Transcriber’s notes:
Text pinted in italics in the original work has been transcribed as
_text_, bold text as =text=. Text printed in small capitals in the
original work has been transcribed in ALL-CAPITALS. Superscript texts
are transcribed as ^{text}.
More Transcriber’s notes have been added at the end of the text.
[Illustration: STEAM AND ELECTRICITY.
The 70,000 Horse-Power Station of the Metropolitan Street Railway, New
York.]
THE PROGRESS
OF
INVENTION
IN THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY
BY
EDWARD W. BYRN, A.M.
“Δός που στω, και την γην κινἡσω.”
(Give me where to stand, and I’ll move the earth.)
--_Archimedes._
MUNN & CO., PUBLISHERS
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN OFFICE
361 BROADWAY, NEW YORK
1900
COPYRIGHTED, 1900, BY MUNN & CO.
ENTERED AT STATIONER’S HALL
LONDON, ENGLAND
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Printed in the United States of America by
The Manufacturers’ and Publishers’ Printing Company,
New York City.
PREFACE.
For a work of such scope as this, the first word of the author should be
an apology for what is doubtless the too ambitious effort of a single
writer. A quarter of a century in the high tide of the arts and
sciences, an ardent interest in all things that make for scientific
progress, and the aid and encouragement of many friends in and about the
Patent Office, furnish the explanation. The work cannot claim the
authority of a text-book, the fullness of a history, nor the exactness
of a technical treatise. It is simply a cursory view of the century in
the field of invention, intended to present the broader bird’s-eye view
of progress achieved. In substantiation of the main facts reliance has
been placed chiefly upon patents, which for historic development are
believed to be the best of all authorities, because they carry the
responsibility of the National Government as to dates, and the attested
signature and oath of the inventor as to subject matter. Many
difficulties and embarrassments have been encountered in the work. The
fear of extending it into a too bulky volume has excluded treatment of
many subjects which the author recognizes as important, and issues in
dispute as to the claims of inventors have also presented themselves in
perplexing conflict. A discussion of the latter has been avoided as far
as possible, the paramount object being to do justice to all the worthy
workers in this field, with favor to none, and only expressing such
conclusions as seem to be justified by authenticated facts and the
impartial verdict of reason in the clearing atmosphere of time. For sins
of omission a lack of space affords a reasonable excuse, and for those
of commission the great scope of the work is pleaded in extenuation. It
is hoped, however, that the volume may find an accepted place in the
literature of the day, as presenting in compact form some comprehensive
and coherent idea of the great things in invention which the Nineteenth
Century has added to the world’s wealth of ideas and material resources.
In acknowledging the many obligations to friends who have aided me in
the work, my thanks are due first to the Editors of the _Scientific
American_ for aid rendered in the preparation of the work; also to
courteous officials in the Government Departments, and to many
progressive manufacturers throughout the country.
E. W. B.
_Washington, D. C., October, 1900._
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
THE PERSPECTIVE VIEW.
CHAPTER II.
CHRONOLOGY OF LEADING INVENTIONS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
CHAPTER III.
THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.
The Voltaic Pile. Daniell’s Battery. Use of Conducting Wire by Weber.
Steinheil Employs Earth as Return Circuit. Prof. Henry’s Electro-
Magnet, and First Telegraphic Experiment. Prof. Morse’s Telegraphic
Code and Register. First Line Between Washington and Baltimore. Bain’s
Chemical Telegraph. Gintl’s Duplex Telegraph. Edison’s Quadruplex.
House’s Printing Telegraph. Fac Simile Telegraphs. Channing and Farmer
Fire Alarm. Telegraphing by Induction. Wireless Telegraphy by Marconi.
Statistics.
CHAPTER IV.
THE ATLANTIC CABLE.
Difficulties of Laying. Congratulatory Messages Between Queen Victoria
and President Buchanan. The Siphon Recorder. Statistics.
CHAPTER V.
THE DYNAMO AND ITS APPLICATIONS.
Observations of Faraday and Henry. Magneto-Electric Machines of Pixii,
and of Saxton. Hjorth’s Dynamo of 1855. Wilde’s Machine of 1866.
Siemens’ of 1867. Gramme’s of 1870. Tesla’s Polyphase Currents.
CHAPTER VI.
THE ELECTRIC MOTOR.
