50 YEARS AGO

“Energy requirements of Europe” — The report on Europe's future needs of energy recently issued by the Organization for European Economic Co-operation contains a most interesting examination of the position... No doubt in time the competitive position of the coal industry may be affected, for after 1975 nuclear energy is expected to free the coal burnt in thermal power stations to an increasing extent... The share of oil in supplying the energy needs of Western Europe must also rise rapidly... The world's reserves of oil will be adequate for this requirement, but large investments must be made by the oil companies in Western Europe as well as abroad... A potent factor in reducing the menacing gap between indigenous production and the overall requirements of energy resides in the still existing possibilities of saving energy at every stage, from its winning and conversion... to its final utilization in industry and in the home.

From Nature 28 July 1956.

100 YEARS AGO

“With wires and without” — Of the numerous achievements of which the electrical engineer can boast, telegraphy is the one of which he has greatest reason to be proud. If we combine with telegraphy the sister subject of telephony, there can be little doubt but that by the application of these two sciences he has effected a greater revolution in human affairs than by all successes in the way of heavy engineering. He may “electrify” our railways, especially the suburban lines, to the great advantage of both the travelling public and the shareholder, but he is still only doing for us in another way what the mechanical engineer has already accomplished. He may harness great waterfalls and transmit their power over hundreds of miles to localities at which it may be more easily utilised, but he is only saving Mahomet the trouble of going to the mountain... But with telegraphy he has given us something entirely new—an art which, while actually annihilating distance, virtually annihilates time.

From Nature 26 July 1906.