Great Inventions and Discoveries

Tens of thousands of years ago, when the world was even then old, primitive man came into existence. The first men lived in the branches of trees or in their hollow trunks, and sometimes in caves. For food they chased horses or caught fish from the streams along whose shores they lived. If they had clothing, it was the skins of wild beasts. Life was simple, slow, and crude. There were no cities, books, railroads, clocks, newspapers, schools, churches, judges, teachers, automobiles, or elections. Man lived with other animals and was little superior to them.

These primitive men are called cave-dwellers.

A resident of modern New York sits down to a breakfast gathered from distant parts of the earth. He spreads out before him his daily newspaper, which tells him what has happened during the last twenty-four hours all over the world. Telegraph wires and ocean cables have flashed these events across thousands of miles into the newspaper offices and there great printing presses have recorded them upon paper. After breakfast he gets into an electric street car or automobile and is carried through miles of space in a very short time to a great steel building hundreds of feet high. He steps into an electric elevator and is whirled rapidly up to his office on the twentieth floor. The postman brings a package of letters which fast-flying mail trains have brought him during the night from far-away places. He reads them and then speaks rapidly to a young woman who makes some crooked marks on paper. After running her fingers rapidly over the keyboard of a little machine, she hands him type-written replies to the letters he has received. A boy brings him a little yellow envelope. In it he finds a message from Seattle or London or Hong Kong or Buenos Ayres sent only a few moments ago. He wishes to talk with a business associate in Boston or St. Louis. Still sitting at his desk, he applies a small tube to his ear and speaks to the man as distinctly and as instantaneously as if he were in the next room. He finds it important to be in Chicago. After luncheon, he boards a train equipped with the conveniences of his own home, sleeps there comfortably, and flies through the thousand miles of distance in time to have breakfast in Chicago the next morning.

What is the difference between the life of the cave-dweller and the life of the modern New Yorker? We call it civilization. It is not at one bound or at one thousand that we pass from the primitive cave to New York City. Civilization is the accumulation of centuries of achievement. It is builded, in the language of Isaiah, "line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little."

Different nations have accomplished different things and have scattered the seeds of these accomplishments among other nations. Certain individuals have seen farther in certain directions than their fellows and have contributed to civilization the results of their vision. Whoever has added to the safety, the happiness, the power, or the convenience of society; whoever discovers a star or a microbe; whoever paints a picture or plants a tree, builds a bridge or fights a righteous battle; whoever makes two ears of corn grow where there grew but one before; whoever lets the light shine in upon a darkened street or a darkened spirit is an agent of civilization.

The history of civilization is largely a history of man's struggle against the forces of nature and of his victory over them. Nature is always saying to man, "Thou shalt not"; and man is always replying, "I will." If diseases lurk in air and water, cures are ready in the mind of man. Nature shoves men apart with lofty mountains; but man drives his iron horse over the mountains or through them. Vast oceans roll and mighty winds blow between continents; but steam laughs at stormy seas. The moon's light is not sufficient for man's purposes and he makes a brighter one. When winter blows his icy breath, man warms himself with coal and fire. The South pours down upon him her scorching summer; but he has learned how to freeze water into ice. Time and space conspire together for human isolation; man conjures with electricity and with it destroys both. The stars seek to hide their secrets behind immeasurable distances; but an Italian gives man a glass that brings the heavens closer before his vision. History tries to conceal itself in the rubbish of ages; but with ink man preserves the past. His asylums, hospitals, churches, schools, libraries, and universities are lights along the shore guiding the human race in its voyage down the ever widening stream of growth and possibility.

The centuries do not yield to man equal advancement. Some are very fertile; others are almost, if not quite, barren. The entire period of a thousand years stretching from the fall of Rome to the discovery of America was as sterile as a heath. On the other hand, the nineteenth century was the greatest in history in point of human progress, especially in the field of inventions. It alone gave to man far more of civilization than the whole ten centuries before the discovery of America or indeed any other period of a thousand years. One hundred years ago there was not a mile of railroad, ocean cable, or telegraph wire in the world; not a telephone, automobile, electric light, or typewriter. The people were then deriding the new-born idea of the steamboat, and wireless telegraphy had not been dreamed of.