Barlow’s Spur Wheel. Dal Negro’s Electric Pendulum. Prof. Henry’s
Electric Motor. Jacobi’s Electric Boat. Davenport’s Motor. The Neff
Motor. Dr. Page’s Electric Locomotive. Dr. Siemens’ First Electric
Railway at Berlin, 1879. First Electric Railway in United States,
between Baltimore and Hampden, 1885. Third Rail System. Statistics.
Electric Railways, and General Electric Company. Distribution
Electric Current in Principal Cities.
CHAPTER VII.
THE ELECTRIC LIGHT.
Voltaic Arc by Sir Humphrey Davy. The Jablochkoff Candle. Patents of
Brush, Weston, and Others. Search Lights. Grove’s First Incandescent
Lamp. Starr-King Lamp. Moses Farmer Lights First Dwelling with
Electric Lamps. Sawyer-Man Lamp. Edison’s Incandescent Lamp. Edison’s
Three-Wire System of Circuits. Statistics.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE TELEPHONE.
Preliminary Suggestions and Experiments of Bourseul, Reis, and
Drawbaugh. First Speaking Telephone by Prof. Bell. Differences between
Reis’ and Bell’s Telephones. The Blake Transmitter. Berliner’s
Variation of Resistance and Electric Undulations, by Variation of
Pressure. Edison’s Carbon Microphone. The Telephone Exchange.
Statistics.
CHAPTER IX.
ELECTRICITY, MISCELLANEOUS.
Storage Battery. Batteries of Planté, Faure and Brush. Electric
Welding. Direct Generation of Electricity by Combustion. Electric
Boats. Electro-Plating. Edison’s Electric Pen. Electricity in
Medicine. Electric Cautery. Electric Musical Instruments. Electric
Blasting.
CHAPTER X.
THE STEAM ENGINE.
Hero’s Engine, and Other Early Steam Engines. Watt’s Steam Engine. The
Cut-Off. Giffard Injector. Bourdon’s Steam Gauge. Feed Water Heaters,
Smoke Consumers, etc. Rotary Engines. Steam Hammer. Steam Fire Engine.
Compound Engines. Schlick and Taylor Systems of Balancing Momentum of
Moving Parts. Statistics.
CHAPTER XI.
THE STEAM RAILWAY.
Trevithick’s Steam Carriage. Blenkinsop’s Locomotive. Hedley’s
“Puffing Billy.” Stephenson’s Locomotive. The Link Motion. Stockton
and Darlington Railway, 1825. Hackworth’s “Royal George.” The
“Stourbridge Lion” and “John Bull.” Baldwin’s Locomotives.
Westinghouse Air Brakes. Janney Car Coupling. The Woodruff Sleeping
Car. Railway Statistics.
CHAPTER XII.
STEAM NAVIGATION.
Early Experiments. Symington’s Boat. Col. John Stevens’ Screw
Propeller. Robt. Fulton and the “Clermont.” First Trip to Sea by
Stevens’ “Phœnix.” “Savannah,” the First Steam Vessel to Cross the
Ocean. Ericsson’s Screw Propeller. The “Great Eastern.” The Whale Back
Steamers. Ocean Greyhounds. The “Oceanic,” largest Steamship in the
World. The “Turbinia.” Fulton’s “Demologos,” First War Vessel. The
Turret Monitor. Modern Battleships and Torpedo Boats. Holland
Submarine Boat.
CHAPTER XIII.
PRINTING.
Early Printing Press. Nicholson’s Rotary Press. The Columbian and
Washington Presses. König’s Rotary Steam Press. The Hoe Type Revolving
Machine. Color Printing. Stereotyping. Paper Making. Wood Pulp. The
Linotype. Plate Printing. Lithography.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE TYPEWRITER.
Old English Typewriter of 1714. The Burt Typewriter of 1829. Progin’s
French Machine of 1833. Thurber’s Printing Machine of 1843. The Beach
Typewriter. The Sholes Typewriter, the First of the Modern Form,
Commercially Developed into the Remington. The Caligraph, Smith-
Premier, and Others.
CHAPTER XV.
THE SEWING MACHINE.
