Invention

of France, Francis II was Emperor of Germany, Frederick William III was King of Prussia, Ale

was clearly in evidence. The Feudal System had entirely vanished, the sway of great and powerful sovereigns had taken the place in Europe of the ar

early every European nation. The war had started in France, where the tremendous intellectual movement had aroused the

ior to the bow and arrow. It had to be loaded slowly at the muzzle; and the powder was so non-uniform and in other ways inferior, that the gun's range was short and its accuracy slight. Even the artillery that Bonaparte used so skillfully was crude and ineffective, according to the standards of today. The cavalry was not very different from the cavalr

that were later to make the difference, had not yet got to work. It was the power of steam that was to transport men and materials across vast oceans and across great continents at high speed, and place in the hands of every people the natural fruits and the foods and the raw materials and the manufactured appliances of other lands; it was the subtle influence of electricity

as not yet in general use. Electricity was a little behind steam; and though Franklin and the others had proved that it possessed vast possibilities of

reece or Elizabethan England-to state the truth politely; and no such poet lived as Homer, Shakespeare or John Milton. It seems to be a characteristic of literature, and of all the fine arts as well, that each great product is solely a product of one human mind, and not the product of the combined work of many minds. To the inven

ory is a record of such of the doings of men as have had influence at the time, or in the future. Of these doings, the agency that has had the most obvious influence is war, and next to war is invention. War, next after disease, has caused the most suffering the world knows of; but out of the suffering have emerged the great nations without which mo

his statement must not be accepted without reservations of course; for the reason that some poems, some works of fiction, and some paintings and (especially) some musical compositions have tended to strengthen character, and even to stimulate the m

d; or that he regards the influence of literature and the fine arts as being detrimental to the race. On the contrary, he regards them as being valuable

been those who have brought into existence those machines and books and projects of all kinds that have determined the kind of machine of civilization that has now been produ

elligence and courage, in the countless tasks entailed in maintaining the machine in good repair, in keeping it running smoothly, and in receiving with open minds and helping hands each new improvement as it came along. And it was not only in welcoming real improvements, but in keeping out novelties which seemed to be improvements but were not improvements that the work of what may be called the operators

emy. Originally, and in all the long ages of its infancy, the investigations of the experimenters were carried on mainly to discover new remedies in medicine, or to learn methods to transmute base metals into precious metals; though there was a considerable degree also of pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. As a result of the investigations, many startling facts were developed, and many discoveries were made; but, for the reason that the inve

confidently and assuredly thereafter, instead of wandering in a maze. Lavoisier gave chemistry a mathematical basis to start from, and sure beacon lights to guide it; and though many changes in its theory have been made from time to time, they have been due

ped to the point permitting it, and men skilled in exact measurements had been brought up by practice in physical researches. Lavoisier himself had served a long apprenticeship, and his earliest claim to fame was his mathematical researches on heat, embodied in an essay, written in connection with Laplace, and published in 1784. Eve

stry hovered in the dim twilight of speculation, guess-work and even superstition, until Lavoisier br

stopped. If he had stopped then, his knowledge would have remained locked inside of his own mind, useless. The good work that Lavoisier actually did was in actually producing an invention; i

and reactions between material objects that physics studies; and they brought him to the conclusion that there are certain substances or elements which combine together to form compounds that are wholly different from each of the elements (oxygen and hydrogen, for instance, combining to form water); and that those elements are made up of units absolutely indivisible, which combine with each other in absolutely exact proportions. The units he called atoms. He built up a theory wonderfully convincing and coherent, that explained virt

proportions. Speculation on all these points had been rife for many years, but it had not produced the invention of any workable law or even theory. Similarly, many men later speculated on the possibility of devising an electrical instrument that

each other so quickly that only the final stage itself is noted. But the greatest acts, from which great results have followed, have begun with the conception of a picture not of an ordinary kind, such as a great campaign, a new machine, a novel theory, a book, painting, statue or edifice:-then a long proce

to mankind to use. Dalton did similarly. This does not mean that their work was not improved upon thereafter, or tha