Even up to the beginning of the Revolutionary War, less than one hundred fifty years ago, no man in America had ever seen an envelope, a match, a stove, a piece of coal, a daily newspaper, a sewing machine, a reaper, a drill, a mowing machine, ether, chloroform, galvanized iron, India-rubber, or steam-driven machinery. We who are alive to-day are fortunate more than any other generation thus far in the world's population.

"We are living, we are dwelling

In a grand and awful time;

In an age on ages telling-

To be living is sublime."

The horse and the dog of to-day are not very different from the horses and the dogs of a thousand years ago. From the beginning they have done about all they can ever do. Not so with man. He is a progressive animal. He is always reaching outward and upward for broader and higher things. Tennyson sings,

"For I doubt not thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs,

And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the suns."

The difference between the lives of the primitive cave-dweller and the modern American is unspeakably vast. But looking far down the vista of future ages, who shall say that the fortieth century may not as far surpass the twentieth as the twentieth does the sleepy dawn of man's existence on the earth? We are packing more of life into a day than our ancestors could put into a month. And the hours of the centuries to come hold a fuller experience than our days.

Thomas Carlyle calls man a "tool-using animal." Throughout all time man has made and used tools. These tools are the best measure of his civilization. According to the material out of which they have been made, man's progress has been divided into epochs or ages.

Primitive man made a few implements of bone, horn, and stone. They were few and crude. This period is called the Stone Age. During it men dwelt in caves or huts, dressed themselves in skins, and lived by catching fish, chasing wild animals, and gathering wild fruits. By and by man learned how to make tools out of bronze, an alloy composed of copper and tin. These bronze implements were more numerous and more efficient than the stone tools and gave man a higher degree of power and workmanship. With them he cut down trees or carved stone for his dwellings and acquired generally a higher order of life. This era is named the Bronze Age. Finally the use of iron was discovered. This metal afforded many tools that could not be made of stone or bronze-tools that were much stronger and more efficient. Man became correspondingly more powerful and his life more complex. The period during which iron was used is called the Iron Age.

Invention is the making of some new thing not previously existing. Discovery is the finding of something already in existence but not known before. There was no electric telegraph until Samuel Morse made or invented it; America has always existed, but was not known until Christopher Columbus found or discovered it.

Among all the builders of civilization, not the least are the inventors and discoverers. High up on the page of those who have made the world great will always stand the names of Gutenberg or Coster, Watt, Stephenson, Morse, Edison, Fulton, Galileo, Newton, Columbus, Morton, Bell, Marconi, and others who have invented new machines and discovered new processes for making life more happy, safe, and powerful.

Regarding the influence of inventions upon civilization, Lord Salisbury says: "The inventors and even the first users of the great discoveries in applied science had never realized what influence their work was to have upon industry, politics, society, and even religion. The discovery of gunpowder simply annihilated feudalism, thus effecting an entire change in the structure of government in Europe. As to the discovery of printing, it not only made religious revolutions possible, but was the basis on which modern democratic forms of government rested. The steam engine not only changed all forms of industry and the conditions under which industries were prosecuted, but it made practically contiguous the most distant parts of the world, reducing its vastness to a relatively contracted area. And now the introduction of electricity as a form of force seems destined, as its development proceeds, to bring about results quite as important in their way, though but yet dimly seen by the most far-sighted."

Secretary Seward pays this tribute to invention: "The exercise of the inventive faculty is the nearest akin to the Creator of any faculty possessed by the human mind; for while it does not create in the sense that the Creator did, yet it is the nearest approach to it of anything known to man."

And Lord Bacon tells us: "The introduction of new inventions seemeth to be the very chief of all human actions. The benefits of new inventions may extend to all mankind universally; while the good of political achievements can respect but some particular cantons of men; these latter do not endure above a few ages, the former forever. Inventions make all men happy, without injury to any one single person. Furthermore, they are, as it were, new creations, and imitations of God's own works."