Embroidery Machine the Forerunner of the Sewing Machine. Sewing
Machine of Thomas Saint. The Thimonnier Wooden Machine. Greenough’s
Double-Pointed Needle. Bean’s Stationary Needle. The Howe Sewing
Machine. Bachelder’s Continuous Feed. Improvements of Singer. Wilson’s
Rotary Hook, and Four-Motion Feed. The McKay Shoe Sewing Machine.
Button Hole Machines. Carpet Sewing Machine. Statistics.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE REAPER.
Early English Machines. Machine of Patrick Bell. The Hussey Reaper.
McCormick’s Reaper and Its Great Success. Rivalry Between the Two
American Reapers. Self Rakers. Automatic Binders. Combined Steam
Reaper and Threshing Machine. Great Wheat Fields of the West.
Statistics.
CHAPTER XVII.
VULCANIZED RUBBER.
Early Use of Caoutchouc by the Indians. Collection of the Gum. Early
Experiments Failures. Goodyear’s Persistent Experiments. Nathaniel
Hayward’s Application of Sulphur to the Gum. Goodyear’s Process of
Vulcanization. Introduction of his Process into Europe. Trials and
Imprisonment for Debt. Rubber Shoe Industry. Great Extent and Variety
of Applications. Statistics.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHEMISTRY.
Its Evolution as a Science. The Coal Tar Products. Fermenting and
Brewing. Glucose, Gun Cotton, and Nitro-Glycerine. Electro-Chemistry.
Fertilizers and Commercial Products. New Elements of the Nineteenth
Century.
CHAPTER XIX.
FOOD AND DRINK.
The Nature of Food. The Roller Mill. The Middlings Purifier. Culinary
Utensils. Bread Machinery. Dairy Appliances. Centrifugal Milk Skimmer.
The Canning Industry. Sterilization. Butchering and Dressing Meats.
Oleomargarine. Manufacture of Sugar. The Vacuum Pan. Centrifugal
Filter. Modern Dietetics and Patented Foods.
CHAPTER XX.
MEDICINE, SURGERY AND SANITATION.
Discovery of Circulation of the Blood by Harvey. Vaccination by
Jenner. Use of Anæsthetics the Great Step of Medical Progress of the
Century. Materia Medica. Instruments. Schools of Medicine. Dentistry.
Artificial Limbs. Digestion. Bacteriology, and Disease Germs.
Antiseptic Surgery. House Sanitation.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE BICYCLE AND AUTOMOBILE.
The Draisine, 1816. Michaux’s Bicycle, 1855. United States Patent to
Lallement and Carrol, 1866. Transition from “Vertical Fork” and “Star”
to Modern “Safety.” Pneumatic Tire. Automobile the Prototype of the
Locomotive. Trevithick’s Steam Road Carriage, 1801. The Locomobile of
To-day. Gas Engine Automobiles of Pinkus, 1839; Selden, 1879; Duryea,
Winton, and Others. Electric Automobiles a Development of Electric
Locomotives as Early as 1836. Grounelle’s Electric Automobile of 1852.
The Columbia, Woods, and Riker Electric Carriages. Statistics.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE PHONOGRAPH.
Invention of Phonograph by Edison. Scott’s Phonautograph. Improvements
of Bell and Tainter. The Graphophone. Library of Wax Cylinders.
Berliner’s Gramophone.
CHAPTER XXIII.
OPTICS.
Early Telescopes. The Lick Telescope. The Grande Lunette. The Stereo-
Binocular Field Glass. The Microscope. The Spectroscope. Polarization
of Light. Kaleidoscope. Stereoscope. Range Finder. Kinetoscope, and
Moving Pictures.
CHAPTER XXIV.
PHOTOGRAPHY.
Experiments of Wedgewood and Davy. Niépce’s Heliography. Daguerre and
the Daguerreotype. Fox Talbot Makes First Proofs from Negatives. Sir
John Herschel Introduces Glass Plates. The Collodion Process. Silver and
Carbon Prints. Ambrotypes. Emulsions. Dry Plates. The Kodak Camera. The
Platinotype. Photography in Colors. Panorama Cameras. Photo-engraving
and Photo-lithography. Half Tone Printing.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE ROENTGEN OR X-RAYS.
Geissler Tubes. Vacuum Tubes of Crookes, Hittorf, and Lenard. The
Cathode Ray. Roentgen’s Great Discovery in 1895. X-Ray Apparatus.
Salvioni’s Cryptoscope. Edison’s Fluoroscope. The Fluorometer. Sun-
burn from X-Rays. Uses of X-Rays.
