Nature's Secrets — Possibilities of Solar Power

1920

Man gets to feeling pretty smart at times, but nature still has a great deal to teach him if she only would, says the Ohio State Journal. A scientist in the employ of the National Electric Lamp Association at its great plant in Cleveland devoted the entire season last year to studying the lightning bug in the effort to find out how that interesting creature makes light without heat. He failed to discover the secret, as had many another scientist before him.

The potential power which falls on the decks of a battleship in the sunshine of an August day, if it could be harnessed and utilized, would drive the ship vastly faster and farther in a day's journey than its great engines can drive it. The problem of harnessing presents, thus far, the insurmountable difficulty. When that is solved, as probably it will be someday, people will heat their houses with stored sunshine and gas shortages and coal strikes will be matters of perfect indifference.

Nature is jealous of her secrets, but she has grudgingly given up some and she will give up more as time goes on for she cannot resist forever the blandishments of the endless race of wooers whose hearts and intellects are concentrated upon finding out what else she knows.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, March 20, 1920, p. 6.