Science: Power Men

Into Berlin’s ornate, severely modern Kroll Opera House one day last week filed 4,000 delegates to the Second International Power Conference—heirs of the electric age inaugurated by Michael Faraday (see above). Object: to discuss means of selling housewives such power users as vacuum cleaners, washing machines, egg beaters; also methods of generating and distributing power.

After hearing a dozen papers during the morning session they gathered in the afternoon for a pièce de résistance—Dr. Albert Einstein on “Space, Field and Ether Problems in Physics.”

As the guest of honor walked across the stage to have his first try at mass entertainment he smiled sheepishly, uncomfortably. As he mounted the rostrum a score of cameramen moved ominously toward him in orthodox U. S. murder-trial fashion, started grinding. Blinking helplessly Dr. Einstein stood in the flood lights, fidgeted nervously. Pleadingly he turned to President Oskar von Miller of the Conference and said: “This is unbearable.” Quickly attendants routed the cameramen, who by this time had come within six feet of their subject. Rid of his tormentors Dr. Einstein launched into a 40-minute repetition of the speech he had made a fortnight prior at University College, Nottingham, England (TIME, June 16). The men of Power listened intently, smiled politely, scratched their polls.

At next day’s meeting U. S. Ambassador Frederick Moseley Sackett threw the Power men into a ferment by discussing the fact that consumers pay 15 times the manufacturing price of power and urging Science to study and lower distribution costs for the good of the industry, (see p. 17).