Invention: The Master-key to Progress

by Bradley A. Fiske

It is easy to underestimate the influence of the gas-engine, or oil-engine (usually called the internal combustion engine), as is proved by the fact that most people do so; despite the evidence of its importance on all sides, in the shape of submarine vessels, automobiles and similar vehicles. Its most important single effect has been to make possible the aeroplane, and all the science and art of aviation, and the consequent conquest of the air.

In the same year of 1877, Edison made his great invention, the carbon telephone transmitter, which increased enormously the effect of the voice in varying the resistance of a telephone circuit, and thereby increased the loudness of telephone speech. In the same year, Berliner invented the induction transmitter, which consisted of a primary coil of small resistance in circuit with the transmitter and the secondary coil connected to the outside circuit. These two inventions, added to Bell's original invention, made the telephone of today—in its essential features.

In 1878, Edison produced his incandescent lamp, in which a carbon filament, enclosed in a bulb exhausted of air, was heated to incandescence by an electric current. The importance of this invention need hardly be even mentioned. As to the originality of the conception, there are many opinions; for several experimenters had been working in this field, and many brilliant results had been achieved. Important as this invention was, we can imagine the Machine to exist without it, though not in quite so perfect and complete a form. Its main use is its obvious use; though there can be no doubt that the improvement it wrought in the conditions of comfortable living, and the attractions it offered to ambitious youths enlisted a large army in the study of the physical sciences, gave impetus to all the mechanic arts, and assisted in many important ways the upbuilding of the Machine.

In 1879, Appleby invented the automatic grain-binder, and Sir William Crookes made his epochal discovery of cathode rays. This discovery, like many others of a highly scientific character, was not of immediate practical value; consisting as it did in the fact that if the poles of the secondary circuit of a Rhumkorff coil were connected to the two ends of a glass tube from which nearly all the air (or other gas) had been exhausted, a stream of electrified particles was projected from the cathode, or negative pole. These particles were evidently projected with great violence; for if they struck the side of the tube, they produced a brilliant illumination there; while if they struck a piece of metal they developed heat. If the metal were sufficiently thin, it was melted. Later study of these cathode rays developed the fact that the stream of charged particles could be deflected by magnetic and electric fields, thus showing that they had actual physical mass; and still later studies resulted in that mass being determined, and also the amount of the electric charges on them. To an individual particle the name electron was given; and the interesting fact developed that the mass of an electron is only about one-thousandth that of an atom of hydrogen.

This is not very exciting news to men whose time is consumed in the engrossing occupation of earning a living; but scientific facts have a curious habit of lurking in the background, sometimes a long while, and then suddenly stepping up to the footlights in the form of facts or inventions of a kind that are exceedingly important,—even from the standpoint of making a living, or at least of enduring the conditions of living. The study of electrons, for instance led the way to the discovery of the beneficent X-rays, made in 1895 by Röntgen.

The first electric railways, like the first railways of any kind, were laid in mines; for the superiority of electricity over steam for use in the unventilated spaces of mines was obviously greater than in the open spaces on the surface. The first one was in the mines at Zankerode in Germany and was constructed by the famous Siemens Brothers. The first electric surface railway was built at Berlin in 1879. It was about three hundred and fifty yards in length, and laid upon wooden sleepers; an auxiliary rail being fixed midway between the two main rails. The auxiliary rail carried the electric current, which was taken off by a brush connected to the electric motor on the car, from which it went to the rails that acted as the "return." The similarity between this system and that now used in all our cities is striking, and shows how practically and scientifically good the first electric railway was.

To estimate correctly the influence of the invention of the electric railway would be, of course, impossible, especially on partially developed countries; for the electric railway assisted greatly in developing them. It seems possible, however, that the electric railway may be of not very long life, for the reason that the internal-combustion-engine possesses the same great advantage of smokelessness that the electric motor does and makes possible the use of a much simpler system than electric railways necessitate. The fact that any invention is displaced by a later one does not, of course, detract from the merit of the invention displaced, in having supplied the needed stepping-stone for the other one to rise from.

In the same year, Foy invented the steam plow, and Lee invented his magazine rifle. In the following year (1880) Blake invented his telephone transmitter, an improvement of a practical character over preceding ones, Greener invented his hammerless gun, and Faure invented his electric storage battery.

The Faure storage battery was a very important invention, but not nearly so important a one as was at first supposed. It was an improvement on Planté's battery, and consisted mainly in applying red lead and litharge directly to the positive and negative lead plates, before sending any charging current through the liquid; thus expediting the making of the battery very greatly. The invention was hailed with extravagant rejoicings, even Sir William Thomson being carried away from his habitual equanimity; but serious practical difficulties soon developed that are familiar to most of us, and that have never yet been overcome.

In 1880, Koch and Eberth isolated the typhoid bacillus, and Sternberg the pneumonia bacillus. The importance of these two discoveries is not usually appreciated by any but physicians and those who have suffered from these diseases and been cured. Even those who have been saved from having them, especially those in armies who have been saved from having typhoid fever, fail to realize their debt. But the almost perfect immunity from typhoid fever enjoyed by all the enormous armies of the vast World War, compared with the frightful distress and mortality caused by typhoid fever in previous wars, bears eloquent witness to the influence of the great discoveries of those tireless investigators.