ss that the warmth of clothing was because of the air entangled in its fibers; he investigated the radiation, conduction and convection of heat, analyzed the ways in which heat could be economized, and invented a calorimeter for testing the heat-giving value of different fuels. In 1798 he had noted the fact that heat was developed when cannon were being bored. He immediately conceived the idea that the heat developed was related to the amount of work expended driving the boring tool, and invented a means of measuring it. This consisted simply of a blunt bor

us Ohm's Law, that the strength of an electric current in any circuit is equal to the difference in poten

aos in the little but super-important world, in which physicists and chemists were trying to solve the riddles that the utilization of electric currents presented. It gave them a basis from which to s

e. The usual way of getting light was with the flint and steel and tinder-box,-a most inconvenient contrivance. It was quit

nt in England for "an improved application of air to produce heat in fires, forges and furnaces," in which he proposed to pass a current of heated air through the burning fuel. His invention met with o

onceiving the idea of getting the locomotive, and then in actually getting it, and then putting it to work. In the following year Braithwaite and Ericsson in London brought out the first portable fire-engine. There was a great deal of invention of

nstantaneous magnetic effect is felt in the vicinity; and that this magnetic effect will cause an instantaneous current in any closed conducting circuit that may be near. Faraday also discovered that a similar instantaneou

ill set up instantaneous currents that tend to oppose the increase or decrease. Thus, while Faraday is credited with the discovery of electro-magnetic induction, Henry is credited with the discovery o

d the more conspicuous part. With it began the endeavor to develop electric currents by the relative motion of coils o

ough its an?sthetic properties were known in general, and although the idea of using gases and vapors and medicines to deaden pain was many centuries old yet nevertheless, chloroform was not put to practical use until abou

er inventions, one is tempted to wonder why it had not been invented before; for the fact that electricity could be sent along a conductor and made to cause motion at the other end had been known since Guericke had demonstrated the fact in the closing years of the seventeenth cen

in succession in front of the coil, currents were induced that alternated in direction, twice in each revolution. If a man grasped two wires in the circuit he received a series of sharp electric shocks; but such effects as decomposing water that were produced by the continuous currents of Voltaic batteries could not be produced by these alternating currents. To secure such effects, Siemens and ot

and was considered more of a scientific toy than a machine of serious importance. Still, the probability was realized by many investigators that a new discovery or invention might be made

it is the men and the methods and the other things which are in evidence when some important occurrence happens, that are identified with it in the minds of people not only at the time, but afterward. An invention that may have cost its creator the toil and struggle of a lifet

vention which we cannot help associating in our minds with the acceleration which any material object gets, when continuously subjected to a uniform force

very quick and sure means of reversing its direction of motion, and of regulating the travel of the valve and the degree of expansion of the steam. In the following year came Stephenson's steam whistle; and in the year following (1834) came the McCormick reaper. Few inventions have had a greater or a more immediate effect on the trend of modern progress, which is to influence men to live in

nt out the influence of invention in making the world what it is today. Perhaps it would have been better if men had had no invention and had remained in a state of savagery. Some men say so sometimes; but even those men (or most of them) like to sit by a warm fire

nt discovery of carbolic acid. In 1835 Burden invented a horse-shoe machine. In 1836

t be detailed here. Daniell overcame this difficulty almost wholly by inventing a battery, in which there were two liquids instead of one, and the two liquids were in two separate compartments

is still the most brilliant illuminating gas we have, and is rivaled by the electri

t that the Machine must be made self-protective as far as possible; and that anything which increases the power of civilized man as against the savage, or barbarous, or semi-barbarous increases its power of self-protection. It is true that a savage can use a revolver, if he be instructed; but the more compli

thers now. The weight of testimony, however seems to be on the side of Ericsson; and as has been pointed out before, the question of the identity of the inventor is not important to our discussion. The first ocean steamship to

ribution to the permanency of the Machine. In the same year, Cooke and Wheatstone in England invented their famous "Needle Telegraph," in which a magnetic needle was made to deflect quickly to the right or left when one of two keys was

t, the art of hardening, or "vulcanizing," rubber by means of sulphur. This invention was a great boon to mankind, but not to Goodyear; for the jackals who lie in wait for great inventions eager to wrest unearned profit for themselves from the men wh

