoption of new inventions. Many thinking men and women of the present generation are inclined to believe the twentieth century invention par excellence will be the bringing of all the machinery of production, transport and exchange under the official control of persons appointed by the State or by the municipality, and therefore amenable to the vote of the people. Projects of collectivism are in the air, and high hopes are entertained that the twentieth century will be far more distinctively marked by the revolution which it will witness in the social and industrial organisation of the people than in the improvements effected in the mechanical and other means for extending man's powers over natural forces.

The average official naturally wishes to retain his billet. That is the main motive which governs nearly all his official acts; and in the treatment which he usually accords to the inventor he shows this anxiety perhaps more clearly than in any other class of the actions of his administration. He wants to make no mistakes, but whether he ever scores a distinct and decided success is comparatively a matter of indifference to him. So long as he does not give a handle to his enemies to be used against him, he is fairly contented to go on from year to year in a humdrum style.

Even a man of fine feeling and progressive ideas soon experiences the numbing effects of the routine life after he has been a few years in office. He knows that he will be judged rather on the negative than on the positive principle, that is to say, for the things which it is accounted he ought not to have done rather than for the more enterprising good things which it is admitted he may have done.