Invention: The Master-key to Progress

by Bradley A. Fiske

This was an invention of the first order; original, concrete and highly useful. After meeting the customary chorus of prejudice and opposition, it justified its existence by a quickly established record of effectiveness, and took its place among the useful adjuncts of the machine of civilization.

Meanwhile, several other adjuncts had appeared. Among these was the steel pen, a process of making malleable iron castings, the planing machine, a fireproof safe, the knitting machine and the band wood-saw.

In 1726 Dr. Hales had announced that a gas capable of burning, and giving light while burning, could be distilled from coal. This announcement created great interest, and led to a long series of scientific investigations as to the possibility of utilizing it for house and street illumination, especially by a Mr. Murdock in the latter decade of the century. In 1802 Mr. Murdock made a public display of the result of his labors, by illuminating a factory with gas. In the year 1803–1804 the Lyceum Theatre in London was so lighted, and a year later some extensive cotton mills in Manchester. Public interest was so roused that investigations on a larger scale ensued, which resulted in lighting Westminster Bridge with gas in 1813, and the town of Westminster the following year. In 1816 street lighting by gas was common in London. The lighting of houses by gas followed later, but very slowly.

It is a little difficult to see that there was much invention of an original or brilliant kind involved in the gradual development of the art of illuminating by gas; but it cannot reasonably be denied that a considerable amount of invention must have been done in the aggregate, for the reason that a wholly novel art was created. If it was not invented, how was it brought into being? The best answer probably is that the art was not the result of one brilliant invention followed by others that improved upon it, but was rather the aggregate work of a number of minor inventions, each one of which carried the art forward, but by only one short step.

Other minor inventions produced the locomotive and the railroad. The first steam engines were stationary; but portable engines, now called locomotives, gradually came into being. They were engines mounted on platforms resting on wheels that, in turn, rested on the ground; the revolutions of the engines turning the wheels, and causing the advancement of the whole. In 1807 a wagon-way was laid down on which cars were run to and from a colliery, and this wagon-way passed close in front of a house in which lived a poor family named Stephenson, a member of which was a boy whose Christian name was George. In the following year, the wooden parts were taken up and replaced by a single line of iron rails with sidings. In 1811 a portable engine was constructed for running on these rails, and this was followed by another in the following year. George Stephenson made a locomotive for running on rails in 1814, and followed it by another in 1816, both for hauling coal.

It was now so obvious that locomotives could haul other things than coal, that a railroad was laid down between Manchester and Liverpool, and a prize of £500 was offered for the best engine. On October 6, 1829, the competition was held, though only three engines appeared. The prize was won by Stephenson's locomotive, the Rocket, which attained a speed of 29 miles per hour.

With the locomotive, as with illuminating gas, it is impossible to see any one original or brilliant invention. We do see, however, the result of the superposition on one brilliant invention (that of Hero's steam engine) of a number of minor inventions, and much constructive ingenuity and initiative.

An invention of a higher order had signalized the latter part of the eighteenth century, in the form of a printing press in which the speed of printing was greatly increased by the use of revolving cylinders; one holding the type on its outer surface, and the other covered with leather, the paper passing between, and receiving the printed impression by the pressure exerted between the two cylinders. In order that the type should fit on the curved surface of the cylinder, they were made narrower toward the bottom. The machine was invented by an Englishman named Nicholson. It was never put into practical use; but a machine embodying the revolving cylinder for receiving the force of the impression communicated to the paper, was invented and put into successful use later by a German named König. The type, however, was not put on a cylinder in this machine, but on a flat plate that passed back and forth under the revolving impression cylinder. Two of König's presses were bought for the London Times; and on November 28, 1814, one made 1,100 impressions per hour, a marvelous advance over speeds previously attained. From the standpoint of pure invention, it was not so admirable as Nicholson's; but being a later product, and being based on Nicholson's principle, it was naturally an improvement in construction and mode of operation.

In 1814 Sir David Brewster, while experimenting on the polarization of light, made an invention of the most original and concrete type, which required a high grade of scientific knowledge for its conception and development, but which was not intended for any utilitarian purpose, and yet was of too serious a character to be called a scientific toy. This was his famous kaleidoscope; an instrument described accurately by its name, for it enabled one to see beautiful things. It was very simple in construction and principle, and seems to have fallen short of greatness in only one element, that of usefulness. By a careful adjustment of two prisms at a definite angle to each other, Sir David showed that geometrical images of the utmost beauty and variety could be made of objects placed between the mirrors, especially if those objects were small objects, and if they were of different colors, like bits of colored glass. Knowledge of this escaping, thousands of kaleidoscopes were soon put on the market, and sold in all the principal cities, before Sir David had had time to get a patent. Though the instruments were unscientifically made, they gave beautiful pictures nevertheless; but the result was that the kaleidoscope was not appreciated at its full value. The inventor improved the instrument greatly, and developed it into one of the most beauty-producing appliances known, and one of the most extraordinary and unique. The most remarkable fact connected with it is that no real usefulness for it has ever yet been found. The present author ventures to predict that a clear field of usefulness will some day be found by some fortunate inventor.

Meanwhile, the ill-clad captain of artillery who had invented the plan by which the British were pushed out of Toulon with so much neatness and despatch, had nearly turned the civilized world upside down. No man save Alexander ever accomplished so much of that kind of work in so short a time. His work consisted of a number of acts performed by him, each of which was like his act at Toulon, in that it began with the conception of a brilliant idea, proceeded with the embodiment of the idea in a concrete plan, and ended with the carrying into operation of that plan. Napoleon was great in each of these lines of work. He had a brilliant and yet correct imagination, that enabled him to conceive ideas of extraordinary brilliancy, and also to select from them the ideas that were the most susceptible of being made into concrete plans of the kind that could be carried out successfully. He possessed great constructiveness, that enabled him to construct mentally a plan in which all the means available for his use were seized upon and put to their special tasks. He possessed finally great ardor, industry and courage, that enabled him to start his plan to going very quickly, and keep it going very rapidly, until it had performed its task. It would be idle to discuss at which of these three stages of the work he was the greatest, or to try to decide which stage of the three was the most important; because the three were links in a continual chain, and the chain depended on each equally for its strength:—as any chain does on its links.