Minor Inventions,
and
Patents of Principal Countries of the World.
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.