In 1907, the Chicago Post observed:

“it is too soon to lament the horse. We have not yet come to the day when we must decide whether to pet him, as the dog, or eat him as the amiable cow. Our sentiment for the noble beast will remain, and with the heaviest work undertaken by insensitive strength his lost will probably be improved.”

[Source: The Electric Vehicle and the Burden of History]

In this chunkily high-minded description of the changing role of the horse in the face of motorization, we find the wonderful phrase “insensitive strength” standing in for motor vehicles. Insensitive here not meaning brutish or unable to enjoy a good cry, but in its first and now-obsolete meaning: inanimate. As always, The Oxford English Dictionary:

Not sensitive 1. Destitute of feeling or consciousness (in general); not sentient; inanimate. Obs.
1610 HEALEY St. Aug. Citie of God 471 Though man be not insensitive, yet this sence of his..is justly termed rather death then life.
a1694 TILLOTSON Serm. (1743) IX. clxxvi. 4110 This faculty is that which constitutes the difference between sensitive and insensitive creatures.
1713 DERHAM Phys.-Theol. IV. i. 85 Sensitive or insensitive Creatures.

Image: Alfred Fuhrman via the California State Library.

Harnessing nature is a little like harnessing God.

Or so the following article on the Reynolds Wave Machine would have us believe.

Written back in 1907, it has one of the most stupendously purple intros you’re every likely to see for a science and engineering story; it’s actually a bit like Wired circa 1994. I’ve transcribed it all below for your inspection. If written by, say, David Foster Wallace, it would be titled, “A Brief History of Western Technology.”

It reads like a green tech update to the Tower of Babel myth.  It’s quite brilliant, actually. (And note the similarity between the description of the broken wave machine and the system Pelamis, the leader in wave energy, created.

Booming and thundering and pounding the sands of the sea shore, the mighty waves of the ocean have puzzled and fascinated the mind of man since he first gazed wonderingly at their dark waters. To the uncouth savage, the dire might embodied in their all potent onrush seemed to speak of a powerful god whom it was necessary to propitiate; and he worshiped the strange power.

Later   on   civilization   denuded   the ogre   of   his   supernatural   surroundings, but the inanimate power that lurked in his bosom, ever ready to leap forth and devour the suspecting, filled the mind of the mariner with mingled dread and awe.

The theologian saw in the ceaseless, crashing, roaring, restless power of the wave the omnipotent might of the Deity itself, and its never-sleeping billows that crunched the swirling sands in their teeth breathed of his great strength.

WHAT THE INVENTOR SAW

The inventor, sitting at the seaside, watched with a vague sense of dissatisfaction the rolling rise and fall of the booming waters. The resistless advance of the waves as they ebbed and flowed seemed to speak to him of mighty powers as yet unharnessed, and of strength sufficient to move a world. In the dark shadows of the billows he gazed and long sought to wrest from their umbered waves the secret of harnessing that power. The gently rolling waters told him of a power which, bridled, would perform for the world all the labor at which man was toiling away the brief years of his existence. Small wonder that the inventor passed his days by the side of the incomprehensible sea, struggling with the mystery that seemed to baffle solution.

The rolling motion of the waves seemed to show him what direction his search must be prosecuted, and many years ago the first wave motor was devised. The instrument was floated on the surface of the water, and each successive undulation of the water added its quota to the power generated. But the first storm sufficed to show that this system was unsatisfactory. The floating machine was crunched to pieces by the force it was trying to harness, and a mass of shapeless wreckage floated to shore to warn the Inventor that the problem was not yet solved.

(When did newspapers stop using words like “propitiate” in their business stories?)

The entire several thousand word story can be found in situ here [pdf]. The quick summary is: welcome to 1907,  wave power is about to revolutionze the way that light, heat, and power are made. Two crazy brother inventors have discovered the key to tapping the motion of the ocean. It’s simple, “perfect in detail,” the “motor will not break,” and it “may revolutionize labor.”

“A superficial inspection of the new motor is scarcely sufficient to fully impress one with the tremendous significance of the new discovery,” writes the Herald. “The enormous value of such a motor is almost beyond the grasp of the mortal mind… With the power of the waves from Los Angeles to San Francisco harnessed, the inventors would have more power than the world could use; and electricity would become such a glut upon the market they could not give it away.”

An engineer from Huntington Beach, N.O. Harmon gives the machine his imprimatur, saying, “It would appear to me therefore that this motor will solve the wave power problem.” (You know, *the* wave power problem.)

And at the end of the article, we’re told (quite usefully) that the California Wave Motor company was being formed by “a large number” of area businessmen to commercialize the technology. Anyone know what happened to that company and the Los Angeles Wave Power and Electric Company, which sprung up around the same time, using a different technology? What was it that made these engineers and inventors and businesspeople think they were on the verge of a revolution?

Why’d it take until December 2007 for wave power to return to California as a commercial venture?