CHAPTER XXVI.
GAS LIGHTING.
Early Use of Natural Gas. Coal Gas Introduced by Murdoch. Winsor
Organizes First Gas Company in 1804. Melville in United States Lights
Beaver-Tail Lighthouse with Gas in 1817. Lowe’s Process of Making
Water Gas. Acetylene Gas. Carburetted Air. Pintsch Gas. Gas Meter.
Otto Gas Engine. The Welsbach Burner.
CHAPTER XXVII.
CIVIL ENGINEERING.
Great Bridges, Pneumatic Caissons, Tunnels. The Beach Tunnel Shield.
Suez Canal. Dredges. The Lidgerwood Cable Ways. Canal Locks. Artesian
Wells. Compressed-Air Rock Drills. Blasting. Mississippi Jetties. Iron
and Steel Buildings. Eiffel Tower. Washington’s Monument. The United
States Capitol.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
WOODWORKING.
Early Machines of Sir Samuel Bentham. Evolution of the Saw. Circular
Saw. Hammering to Tension. Steam Feed for Saw Mill Carriage. Quarter
Sawing. The Band Saw. Planing Machines. The Woodworth Planer. The
Woodbury Yielding Pressure Bar. The Universal Woodworker. The
Blanchard Lathe. Mortising Machines. Special Woodworking Machines.
CHAPTER XXIX.
METAL WORKING.
Early Iron Furnace. Operations of Lord Dudley, Abraham Darby, and
Henry Cort. Neilson’s Hot Blast. Great Blast Furnaces of Modern Times.
The Puddling Furnace. Bessemer Steel and the Converter. Open Hearth
Steel. Regenerative Furnace. Siemens-Martin Process. Forging Armor
Plate. Making Horse Shoes. Screws and Special Machines. Electric
Welding, Annealing and Tempering. Coating with Metal. Metal Founding.
Barbed Wire Machines. Making Nails, Pins, etc. Making Shot. Alloys.
Making Aluminum, and Metallurgy of Rarer Metals. The Cyanide Process.
Electric Concentrator.
CHAPTER XXX.
FIRE ARMS AND EXPLOSIVES.
The Cannon, the Most Ancient of Fire Arms. Muzzle and Breech Loaders
of the Sixteenth Century. The Armstrong Gun. The Rodman, Dahlgren, and
Parrott Guns. Breech-Loading Ordnance. Rapid Fire Breech-Loading
Rifles. Disappearing Gun. Gatling Gun. Dynamite Gun. The Colt, and
Smith & Wesson Revolvers. German Automatic Pistol. Breech-Loading
Small Arms. Magazine Guns. The Lee, Krag-Jorgensen, and Mauser Rifles.
Hammerless Guns. Rebounding Locks. Gun Cotton. Nitro Glycerine, and
Smokeless Powder. Mines and Torpedoes.
CHAPTER XXXI.
TEXTILES.
Spinning and Weaving an Ancient Art. Hargreaves’ Spinning Jenny.
Arkwright’s Roll-Drawing Spinning Machine. Crompton’s Mule Spinner.
The Cotton Gin. Ring Spinning. The Rabbeth Spindle. John Kay’s Flying
Shuttle and Robt. Kay’s Drop Box. Cartwright’s Power Loom. The
Jacquard Loom. Crompton’s Fancy Loom. Bigelow’s Carpet Looms. Lyall
Positive Motion Loom. Knitting Machines. Cloth Pressing Machinery.
Artificial Silk. Mercerized Cloth.
CHAPTER XXXII.
ICE MACHINES.
General Principles. Freezing Mixtures. Perkins’ Ice Machine, 1834.
Pictet’s Apparatus. Carré’s Ammonia Absorption Process. Direct
Compression, and Can System. The Holden Ice Machine. Skating Rinks.
Windhausen’s Apparatus for Cooling and Ventilating Ships.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
LIQUID AIR.
Liquefaction of Gases by Northmore--1805, Faraday--1823, Bussy--1824,
Thilorier--1834, and others. Liquefaction of Oxygen, Nitrogen and Air,
by Pictet and Cailletet in 1877. Self-Intensification of Cold by
Siemens in 1857, and Windhausen in 1870. Operations of Dewar,
Wroblewski, and Olszewski. Self-Intensifying Processes of Solvay,
Tripler, Lindé, Hampson, and Ostergren and Berger. Liquid Air
Experiments and Uses.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
MINOR INVENTIONS,
AND
Patents of Principal Countries of the World.
