Amazing Stories, August 1927 — page 74: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

488 sensed that vast expanse of nearby ocean over which the gale was driving. And I asked: “You make it out of ocean water?” “Yes, out of ocean water,” he replied. EB said nothing more at the time. Subse- quently, when through our general conversa- tions I had got an idea of the nature of his investi- gations, he was less reserved. I knew then that he had delved very profoundly into the nature of chemical reactions, particularly those of solubility. He had the sort of mind that sees things always from the imaginative viewpoint, that never allows . imagination to become smothered beneath technical and mathematical detail. He was able to arrive at an actual pictwre of molecular processes, and for this reason he was able to make his tremendous discoveries. One day, drawing back the curtain of his labora- tory, he picked up a beaker, filled it with water, and asked me to drop some table salt into it. When 1. had done so, he said: “That wasn’t much trouble, was it? But what a lot of trouble to get that salt back again—I mean by evaporation, There should be an easier way, shouldn’t there?” I replied I thought there should be. Schirman- hever now placed a clean sheet of white paper on the bench. On the paper he put a handful of sand that he had picked up outside. With the sand he mixed up several pinches of iron filings. “Now,” he asked, “do you know any easy way of getting those filings back again?” “Well,” I said, “if you had a magnet—”’ “Hxactly!”, He produced one, and drew the filings out of the sand, scraping them off the mag- net into a little separate pile. Then he looked at me. ‘By my process I can draw salts out of water just as easily as that magnet draws iron filings out of the sand. Let’s say I’ve invented a chemical magnet.” He smiled to himself, and added, ‘‘That’s an in- accurate way of putting it, of course, but it gives the imagination something to feed on, which is the main thing. What I have devised is a way of get- ting salts out of water without having to use any energy. No heat under boilers, no electric current. As simple as that,” he snapped his fingers. ‘And why shouldn’t it be easy? There’s very little energy change when most salts are dissolved in water. In fact, what energy change there is is usually to the good—the water is cooled off a little by the addi- tion of the salt, so that there should be energy given out, not taken in, when you get.the salt back —and there is.” He glanced at one corner of his laboratory where there stood a queer closet-like arrangement with pipes leading in and out—evidently a casing around some concealed apparatus. “Want to see it work?” he asked. I nodded. I had noticed that corner of the lab- oratory before, and half-guessed its significance. But this was the first time Schirmanhever had of- fered any information about it. Now he picked up ¢ a ie of pea-water, and poured it into a lz interior he came around to the front of the casing and turned a valve. A moment later a bucket he had placed on the floor began filling up. Schirman- hever, lifting the bucket so that the water would flow noiselessly down the side, motioned to me to listen. I heard in the interior of the apparatus a soft, continuous sound similar to that which might be made by tiny grains of something slipping down a chute. When the flow of water had stopped, the bucket being nearly full, Schirmanhever lifted a dipperful of it up to my lips—it was as fresh pure water as I have ever tasted. At the same moment he held up for my inspection a miniature bin that he had drawn out of the interior of his apparatus; its floor was covered with several inches of a whit- ish salt. “Now,” he said, pouring the contents of the little bin into the bucket of fresh water, ‘‘you see before you the pailful of sea-water again.” The whole process had taken so short a time— scarcely more than a couple of minutes—and its operation had been so noiseless, no sound coming from the interior of the machine except that little whispering noise made by the settling salt, that I could only stand amazed. “You mean to say,” I exclaimed, “that that water I drank’”—and I looked at what remained in the dipper—“‘was some of the sea-water—and that that salt you showed me——” “Tt was,” answered Schirmanhever. ‘The very same sea-water. My apparatus in here,” he tapped the wooden casing, “had simply divided it into its two components—the pure water and the dissolved salts.” “And it got it all out in that short time?” Schirmanhever smiled at the incredulity in my face. Then he frowned. “Yes, it got it all out, and that’s my trouble. That watet you tasted was pure as rain water. But my process won’t select yet. It pulls salts and suspended matter out in one lot. The hardest part of my job—that of developing selective attraction for the various chemicals in so- lution, inthe same way you might have different magnets for iron, copper, silver, gold and so on,— is still before me. Indeed, I don’t know whether Pll ever be able to solve that problem. And if I don’t—’ His brilliant, feverish eyes stared straight into mine, and I read in them the end of the sentence—that if he didn’t, all the knowledge he had acquired thus far would die with him. This was the thing that astounded me. Once I realized Schirmanhever’s invention actually would extract salts from solution with such ease, it seemed to me the most marvellous scientific achieve- ment of the century. If he stopped at this point, he had only to commercialize his process to make an immense fortune for himself. But Schirmanhever seemed to think he had accomplished nothing as yet. His whole being was wrapped up in making the process the entirely perfect thing he had dreamed it. “There!” he would exclaim, gesturing dramatic ally | towards the eaenes of ocean, “Just chad