them. Later, he was able to obtain many copies, or "proofs," from one picture or negative. It seems that he did not publicly announce his invention till 1839. To it was given the name "calotype." In May of that year Mr. Mungo Ponton a

piano. In the same year, Selligne discovered a method of utilizing water-gas, made by decomposing water and producing a new illuminating agent that could be used by itself or in combination with coal gas. In the same year James Nasmyth in Scotland invented the steam hammer-a simple applia

n supplying power in order to do more work, however, but in supplying what may be called auxiliary physical agencies. In the player piano, the fingers are r

influence of the steam hammer stands out in enormous letters of steel. The piano seems to be in the same category as are literature and poetry and music in general: it serves to please. The steam-hammer,

ructors and engineers to produce the tremendous engineering structures that characterize today. The main element in the progress of the race has been its triumph over the forces of material Nature. This triumph has been gained by inventors, who conceived of certain methods and devices (clothing, for instance) by means of which materials provided by Nature could be utilized by man to protect himself against her attacks upon him-attacks by col

limbing the stairway to civilization, unless he were occasionally cheered on the way by a strain of music, or a beautiful painting, or a poem, or a brisk walk in northwest weather, or a gladdening glass of wine. It may be argued that these are the things that

to be, however, that the civilized man is, on the whole, happier than the savage; that civilization is preferable to savagery. It is the purpose of this book, moreover, merely to point

all machines; it is inherent in every machine, simply because the good working of every part is dependent on the good working of every other part. An organism is a machine of the highest order, and therefore possesses this characteristic of inter-dependability in its highest form. A club is not an organism, or even a m

ion, though it may not affect appreciably the savages of Australia. A strike in the coal mines affects every person in the United St

jured and even destroyed, by careless or ignorant handling. These facts are clearly realized by all engineering companies of all kinds; and the result has been that highly competent engineers have been trained to care for and handle their engines. There are no more highly competent men in any callings than are the engineers in every civilized country. One might declare without m

ernment to handle the men. It is also its office to direct their minds; because unless those minds view things correctly, the Machine of Government cannot work with smoothness. Now, men are inferior to machines in one important way:-men, as men, cannot be impro

e is any need for looking out for the integrity of the Machine as a whole. The closest approximation to it is a belated realization that the Bolshe

fter began to abuse it. For two hundred years thereafter, the Machine suffered from such abuse and neglect, that by the year 395, it had become so unwieldy, that it was divided into two parts, one administered from Rome and the other from Constantinople. The two parts soon became two separ

literature and art stopped. The marvelous inventions of the past were forgotten and disused. A condition of semi-barbarism passed into Europe, and continued for a period of five hundred years, to which the name Dark Ages has been aptly given. A feeble light began to glow about 800 A. D. as a result of the activities of Charlemagne, but it almos

jan's time is not nearly so strong; another fact is that the Roman Machine was destroyed because it had become ineffective through careless

existed. The structure of society was simple, homogeneous and strong. It was almost wholly military. It rested on force; but that force rested on reason, moderatio

of this condition can be clearly seen in the fact that every great war has set back the progress of civilization for a while in all civilized countries, even though in some ways it has advanced it. The World War just finished, for instance, shook the very foundations of society; and we do not yet know that it did n

me weaker. It had become weaker for the reason that the men in charge of it had not taken the proper care of it. They failed to take proper care of it, for the reason that they were not th

dingly efficient. But whether a government is autocratic or democratic, the degree of civilization must depend in the main on the people themselves. Even the power and genius of Charlemagne could not at once make Europe civilized; and even the power and bestiality of Commodus could not at once make Rome uncivilized. In eve

e, or they would not have remained Roman emperors. If the Roman people had been as strong individually and collectively as they were in the days of Octavius and Trajan, no such emperors a

g that has caused the deterioration of every other great people

s after cause, unless means be taken to see that men are trained to care for the Machine more carefully than they are trained now. In no country is there any serious effort made to train men to operate the Machine of Government, except those parts of the Machine that are called the army and the navy:-though some tremendous efforts are made in private life t

The Machine of today is much larger and heavier than the Roman. If it falls, as it may, the