CHAPTER XXXV.
EPILOGUE.
CHAPTER I.
THE PERSPECTIVE VIEW.
Standing on the threshold of the Twentieth Century, and looking back a
hundred years, the Nineteenth Century presents in the field of invention
a magnificent museum of thoughts crystallized and made immortal, not as
passive gems of nature, but as potent, active, useful agencies of man.
The philosophical mind is ever accustomed to regard all stages of growth
as proceeding by slow and uniform processes of evolution, but in the
field of invention the Nineteenth Century has been unique. It has been
something more than a merely normal growth or natural development. It
has been a gigantic tidal wave of human ingenuity and resource, so
stupendous in its magnitude, so complex in its diversity, so profound in
its thought, so fruitful in its wealth, so beneficent in its results,
that the mind is strained and embarrassed in its effort to expand to a
full appreciation of it. Indeed, the period seems a grand climax of
discovery, rather than an increment of growth. It has been a splendid,
brilliant campaign of brains and energy, rising to the highest
achievement amid the most fertile resources, and conducted by the
strongest and best equipment of modern thought and modern strength.
The great works of the ancients are in the main mere monuments of the
patient manual labor of myriads of workers, and can only rank with the
buildings of the diatom and coral insect. Not so with modern
achievement. The last century has been peculiarly an age of ideas and
conservation of energy, materialized in practical embodiment as
labor-saving inventions, often the product of a single mind, and
partaking of the sacred quality of creation.
The old word of creation is, that God breathed into the clay the breath
of life. In the new world of invention mind has breathed into matter,
and a new and expanding creation unfolds itself. The speculative
philosophy of the past is but a too empty consolation for short-lived,
busy man, and, seeing with the eye of science the possibilities of
matter, he has touched it with the divine breath of thought and made a
new world.
When the Nineteenth Century registered its advent in history, the world
of invention was a babe still in its swaddling clothes, but, with a
consciousness of coming power, was beginning to stretch its strong
young arms into the tremendous energy of its life. James Watt had
invented the steam engine. Eli Whitney had given us the cotton gin. John
Gutenberg had made his printing type. Franklin had set up his press. The
telescope had suggested the possibilities of ethereal space, the compass
was already the mariner’s best friend, and gunpowder had given proof of
its deadly agency, but inventive genius was still groping by the light
of a tallow candle. Even up to the beginning of this century so strong a
hold had superstition on the human mind, that inventions were almost
synonymous with the black arts, and the struggling genius had not only
to contend with the natural laws and the thousand and one expected
difficulties that hedge the path of the inventor, but had also to
overcome the far greater obstacles of ignorant fear and bigoted
prejudice. A labor-saving machine was looked upon askance as the enemy
of the working man, and many an earnest inventor, after years of arduous
thought and painstaking labor, saw his cherished model broken up and his
hopes forever blasted by the animosity of his fellow men. But with the
Nineteenth Century a new era has dawned. The legitimate results of
inventions have been realized in larger incomes, shorter hours of labor,
and lives so much richer in health, comfort, happiness, and usefulness,
that to-day the inventor is a benefactor whom the world delights to
honor. So crowded is the busy life of modern civilization with the
evidences of his work, that it is impossible to open one’s eyes without
seeing it on every hand, woven into the very fabric of daily existence.
It is easy to lose sight of the wonderful when once familiar with it,
and we usually fail to give the full measure of positive appreciation to
the great things of this great age. They burst upon our vision at first
like flashing meteors; we marvel at them for a little while, and then we
accept them as facts, which soon become so commonplace and so fused into
the common life as to be only noticed by their omission.
