Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/129

 long time not likely to serve any greater mechanical purpose than that of furnishing a highly portable apparatus by which great power can be developed for a short time at any required place. It is easy to believe that it could not be otherwise employed with any economy, even when discovery has greatly simplified the now difficult process of liquefaction. But in regard to this matter, and to almost every other mechanical and engineering improvement suggested in the present work, it is of the first importance to remember that the conditions in which the work of the world a hundred years hence will be done are certain to differ very greatly from anything we know to-day; and that procedures at present not merely out of proportion, but in themselves actually chimerical, will become perfectly workable in the new circumstances of another century. No doubt the problems at present involved make many of the developments herein suggested almost laughable to those who examine the subject without imagination. But what could have been thought of a man who, when Oersted discovered the influence of a battery current on the compass needle, suggested that the discovery might, in much less than a hundred years, be practically developed in such unforeseen ways as to produce locomotive machines capable of carrying vast weight at a speed of perhaps a hundred