Author: Jelte

“But the new applications of coal are of an unlimited character. In the command of force, molecular and mechanical, we have the key to all the infinite varieties of change in place or kind of which nature is capable. No chemical or mechanical operation, perhaps, is quite impossible to us, and invention consists in discovering those which are useful and commercially practicable… For once it would seem as if in fuel, as the source of universal power, we had found an unlimited means of multiplying our command over nature. But alas no! The coal is itself limited in quantity; not absolutely, as regards us, but so that each year we gain our supplies with some increase of difficulty.” – Jevons, W.S. (1865), ‘The Coal Question: An Inquiry concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of our Coal‐Mines’, § 9, §§ 15.