To appreciate them let us briefly contrast the conditions of to-day with
those of a hundred years ago. This is no easy task, for the comparison
not only involves the experiences of two generations, but it is like the
juxtaposition of a star with the noonday sun, whose superior brilliancy
obliterates the lesser light. But reverse the wheels of progress, and
let us make a quick run of one hundred years into the past, and what are
our experiences? Before we get to our destination we find the wheels
themselves beginning to thump and jolt, and the passage becomes more
difficult, more uncomfortable, and so much slower. We are no longer
gliding along in a luxurious palace car behind a magnificent locomotive,
traveling on steel rails, at sixty miles an hour, but we find ourselves
nearing the beginning of the Nineteenth Century in a rickety, rumbling,
dusty stage-coach. Pause! and consider the change for a moment in some
of its broader aspects. First, let us examine the present more closely,
for the average busy man, never looking behind him for comparisons, does
not fully appreciate or estimate at its real value the age in which he
lives. There are to-day (statistics of 1898), 445,064 miles of railway
tracks in the world. This would build seventeen different railway
tracks, of two rails each, around the entire world, or would girdle
mother earth with thirty-four belts of steel. If extended in straight
lines, it would build a track of two rails to the moon, and more than a
hundred thousand miles beyond it. The United States has nearly half of
the entire mileage of the world, and gets along with 36,746 locomotives,
nearly as many passenger coaches, and more than a million and a quarter
of freight cars, which latter, if coupled together, would make nearly
three continuous trains reaching across the American continent from the
Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. The movement of passenger trains is
equivalent to dispatching thirty-seven trains per day around the world,
and the freight train movement is in like manner equal to dispatching
fifty-three trains a day around the world. Add to this the railway
business controlled by other countries, and one gets some idea of how
far the stage-coach has been left behind. To-day we eat supper in one
city, and breakfast in another so many hundreds of miles east or west as
to be compelled to set our watches to the new meridian of longitude in
order to keep our engagement. But railroads and steam-cars constitute
only one of the stirring elements of modern civilization. As we make the
backward run of one hundred years we have passed by many milestones of
progress. Let us see if we can count some of them as they disappear
behind us. We quickly lose the telephone, phonograph and graphophone. We
no longer see the cable-cars or electric railways. The electric lights
have gone out. The telegraph disappears. The sewing machine, reaper, and
thresher have passed away, and so also have all india-rubber goods. We
no longer see any photographs, photo-engravings, photolithographs, or
snap-shot cameras. The wonderful octuple web perfecting printing press;
printing, pasting, cutting, folding, and counting newspapers at the rate
of 96,000 per hour, or 1,600 per minute, shrinks at the beginning of the
century into an insignificant prototype. We lose all planing and
wood-working machinery, and with it the endless variety of sashes,
doors, blinds, and furniture in unlimited variety. There are no
gas-engines, no passenger elevators, no asphalt pavement, no steam fire
engine, no triple-expansion steam engine, no Giffard injector, no
celluloid articles, no barbed wire fences, no time-locks for safes, no
self-binding harvesters, no oil nor gas wells, no ice machines nor cold
storage. We lose air engines, stem-winding watches, cash-registers and
cash-carriers, the great suspension bridges, and tunnels, the Suez
Canal, iron frame buildings, monitors and heavy ironclads, revolvers,
torpedoes, magazine guns and Gatling guns, linotype machines, all
practical typewriters, all pasteurizing, knowledge of microbes or
disease germs, and sanitary plumbing, water-gas, soda water fountains,
air brakes, coal-tar dyes and medicines, nitro-glycerine, dynamite and
guncotton, dynamo electric machines, aluminum ware, electric
locomotives, Bessemer steel with its wonderful developments, ocean
cables, enameled iron ware, Welsbach gas burners, electric storage
batteries, the cigarette machine, hydraulic dredges, the roller mills,
middlings purifiers and patent-process flour, tin can machines, car
couplings, compressed air drills, sleeping cars, the dynamite gun, the
McKay shoe machine, the circular knitting machine, the Jacquard loom,
wood pulp for paper, fire alarms, the use of anæsthetics in surgery,
oleomargarine, street sweepers, Artesian wells, friction matches, steam
hammers, electro-plating, nail machines, false teeth, artificial limbs
and eyes, the spectroscope, the Kinetoscope or moving pictures,
acetylene gas, X-ray apparatus, horseless carriages, and--but, enough!
the reader exclaims, and indeed it is not pleasant to contemplate the
loss. The negative conditions of that period extend into such an
appalling void that we stop short, shrinking from the thought of what it
would mean to modern civilization to eliminate from its life these
potent factors of its existence.
Returning to the richness and fullness of the present life, we shall
first note chronologically the milestones and finger boards which mark
this great tramway of progress, and afterward consider separately the
more important factors of progress.