m*- w - Clpdigital.org

TODAY THE WHOLE INDUSTRIAL LIFE OF FLORENCE. LARDERELLO. LEGHORN,
RECEIVING THE IMPETUS OF RENEWED LIFE FROM THE SUPER-
T H R E F hundred years ago the
flames which leaped about the
mouth of Vesuvius were emblematic
of the flaming brimstone
through which sinners
might expect to pass on their painful
way to Paradise. The center of the
earth with its molten lakes and superheated
steam chambers was the Hades
people knew and feared. The boiling of
geysers of Iceland were merely the
safety valves for the boilers of Satan's
extensive Turkish bath.
Had a practical inventor of that day
suggested harnessing one of these
geysers to do man's work, or the piping
of power away from a volcano, the
fanciful one would have been burned to
the stake as a sorcerer.
Today, however, a scientific sorcerer,
unhampered by superstitions of this kind,
has tackled and solved the problem of
utilizing the vast resources of heat that
are present in the bowels of the earth.
T lis home city, Florence, Italy, draws
734
power for its munitions factories by clay
and for lighting purposes by night from
a real inferno, raging, blazing and boiling
beneath the thin crust of ea^th on
which Florence stands.
Great jets of superheated steam issuing
from that cauldron supply power to
drive a plant of 15,000 horsepower,
which generates electricity sent along
overhead conductors to Florence, Larderello,
Leghorn, Volterra, Grosseto, and
other neighboring towns in the prosperous
industrial section of Central Tuscany.
From the standpoint of engineering
science this is an epochal achievement,
eclipsing the dreams of the greatest
scientific thinkers of this age. It offers
to mankind, for immediate use, a concealed
source of power sufficient to do
the work now done by artificially generated
power. And fortunately, it comes
at a time when we are within sight of the
exhaustion of our coal and other fuel
supplies—the catastrophe which alarni-