Invention: The Master-key to Progress

by Bradley A. Fiske

The ophthalmoscope reminds one of the stethoscope; so simple it is, so perfect and so useful. It consists merely of a small concave mirror with a hole in it, a lamp and a small convex lens: the mirror being held so that one eye of a physician can look through it, and the lens being placed conveniently by the physician near the eye of a patient. The mirror reflects light from the lamp towards the patient's eye, and the convex lens concentrates them on whatever is to be examined—usually the interior of an eye. This instrument belongs in the small class of inventions already spoken of, in which the original conception was so perfect, that the acts of developing it into a concrete instrument and then producing the instrument were easily performed.

The Ruhmkorff coil is in the same class; for it consists merely of two coils of wire; one "primary" coil being of coarse wire and connected with a source of electric current, and the other "secondary" coil of fine wire placed around the coil of coarse wire. If the current in the primary coil be made or broken or changed in force or direction, currents are "induced" in the secondary coil; the strength of the two currents varying relatively according to the sizes and lengths of the wires in the two coils. This invention has an interest apart from its usefulness, in the fact that Ruhmkorff invented it for purposes of scientific study, and that no utilization of it for everyday life occurred until nearly half a century later. Then Ruhmkorff coils were made into "transformers" for use in "stepping down" the small high voltage currents needed for transmitting electric currents over long distances, into the larger but lower voltage currents needed for actuating electric lights and motors.

In the following year, 1852, Channing and Farmer invented the fire-alarm telegraph, an important contribution to the safety of the Machine, though it did not come into general use for several years. In the same year, Fox Talbot made another of his epochal contributions to photography, by inventing a process by which photographic half-tones could be produced. In the following year, a process was invented for making from wood a pulp that was very valuable as the basis of making paper,—and Faraday made three important discoveries. These were the laws of electro-magnetic induction, the relations of the dielectric to the conducting bodies in electro-static induction, and the laws of electrolysis.

These discoveries of Faraday were all inventions, in the sense in which the word invention is used in this book. Each one was the outcome of a series of careful and mathematically guided experiments, and the outgrowth of an idea. In the following year, Melhuish invented photographic roll films, and Herman invented the rock drill. The latter invention has been of the utmost practical value in blasting operations of all kinds, and must be regarded as a very distinct addition to the Machine.

In the same year, appeared the Smith & Wesson revolver; not a great invention, but an improvement in many ways over Colt's; Mr. A. B. Wilson brought out his four-motion feed for sewing-machines, and R. A. Tilghman invented his process for decomposing fats by hot steam. In the following year (1855), Lundstrom made the highly important invention of safety matches. When one reflects (as every one must at times) how great and absolutely irretrievable are the losses caused by fire each year, how the amount of possible destruction grows each year exactly as fast as the Machine grows, and realizes how large a fire many a small match has caused, he feels inclined to give a mental salute to Mr. Lundstrom of Sweden.

In the same year, iron-clad floating batteries were used in the Crimean War. This was not the first time that iron-clad vessels had been employed, for vessels protected on the sides with sheets of iron and copper had been used by the Coreans in their victorious war against the Japanese about three hundred years before; but it was the first time that such vessels had appeared in Europe. Cocaine was invented the same year, and one of the most valuable anæsthetics yet known was then produced.

But the most valuable contribution to the Machine in 1855 was Henry Bessemer's epochal invention of making steel by blowing air through molten cast iron, until enough of the carbon had been burnt off to leave a steel of whatever quality was desired. This invention reduced the cost of making steel, and the time required, in so great a degree as to place the manufacture of steel on a basis entirely new, and to extend its field of employment greatly. And, as with many previous great inventions, this one paved the way for still other inventions, by indicating the possibility of still wider fields. The Bessemer process is not in the class with the typewriter or the telegraph, but in the class with the gun; for it does things itself. It would be difficult to specify any invention (except one produced at a much earlier time) that has had more influence, and more good influence, on history than Bessemer's. No one can look out of his window in any town or city, without seeing some of the innumerable products of Bessemer's idea.

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Our record has now brought us to the middle of the nineteenth century. The conditions of living in 1850 were greatly different from those of 1800. In fifty years, the physical conditions of living and of carrying on business of all kinds, had improved more than in the century between 1700 and 1800, more than in the two centuries preceding 1700, and more than in the ten centuries from 500 and 1500. Rapid transportation over the land in railroad trains for both passengers and freight had largely replaced the slow transportation methods of 1800; and, in an almost equal degree, steam transportation at sea had replaced transportation by sails. The printing press had been developed from a crude and slow contrivance, worked by a hand, to a magnificent mechanism worked by steam: the electric battery had been improved into an appliance of the utmost reliability and usefulness; telegraph lines stretched over the continents, and messages were sent surely and instantaneously over hundreds of miles of land; and the science of chemistry had arisen from the ashes of alchemy. As a result of this, the science of photography had been born, and had already begun its work, so varied and so useful. Physics had grown so surely and so greatly, that it had been divided into the separate but allied sciences of heat, light and electricity—including magnetism: the science of engineering had expanded so widely, that it also had been divided into other sciences—civil engineering, mechanical engineering, hydraulic engineering and electrical engineering: the science of medicine, because of the advances in chemistry and physics, had advanced at an equal rate: the gun had been so greatly improved, and gunpowder also, that such a degree of precision and range had been attained as to make the gun of 1800 seem crude indeed; and the improvement had been inevitably caused by the greater knowledge placed at the disposal of ordnance officers, by the advances in chemistry, heat, light, electricity, magnetism and the various engineering arts. The introduction of illuminating gas, the improvements in forging, casting and turning metals, had made possible the building of edifices, and the fabrication of better and cheaper utensils of every kind: improvements in the means and methods of spinning, knitting and weaving had bettered the materials that people wore upon their persons: improvements in rubber manufacture had made possible the use of waterproof garments; crops could be gathered more quickly and surely: safety from fire had been increased: methods of heating houses had been vastly improved: and the discovery of anæsthetics had relieved civilized man in great degree from his most distressing single enemy. As a result, the people of every civilized country lived under conditions of comfort far greater than had ever been known before in similar climates.

The facts and conditions detailed above relate almost wholly to the material conditions of living, and show that, for most people, they had been enormously improved: though it is noteworthy that for the very poor, they had not improved in many cases, and had been altered for the worse in other cases. The unfavorable changes were mainly those produced by "factory life" which in 1850 must have been worse than country life for the same class of people. These cases were so greatly in the minority, however, as not to affect the main proposition that the advance in civilization from 1800 to 1850, caused by new inventions, had improved the material conditions of living for the great majority of the people affected by them.